Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the philosophy or methods of Descartes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), to his philosophy, or to his geometrical method.
  • noun One who adopts the philosophy of Descartes; a follower of Descartes.
  • noun Any curve of the fourth order having two cusps on the absolute.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An adherent of Descartes.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to the French philosopher René Descartes, or his philosophy.
  • adjective (Geom) distance of a point from lines or planes; -- used in a system of representing geometric quantities, invented by Descartes.
  • adjective a small hollow glass figure, used in connection with a jar of water having an elastic top, to illustrate the effect of the compression or expansion of air in changing the specific gravity of bodies.
  • adjective (Geom.) a curve such that, for any point of the curve mr + m'r' = c, where r and r' are the distances of the point from the two foci and m, m' and c are constant; -- used by Descartes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of, or pertaining to, Descartes, his mathematical methods, or his philosophy, especially with regard to its emphasis on logical analysis and its mechanistic interpretation of physical nature.
  • adjective mathematics, cartography Of, or pertaining to, co-ordinates based on mutually orthogonal axes.
  • noun One who follows the philosophy of Cartesianism.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to Rene Descartes or his works
  • noun a follower of Cartesian thought

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French cartésien (from René Descartes) and New Latin Cartesiānus (from Cartesius, Latin form of Descartes).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

After Rene Descartes

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Examples

  • These two numbers are then the “ Cartesian co-ordinates” of this corner with reference to the “Cartesian co-ordinate system” which is determined by the arrangement of little rods.

    Chapter 24. Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Continuum 1920

  • CARTESIAN THREE-SPACE An extension of rectangular coordinates into three dimensions is Cartesian three-space (Fig. 6-2), also called xyz-space.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • MATHEMATICIAN'S POLAR VS CARTESIAN Figure 5-13 shows a point P ¼ (x0, y0) ¼ (0, r0) graphed on superimposed Cartesian and polar coordinate systems.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • Interesting discussing on photography as a weapon is continued in Cartesian Blogging.

    Knowledge is Power: Photography Archives 2008

  • Interesting discussing on photography as a weapon is continued in Cartesian Blogging.

    More Photography stuff - Knowledge is Power 2008

  • Interesting discussing on photography as a weapon is continued in Cartesian Blogging.

    Knowledge is Power: November 2008 Archives 2008

  • Interesting discussing on photography as a weapon is continued in Cartesian Blogging.

    Knowledge is Power: kiplog: November 2008 Archives 2008

  • Interesting discussing on photography as a weapon is continued in Cartesian Blogging.

    Knowledge is Power: Photography: November 2008 Archives 2008

  • This problem (which so far as he could tell, mathematicians regard as quite uninteresting) was simply the relation between linear, sequential strings of symbols or mathematical "sentences" like y = 1/x, and the diagrams in Cartesian coordinates that transform these statements into visual images, in this case, a curve descending from an infinite height along the vertical y-axis, turning right and skating off into an infinite eastern distance along the x-axis.

    The Last Formalist, or W.J.T. Mitchell as Romantic Dinosaur 1997

  • This problem (which so far as he could tell, mathematicians regard as quite uninteresting) was simply the relation between linear, sequential strings of symbols or mathematical "sentences" like y = 1/x, and the diagrams in Cartesian coordinates that transform these statements into visual images, in this case, a curve descending from an infinite height along the vertical y-axis, turning right and skating off into an infinite eastern distance along the x-axis.

    The Romantic Education of W.J.T. Mitchell 1997

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