Descartes Bones

Descartes Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason
Russell Shorto

Written with vigor and humor this book is the story of Descartes skull. Really. But it takes you deeper than that without feeling like you are mired in philosophical fiddle-faddle. Shorto takes a small object with a heavy history and lightly skirts a story full of intrigue and curiosity about how we as modern folk were born.

Why Descartes? It boils down to his "cognito, " and more important the implications of taking doubt and questions down to the very end of its logical conclusion. It is, what we know as, I think therefore I am. The author explains it this way: "Once the acid of his methodical doubt had eaten its way through everything else, what he was left with was not, technically, even an 'I' but merely the realization that there was thinking going on. . . thinking is taking place therefore there must be that which thinks." (pg 20)

The author then weaves the story of this great thinkers skull with the intricacies of the history of thought pre-Descartes (what led him to think and express what he did) and his legacy. He describes with good conviction that the Enlightenment thinking splintered off into those who took Descartes method and incorporated it into religion, those that were secular in a moderate way and then radical secularists. All of this can be channelled in the ultimate book, in this author's opinion, Discourse on Method. It was significant because it was written for the public at that time, in the French language and not latin. Further, he wrote in the first person. Each of these points was revolutionary on its own.

And just because I can't help myself, I leave you with some of my favorite musings from the book on death: "Death is the event in life. It is our chief organizing principle. It's why we rush and why we dawdle, why we butter up our bosses and fawn over our children, why we like both fast cars and fading flowers, why we write poetry, why sex thrills us. Its why we wonder why we are here." (pg 43)

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