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| France Billet de 500 Francs Descartes |
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| France money 100 French Francs |
French banknotes, French paper money, French bank notes, France banknotes, France paper money, France bank notes, collection of French paper money, Billets de banque en franc français, collection de papier-monnaie billets français, Les billets de la Banque de France, Papier monnaie - Billets France.
Obverse: Bust of philosopher René Descartes seated in a chair and holding a compass. In the background, a Muse holding a large book.
Reverse: Statue of winged Victory writes the word "PAX" (Peace) on a shield. In the background a rural landscape with scene of peasant farmers returning from hay harvest.
The dominant colors are red-brown and gray-green.
Its dimensions are 160 mm x 92 mm.
100 French francs Descartes banknote created on 15 May 1942, put into circulation from July 21, 1944 by the Bank of France. This banknote was issued for replacing the 100 francs Sully. 100 francs Descartes was replaced by the 100 francs 100 francs Jeune Paysan "Young Farmers".
This banknote belongs to the series of notes "famous people" printed in intaglio and color process, a technique still used today to obtain relief features and sharper. It was painted by Lucien Jonas, the engraving is signed Ernest Pierre Deloche.
It was printed from May 1942 to December 1944 and withdrawn from circulation as legal tender on June 4, 1945.
This banknote should bear the portrait of Marshal Marquis de Vauban, on which Marshal Vauban indicates his marshal's baton to toward the fortresses of the Nord and it symbolizes the peace and the strength of our military defense, but an disaster on the Maginot Line, led to the decision of Banque de France at the last moment to replace Marshal Vauban by Descartes.
René Descartes ( 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed The Father of Modern Philosophy, and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations) — was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution and has been described as an example of genius. He refused to accept the authority of previous philosophers and also refused to accept the obviousness of his own senses.
Descartes frequently sets his views apart from those of his predecessors. In the opening section of the Passions of the Soul, a treatise on the early modern version of what are now commonly called emotions, Descartes goes so far as to assert that he will write on this topic "as if no one had written on these matters before". Many elements of his philosophy have precedents in late Aristotelianism, the revived Stoicism of the 16th century, or in earlier philosophers like Augustine. In his natural philosophy, he differs from the schools on two major points: First, he rejects the splitting of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejects any appeal to final ends—divine or natural—in explaining natural phenomena. In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's act of creation.
Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well.
He is perhaps best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum" (French: Je pense, donc je suis; I think, therefore I am), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method (1637 – written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644 – written in Latin).