Synopses & Reviews
On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, the Frenchman Rene 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.
Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who was hounded from country to country on charges of atheism? Why would Descartes' bones take such a strange, serpentine path over the next 350 years--a path intersecting some of the grandest events imaginable: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, the mind-body problem, the conflict between faith and reason? Their story involves people from all walks of life--Louis XIV, a Swedish casino operator, poets and playwrights, philosophers and physicists, as these people used the bones in scientific studies, stole them, sold them, revered them as relics, fought over them, passed them surreptitiously from hand to hand.
The answer lies in Descartes' famous phrase: Cogito ergo sum--I think, therefore I am. In his deceptively simple seventy-eight-page essay, Discourse on the Method, this small, vain, vindictive, peripatetic, ambitious Frenchman destroyed 2,000 years of received wisdom and laid the foundations of the modern world. At the root of Descartes' method was skepticism: What can I know for certain? Like-minded thinkers around Europe passionately embraced the book--the method was applied to medicine, nature, politics, and society. The notion that one could find truth in facts that could be proved, and not in reliance on tradition and the Church's teachings, would become a turning point in human history.
In an age of faith, what Descartes was proposing seemed like heresy. Yet Descartes himself was a good Catholic, who was spurred to write his incendiary book for the most personal of reasons: He had devoted himself to medicine and the study of nature, but when his beloved daughter died at the age of five, he took his ideas deeper. To understand the natural world one needed to question everything. Thus the scientific method was created and religion overthrown. If the natural world could be understood, knowledge could be advanced, and others might not suffer as his child did.
The great controversy Descartes ignited continues to our era: where Islamic terrorists spurn the modern world and pine for a culture based on unquestioning faith; where scientists write bestsellers that passionately make the case for atheism; where others struggle to find a balance between faith and reason.
Descartes' Bonesis a historical detective story about the creation of the modern mind, with twists and turns leading up to the present day--to the science museum in Paris where the philosopher's skull now resides and to the church a few kilometers away where, not long ago, a philosopher-priest said a mass for his bones.
Synopsis
Sixteen years after Rene Descartes' death in Stockholm in 1650, a pious French ambassador exhumed the remains of the controversial philosopher to transport them back to Paris. Thus began a 350-year saga that saw Descartes' bones traverse a continent, passing between kings, philosophers, poets, and painters.
But as Russell Shorto shows in this deeply engaging book, Descartes' bones also played a role in some of the most momentous episodes in history, which are also part of the philosopher's metaphorical remains: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, and the earliest debates between reason and faith. Descartes' Bones is a flesh-and-blood story about the battle between religion and rationalism that rages to this day.
ANew York TimesNotable Book
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Synopsis
A New York Times Notable BookSixteen years after René Descartes' death in Stockholm in 1650, a pious French ambassador exhumed the remains of the controversial philosopher to transport them back to Paris. Thus began a 350-year saga that saw Descartes' bones traverse a continent, passing between kings, philosophers, poets, and painters. But as Russell Shorto shows in this deeply engaging book, Descartes' bones also played a role in some of the most momentous episodes in history, which are also part of the philosopher's metaphorical remains: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, and the earliest debates between reason and faith. Descartes' Bones is a flesh-and-blood story about the battle between religion and rationalism that rages to this day.
About the Author
RUSSELL SHORTO is the bestselling author of The Island at the Center of the World and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Amsterdam.
Reading Group Guide
1.
Descartes' Bones opens with this quotation from Shakespeare's Richard II: "What can we bequeath save our deposed bodies to the ground?" In the context of what we learn in
Descartes' Bones, what do you think this quote means? Why did the author choose it?
2. What do you think of the author's conversational writing style, how he weaves his experiences and opinion into the narrative? Did it enhance your reading experience?
3. Before reading Descartes' Bones, what meaning did Descartes' most famous saying, "I think, therefore I am," hold for you? Did it change now that you've read the book? How?
4. What is your definition of philosophy? Is there a particular philosopher to whose theories you subscribe? What do you think of Descartes' disproved theory of dualism? Can you understand why it was accepted for so long?
5. "Dr. Mennecier is what you would call a French intellectual. . . . To many people. . . . that would be considered a slur. . . . but the term can also encompass a way of looking at the world that is becoming sadly rare—call it a serious commitment to idiosyncrasy". How does Descartes embody this description by the author? What about the author himself? How would you describe someone with a "commitment to idiosyncrasy?" Is that a good or bad trait?
6. "The prevailing wisdom in neuroscience and philosophy is that Descartes was dead wrong. Mind and body—mind and brain—aren't fundamentally different at all." What do you make of this statement from the Preface, that such a revered figure in science such as Descartes was ultimately wrong? Does the fact that dualism was debunked make you question the accuracy of Descartes' other teachings?
7. The author poses many questions about what he terms the "perennial conflict between faith and reason." To you, what comprises this dispute? Why has it persisted through centuries?
8. "[Descartes] wanted to reorient the way people thought". How are people influenced? Do you think it's really possible to alter the way a person actually thinks? If so, how would one go about doing so?
9. The author describes the great lengths to which opponents of Cartesianism went to prevent its ideas from being spread. Why was Cartesianism considered so dangerous?
10. "In the prevailing modern view, faith has no business meddling in astronomy or biology." Do you agree with this statement from Chapter Two? Considering debates like those between believers of Darwin's theory of evolution and those of intelligent design, how does religion factor into these ideas?
11. The author describes the saga of Descartes' bones as a metaphor for modernity. Do you agree with his characterization?
12. In Chapter Six the author explains his obsession with the tale of Descartes bones by stating that we as human beings "are all detectives" and "we crave closure." Do you agree? Why is the story of Descartes' bones so interesting to Russell Shorto, and to others? To paraphrase the book's descriptive copy, why should anyone care about the remains of one long-dead philosopher?
“Smart, elegantly written. . . . A feat of intellectual story-telling.”
—The New York Times Book Review
The introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto.