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Loading... Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith…by Russell Shorto
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  JeffV | Jun 12, 2009 |  Interesting history of philosophy, reason, and science This has been an unusual trip through the beginning of modern philosophy back in the 1600s to the present. I have not personally studied philosophy, but I found the book easy enough to read. There are many endnotes which in this case I found to be less distracting than footnotes yet easy enough to look up, and many references. The work is well-researched and written for the average person such as myself. There was a great deal of history showing Descartes’ reasoning, studies, and presentation of the original idea of duality of mind and body. This early beginning formed the basis for all science today, giving him the ‘title’ of the Father or Modernity”.. Shorto’s book takes a new look at the beginnings of Descartes’ work and follows through the centuries after his death, showing his effect on science and reason to the present day. However, he has taken an interesting route of demonstration. Descartes never lay quietly in his grave, he was moved through the centuries into various locations, some religious, some not. These relocations of his bones tended to coincide with important turning points in history, harking back to his view of duality and modernism. To make matters more mysterious, the skull was not with the bones. Surprisingly, the skull was located almost 200 years after Descartes’ death and has been authenticated. However, the bones (fragments), presumed carefully handled with each removal and noted, are no longer believed to be authentic. I found the book interesting and different, there are fascinating looks at several historical figures and times. The characters are humanized and real, and I think it would appeal to readers who are inquisitive, like factual science, or history, without sounding like a text-book. (  ) readerbynight | Jan 30, 2009 | Terrific stuff. Shorto uses an interesting historical mystery - the fate of Descartes' remains - as a springboard for a short discussion of the history of philosophy and of the Enlightenment AND for a discussion of our current crisis. (  ) AsYouKnow_Bob | Jan 27, 2009 |  CMA_Library | Jan 22, 2009 | The author uses the story of Descartes' bones as a metaphor for the divisive and rambling path toward human progress. The use of Descartes' bones in this way is doubly clever because not only is the physical path of the bones mysterious and controversial; Descartes' philosophy of questioning received wisdom had its own controversy with traditional thinking. The book follows the history of The Enlightenment through to today's three-way tension between moderates, religious fundamentalist, and secular fundamentalist. Ironically, there is enough traditional 16th Century thinking in Descartes' writing to allow all sides in the later controversies to claim him, and this is paralleled by the multiple conflicting claims of possessing his bones. The meaning of Descartes' most famous quotation is discussed early in the book: "As philosophers since have pointed out, "I think, Therefore I am," or "Je pense, donc je suis," or "Cogito, ergo sum," does not fully encompass what Descartes intended. Once the acid of his methodological 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. More correct than "I think, therefore I am" would be "Thinking is taking place, therefore there must be that which thinks." but that hardly has the snap to make it a slogan fit for generations of T-shirts and cartoon panels." The following is a portion of the book's discussion of the controversies related to mind/body separation: "There was then, as there is now, what might be termed a liberal-conservative divide in attempts to resolve the problem. Put another way, there is a connection between the esoteric efforts to tackle dualism and the sorts of real-world battles that fill newspapers and occupy TV talk shows. Those on the left have tended to accept the seeming consequences of equating mind and brain: if it means that basic features of society --- the self, religion, marriage, moral systems --- need to be reconstructed along new lines, so be it. .... The point is not that mind-equals-brain requires one to hold particular positions on these topics but that it allows for a wide range of moral speculations. The "conservative" stance has been to fight to keep "mind" separate from "body" --- to preserve the status quo, whether in matters of religion, the family, or the self, to maintain that there is an eternal, unchanging basis of values. With regard to Descartes, the irony is that the man who was once seen as the herald of the modern program, the breaker of all icons and traditions, had by the nineteenth century become part of the conservative argument, the man who built a protective wall around the eternal verities, keeping them from the corrosive forces of modernity." The following is a portion of the author's advocacy for a middle way: "In these pages I have taken up Johathan Israel's thesis that there was a three-way division that came into being as modernity matured. There was the theological camp, which held on to a worldview grounded in religious tradition; the "Radical Enlightenment" camp, which in the advent of the "new philosophy," wanted to overthrow the old order, with its centers of power in the church and the monarch, and replace it with a society ruled by democracy and science; and the moderate Enlightenment camp, which subdivided into many factions but which basically took a middle position, arguing that the scientific and religious worldviews aren't truly inconsistent but that perceived conflicts have to be sorted out." .... If there is a solution to the dilemma of modernity, surely it lies in bringing the two wings into the middle, which is where most people live." The following is an insightful quotation from the book that caught my attention: "We are graced with a godlike ability to transcend time and space in our minds but are chained to death. The result is a nagging need to find meaning. This is where the esoteric "mind-body problem" of philosophy professors becomes meaningful to us all, where it translates into tears and laughter." The following is an example of clever use of words in telling the story of the French Academy's decision regarding the genuineness of the skull that was purported to be Decartes': "They had applied their doubts to the very head that had introduced doubt as a tool for advancing knowledge. And in the end they gave the head a nod." The book provides a refreshing and civil discussion of philosophic debates. Weaving the story of Descartes' bones into the narrative makes the otherwise dry subject of philosophy an interesting read. ( ) Clif | Jan 10, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 038551753X, Hardcover)On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, the Frenchman René Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely death far from home. Sixteen years later, the French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Descartes remains have been treated much the way the bones of saints during medieval times, as symbols, as artifacts of reverence, or even as objects d'art. It serves as a vehicle to wrap around the rise of modern thought...if you need thematic story to go along with your history lesson, this book is for you. While Shorto says near the end that the story of Descarte's Bones is an allegory, often times he gets a little too bogged down in that story, going through great lengths to justify trivial details (IMO, I was more interested in the way he tied developments in science and philosophy back to Descartes).
In the end, he invokes modern thinkers such as Christopher Hitchens and suggests that the Enlightenment requires eternal vigilance, as the forces of ignorance (fundamentalist religion) continue to battle against modern thought. Descartes set a massive wave of ideas in motion that still resonate today...but more than 300 years later, it's still not inconceivable that the progress cannot be undone. Descartes himself tried to reconcile religion with reason, and some of the most formidable opposition also claims the Frenchman as inspiration for their thought. (