Descartes' Bones

I heard an interesting conversation on NPR yesterday that's worth a listen: Tom Ashbrook of the radio show On Point interviewed author Russell Shorto about his latest book, Descartes' Bones. The book has received some criticism for giving Descartes too much credit for the role he played in philosophical movements in and around his time, but most readers seem to have found the work enjoyable and informative, and the questions it raises about faith and reason timely.

Upon his death from pneumonia at the age of 54 Descartes was buried in Stockholm but was later transferred home to France. At the exhumation, so the story goes, a captain of the Swedish guards removed his skull and replaced it with another. His original skull was sold several times before coming to its current resting place in the Palais de Chaillot, at the Musée de l'Homme, while his body lies in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

(This reminded me of the way the mummified head of St. Catherine reached its final resting place in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena while the rest of her body stayed behind in Rome. I couldn't help but smile at the irony of rationalists keeping relics too.)

History and philosophy buffs will see in this tale of Descartes' bones the posthumous enactment of Cartesian dualism: the separation of mind and matter brought into symbolic relief by the very literal disembodiment of Descartes' head. His idea of mind and body as separate is probably among his most famous bequests to subsequent generations, along with his immortal (and, perhaps, often-misinterpreted or misappropriated) utterance Cogito ergo sum and his development of Cartesian coordinates and analytic geometry.

The question is, was he wrong? And if we are so sure he was, why are we still discussing the question today?

Neuroscience has increasingly shown, not mind over matter, or mind versus matter, but rather mind that IS matter. Memory, thought, experience, emotion, judgment and lack thereof, connection with "reality" or lack thereof, are all now thought to be the stuff of neurotransmitters being released (or not) in the brain, depending on the interplay of genetic and environmental influences on brain chemistry and development. Mind IS body, or so current science seems to tell us.

The pendulum has swung so far in this direction that commenters on the radio show's website have criticized Tom Ashbrook for even entertaining alternative points of view. In fact, there are Dawkins and Hitchens fundamentalists who seem to consider the very discussion of these matters a contemptible and even destructive waste of time and energy. And certainly in medicine, empiricism reigns supreme.

I'm not satisfied, though. I'm with Descartes, unlike the empiricists that followed him: I believed there are some truths that can be derived from outside the realm of mathematics and the observable. Granted, reason, logic and empirical thinking have their place, and a very important one at that, but they don't solve everything.

Descartes was interested in how we arrive at indubitable knowledge. Part of the answer lay in using simple, incontrovertible facts - not necessarily derived from frail, malleable sensory perceptions - as the basis and springboard for scientific inquiry and discovery. But even fairly reliable knowledge couldn't and can't give us answers to questions like, when does a human life count? When should it be saved? When should it be let go? When is a dead person dead? (More on this last question here and here.)

They all boil down to the same basic question Descartes and all those megaminds asked.

How do I know?

I think it would be arrogant for anyone to believe, and certainly dangerous to assume, that we have the answers for certain, or that we even can. But I also think we would be fools to stop trying for them.

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[Photo credit: "The skull of Descartes. Across the forehead, in Swedish, is an accusation of a theft in 1666 that began the skull’s peregrinations. Above it is a poem in Latin celebrating Descartes’ genius and mourning the scattering of his remains."]