Jokes about René Descartes

I Think, Therefore I Am
- René Descartes

Joke #1
Rene Descartes was sitting at a bar. The bartender came over and asked if he would like another drink. He replied, "I think not." And he vanished.

Heisenburg was also sitting at the bar. After Descartes vanished in a puff of smoke, the bartender walked over to him and asked, "Did you see that?" To which Heisenberg replied, "I can't be certain."

The bartender then noticed Einstein was there. So he asked him if he could believe what had happened. Einstein replied, "It's all relative."

Then the bartender noticed that Carl Sagan was there. He walked over to him and asked, "Can you believe that all these famous people are here in THIS bar?" Sagan replied, "No. Why there must be BILLIONS and BILLIONS of bars out there."


Joke #2
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Rene Descartes: It had sufficient reason to believe it was dreaming anyway.


Joke #3
Did you know that Rene Descartes met the Hunchback of Notre Dame?

They were both visiting Paris, and met on a ferry crossing the famous river. Somehow Quasimodo fell overboard. He disappeared under the water because of the weight of handbells he was carrying on his belt.

As Descartes began a rescue, he shouted, "Quasimodo, I see where you are," and plopped on his coordinates.

He found Quasimodo was already headed toward shore. He seemed to be running across the bottom, but then Descartes saw he was dancing!
Descartes signed to him: "What are you doing that for?" Quasimodo signed back, "Save yourself! I'm happy. I'm just Ringing In The Seine!!"

So Rene reached the shore by bobbing up and down. An onlooker asked, "How did you do that?"
"I'm a Cartesian diver," replied Descartes. "I realize, 'I sink.' Therefore I swam."
---- This story pasted together by Ian Ellis.


Joke #4
Godel can't prove he was here.
Descartes thought he was here.

Joke #5
Rene was busy putting the last touches to a lavish table spread with all sorts of goodies at the annual Descartes' New Year's Party. guests arrived and Rene was mingeling with them and astounding them with his alacrity of thought, when Mrs. Descartes called to him to take out the special New Year's meat pies.

He placed them on a sideboard away from the main table -- intended for the traditional post midnight revel repast.

Still mingeling he espied a hungry guest ranging over toward the meat pies. Like a flash he was upon him.

"Not now Monsieur, he cried, "I think they're for 1 a.m.!"

That's it for the jokes, now who is René Descartes?

René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. Dubbed the "Founder of Modern Philosophy", and the "Father of Modern Mathematics", much of subsequent western philosophy is a reaction to his writings, which have been closely studied from his time down to the present day. His influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system used in plane geometry and algebra being named after him, and he was one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Descartes's theory provided the basis for the calculus of Newton and Leibniz, by applying infinitesimal calculus to the tangent problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. This appears even more astounding considering that the work was just intended as an example to his Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la verité dans les sciences (Discourse on the Method to Rightly Conduct the Reason and Search for the Truth in Sciences, known better under the shortened title Discours de la méthode).

Descartes's rule of signs is also a commonly used method in modern mathematics to determine possible quantities of positive and negative zeros of a function.

Descartes invented analytic geometry, and discovered the law of conservation of momentum. He outlined his views on the universe in his Principles of Philosophy.
One of Descartes most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian geometry, the algebraic system taught in schools today - essentially he invented graphs and graph paper. He also created exponential notation, indicated by numbers written in what is now referred to as superscript (x2).