La Géométrie
La Géométrie was published in 1637BC as an appendix to Discours de la méthode (Discourse on Method), written by René Descartes. Discourse on Method was a philosophical and mathematical treatise intended to disprove Aristotelian philosophy. La Geometrie was written as an attempt to mathematically demonstrate the truth of Discourse on Method's statements about philosophy and the universe. The work was responsible for introducing the Cartesian coordinate system, which is a mathematical graph in which x is the horizontal line and y is the vertical line, and in which the positive numbers on the x line are on the right and the negative numbers on the left, and the positive numbers on the y line are on the top and the negative numbers are on the bottom, and specifically discussed the representation of pints of a plane, via real numbers; and the representation of curves, via equations. The work was also the first to propose the idea of uniting algebra and geometry into a single subject and invented an algebraic geometry called analytic geometry, which means reducing geometry to a form of arithmetic and algebra and translating geometric shapes into algebraic equations. For its time this was bloody good, given that algebra and geometry were considered completely separate branches of mathematics with no connection to one another. It also contributed to the mathematical ideas of Liebniz and Newton and thus was of stonking impotence in the development of calculus.
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