"Cogito ergo sum" -- commonly translated from the Latin as "I think, therefore I am" -- is probably the most-quoted, if also least-understood, fragment of philosophy in the history of Western civilization.
In "Descartes' Bones," journalist and historian Russell Shorto ("The Island at the Center of the Island") sets out to reacquaint the modern reader with the man who first uttered it, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), in the form of a kind of intellectual adventure story that focuses on the fate of the great man's skull.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, November 05, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 50 words Type of Material: Correction
'Descartes' Bones': The review in Monday's Calendar section of "Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason" by Russell Shorto identified a previous book by Shorto as "The Island at the Center of the Island." The title is "The Island at the Center of the World."
At moments, "Descartes Bones" is reminiscent of a real-life version of "The Da Vinci Code." Shorto describes the strange circumstances under which Descartes died, the intrigue that followed his death as secret operatives competed for fragments of his writings and his skeletal remains, and the cult-like qualities of the so-called Cartesians who embraced his teachings.
The body of Descartes, who was later rumored to have been killed by poisoning, was disinterred from its grave in Stockholm by a pair of knights and spirited away to Paris, where it was reburied in a sealed vault in 1667 along with a copper sword on which an account of the whole remarkable adventure was inscribed.
Or was it?
The whereabouts of Descartes' actual remains, as Shorto demonstrates, turn out to be a dense and enduring mystery. One of the caretakers of what was understood to be the philosopher's mortal remains filched a finger bone as a souvenir, and another cut a chunk out of the reputed skull -- "the skull that had given birth to modern philosophy" -- and used it to make a set of finger-rings that he distributed among his friends.
Yet Shorto questions whether any of these modern relics was more authentic than the proliferating fragments of the True Cross. He writes that at one point it seemed "that there were now four skulls or skull pieces that had supposedly once belonged to Descartes."
The comparison to "The Da Vinci Code," which the author himself makes at one point, is a bit misleading. Shorto's book (unlike Dan Brown's) is firmly rooted in scholarship rather than speculation, including a peripatetic investigation of primary sources, and Shorto (again unlike Brown) writes with wit, verve and style. On every page, he offers up some new bafflement, curiosity or delight, thus turning "Descartes' Bones" into the literary equivalent of a "cabinet of curiosities," where objects like a famous philosopher's skull might have been displayed in the 18th century.
