La Loi de Qui?

I got two discussions of Snell’s law* yesterday; that’s just the sort of thing geophysicists do. And I learned that Descartes was responsible for publicizing Snell’s notes on the subject, so in France they call it la loi de Descartes.

I hate Descartes, with the kind of hatred I normally reserve for conservative talk radio. I’m not sure why; it may have something to do with the exceedingly silly arguments in Discourse on Method, or it may have been an unfortunate incident in high school French. Regardless, I think I just antagonized half a classful of French people by adamantly refusing to give their man credit for anything other than the Cartesian coordinate system… ooops.

*wave refraction in the earth and prisms and things