Le ossa di Cartesio

[T]he modernist need to distance society from religion didn't obviate the human need to connect with the past, to come to terms with mortality. Just as religious buildings were co-opted for secular, humanistic purposes that were nevertheless somehow transcendent, the notion of certain human bones be Leggi tutto

Russell Shorto has really interwoven two related narratives in this book. As the title suggests, one begins upon the subject's death and concerns the adventures of his remains. These tales vary from the slightly ghoulish to the darkly comedic as three centuries of interested parties quibble over the Leggi tutto

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 receive Leggi tutto

THIS is the book I've been searching for in my dreams. Exactly what happened and how it happened that the revival of philosophy and scientific thinking arose and grew into the 18th Century Enlightenment and laid the foundations of modern thinking which we take for granted. The Enlightenment was a mere Leggi tutto

I very much enjoyed reading this clever book, if only for its overarching populist rendering of much of what we understand as the modern mind — or at least, as Shorto understands the modern mind to be… The sub-title of the book is: “A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason”, and a Leggi tutto

I was ambivalent about the gimmick of basing the history around the journey of Descartes' bones. How interesting could it be? Much to my delight, Russell Shorto managed to surprise me. While this book isn't quite the "historical detective story" it advertises, it does contain some detective work. I

The tale of philosopher-scientist Rene Descartes' bones form the skeleton of Shorto's sketch of Descartes key ideas that shaped our modern world. Descartes, French by birth but exiled by force (his ideas were anathema to the Catholic Church) and choice (one senses that despite his complaints about th Leggi tutto

At points -- where it appears Shorto has really focused -- this book is a "5." It uses the journey of the bones of the philosopher/polymath Rene Descartes from his 17th century death into the 20th century to reflect upon the relationship between faith, reason and the movements of history. The author' Leggi tutto