Rocky Road: Descartes

Descartes

From Measuring Eternity by Martin Gorst

That the earth is governed by natural laws hardly sounds original today, but when René Descartes first articulated the philosophy in the early 17th century, it was revolutionary — and dangerous. But what else could be expected from the author of the statement, "I think, therefore I am"? In fact, debates about his unorthodox ideas prompted a philosophical passion fairly unfamiliar to modern academia, including an "outbreak of fisticuffs and hair-pulling at a disputation" in 1648.

Descartes was born in 1596 to a wealthy, educated family. At the age of 11, he began his education at La Flèche, an elite Jesuit college (akin to a modern-day prep school) in northern France. Due both to his frail health and family connections, he enjoyed special treatment at the school; he was allowed to sleep late, for instance, while his schoolmates rose early for morning classes. Descartes was able to indulge himself with late mornings for most of the rest of his life, a habit he found hard to break in his final years.

By the time Descartes moved to Paris as a young man, his health was excellent — and his tastes expensive. He was once described as "coiffed in curls, wearing crescent-pointed shoes, his hands covered with well-lined snow-white gloves." And always with a faithful valet in tow. Yet he wasn't too much of a cream puff to enjoy adventure. At a time when religious tensions raged throughout Europe, the Catholic Descartes served with the Protestant army of Maurice of Nassau just for the experience. In a similar spirit, he debated philosophy with all comers, but he had to tread carefully to avoid charges of heresy. (It was not unknown for the Catholic Church to burn heretics.) To make matters worse, rumors linked Descartes with the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, or Rosicrucians, a shadowy society of savants, and a dangerous association at a time when established religions could hardly tolerate each other, much less secret clubs of free thinkers. Ironically, Descartes feared persecution from the Catholic Church all his life, yet it was in Holland where he ultimately faced accusations of atheism — a charge that could at the very least destroy his reputation — from Protestant theologians.

Like other leading thinkers of the Scientific Revolution, Descartes convinced himself that the previous achievements of philosophy were minor. He set aside philosophical texts and started to build what he called a new foundation, explaining that he studied "the book of the world." In about 1630, he began writing his masterwork: Le Monde ("The World"), outlining how the earth arose from initial chaos. Time was key to building the universe as Descartes explained it. He never said exactly how long creation took, but it would have taken longer than the accepted 6,000 years. Still, his greater legacy was not about when the universe was created, but how. He explained that rational processes could create the earth, the sun, the planets, and all the universe. Descartes didn't doubt a divine hand in creation; he simply maintained that God's relationship to creation was like that of a clockmaker to a clock — the parts had been set in motion and could run on their own.

Decartes's mechanical philosophy held that nothing was really alive; plants and animals were machines, once declaring that he could see "no difference between machines built by artisans and objects created by nature alone." Though he considered human bodies to be machines, however, he stopped short of saying as much for human beings. Descartes didn't believe that human thought and behavior could be explained by the physical workings of the body. To explain the action of the human soul on the body, Descartes pointed to the pineal gland in the brain. The gland struck Descartes as being in the perfect spot — where the body's "animal" and "rational" spirits met. He claimed that the pineal gland twisted and turned in response to the soul's demands. Unfortunately, he didn't sufficiently examine enough human brains to see if this was possible. Later dissections by Niels Stensen showed that the gland is held fast by surrounding tissues and incapable of movement. Stensen remarked, "I do not reproach Descartes for his method, but for ignoring it." Robert Hooke was another follower of Descartes who took issue with his occasional unfounded speculations.

Descartes was ready to publish The World in the early 1630s, but was stopped in his tracks by news of the arrest of Galileo. Like Galileo, Descartes had accepted and relied on the findings of Copernicus. Descartes was so afraid, he almost burned all his papers but his pride eventually overcame his fear, and in 1641, he published Principles of Philosophy, though it was a shadow of his original work. The World wasn't published until 1664 — 14 years after his death.

Late in his life, Descartes served as a private tutor to Queen Christina of Sweden, and it was in this frigid country that he was obliged to give up his lifelong habit of sleeping in, to rise at 5 a.m. and tutor the queen in an unheated library. Far worse, the rest of Christina's court seethed with resentment toward her new favorite. Descartes was struck down with illness, perhaps pneumonia, and the court doctor was summoned to treat him. Accounts of his death differ, some historians saying he refused treatment, and others speculating that his appointed doctor, rather than curing him of the sickness, nudged him toward death.

Although The World was not published in his lifetime, Descartes proved to be one of the most important philosophers in Western science, influencing the views of Steno, Robert Hooke, Thomas Burnet and Isaac Newton.

For more information:
Measuring Eternity by Martin Gorst
Descartes' Secret Notebook by Amir Aczel
The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin
Revolutionizing the Sciences by Peter Dear
The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick
The Seashell on the Mountaintop by Alan Cutler
Matters of Exchange by Harold J. Cook
London's Leonardo by Bennett, Cooper, Hunter and Jardine
Postcards from the Brain Museum by Brian Burrell
Mendeleyev's Dream by Paul Strathern
Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer
Wonders and the Order of Nature by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park
Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary
The Occult Tradition by David S. Katz
The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine by Horst Bredekamp
Pandora's Breeches by Patricia Fara