Descartes? - Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture / Chapter 6 / DTC356

Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture / Chapter 6 / DTC356

Media in Everyday Life

Within the sentences, if you read carefully, there is a sentence that nearly stands alone. 

12 lines down it says, "Descartes would be pleased". This stood out to me because I have no clue who Descartes is. The name sounds familiar; if indeed it is a name. The book doesn't say anything after that. It doesn't go into detail and it doesn't leave a little foot note as to what or who they are talking about. So...I go to google.

"Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist."

Ok, great. Now why is that sentence thrown in the middle of the page with no description?

The sentences before this one are explaining how we use technology and go on to explain a hypothetical account of a morning one may have experienced in 2008. Among these experiences is, "Driving to to school or work, you might program your destination into the navigational system i the dashboard of your car and then follow a map that keeps you at the center with each move your car makes." Then we get this, "Descartes would be pleased". So there is your context. 

While researching I found that the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him. 

The Cartesian coordinate system is, well...

"a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely in a plane by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances from the point to two fixed perpendicular directed lines, measured in the same unit of length. Each reference line is called a coordinate axis or just axis of the system, and the point where they meet is its origin, usually at ordered pair (0, 0). The coordinates can also be defined as the positions of the perpendicular projections of the point onto two axes, expressed as signed distances from the origin". 

Take from that what you want. 

Now we can move on to the true meaning of the book. Most would have skipped over that portion but I decided to find out why the book would throw something like that in there. Keep in mind that I am starting on chapter six so if they described Descartes earlier in the book, then I had no idea.