Cartesian

//kɑɹˈti.ʒən// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One who follows the philosophy of Cartesianism.
  2. 2
    a follower of Cartesian thought wordnet
  3. 3
    The Chartreux cat. rare
Adjective
  1. 1
    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. not-comparable

    "Others within the Cartesian tradition took the idea of a light-bearing medium in quite different directions. For instance, in 1690 Christiaan Huygens considered light to be a sequence of pulses traveling at a finite velocity within the medium."

  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of Cartesian. alt-of, not-comparable

    "Following the approach adopted in [2, 3], two orthogonal cartesian reference systems are considered: […]."

  3. 3
    Of, or pertaining to, co-ordinates based on mutually orthogonal axes. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    of or relating to Rene Descartes or his works wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
adherentdescarteandescarteseandescartesiandescartianphilosopher

Example

More examples

"Religion is an evil that can be cured by Cartesian knowledge."

Etymology

From the New Latin Cartesiānus, from Cartesius (“René Descartes”).

Related phrases

Cartesian circleCartesian coordinatesCartesian diverCartesian doubtCartesian equationCartesian gridCartesian planeCartesian productCartesian spaceCartesian squareco ordinates

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.