Descartes.
The Life and Times of a Genius
by Anthony
C. Grayling
Walker & Company, New York, 2006
368 pp. illus. Trade, $26.95
ISBN: 0-8027-1501- x.
Reviewed by Martha Patricia Niño
M.
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Facultad de Artes Visuales
Colombia
ninom@javeriana.edu.co
This work is a journey through the context
of the life of Descartes in the middle
of a world traditionally depicted as dominated
by medieval beliefs in miracles and alchemy.
His famous dictum "cogito ergo
sum" remains as one of the most
important quotations of Western thought.
The book ranges from anecdotes about his
life, academic statements, and Jesuit
roots. Descartes’ personal life was
troubled and described as lingering with
eccentricity and isolation. The book describes
his important contributions to the fields
of philosophy, mathematics, medicine,
geometry, meteorology, astronomy, and
optics. All his studies happen in context
in which beliefs in miracles, spontaneous
generation, and phoenixes rising from
ashes are encouraged. One of his main
interests concerned how to shape lenses
so that they will collect parallels rays
of light in a single focus, thus overcoming
the problems of distortion suffered by
refracting telescopes and spy glasses.
Nonetheless, the fundamental questions
are questions of what is mind, and what
is the relation of mind with the rest
of nature?
This biography can serve as a point of
departure for a countless number of both
historical and contemporary analyses.
One of Descartes’ great contributions
is to introduce the benefit of doubt and
lines of enquiry about reality since sensory
information can be veritable but certainly
our senses can deceive us and the thresholds
of perception vary among individuals.
This is a topic that becomes invigorated
again by artist working with telematics,
such as Ken Goldberg.
This is the same question that doesn’t
lose its relevance even with presented
with the Wachowski brothers’ cinematic
choice of taking the red pill that allows
you to end the story or take the blue
pill and stay in wonderland. Reality and
fiction, in this case, are so intertwined
that they resemble the concept of the
Gesamtdatenwerk explored by the German
opera composer Richard Wagner that advocates
the synthesis of all the poetic, visual,
and sensory information in a total and
life art work. Theoreticians and artists
like Roy Ascott examine this topic in
relation to our current cybernetic systems
is more concerned with the term "noosphere"
(from the Greek noos, or mind), a model
of expanded global consciousness in ethical
context. This will constitute the purported
dawning of a new stage of human evolution.
The book describes Descartes own Gesamtdatenwerk
in a vertiginous context of conceptual
and religious war such as the period of
reformation and corpuscularianism, atomism,
copernicism in the frame of the inquisition.
Descartes managed to work despite having
being considered a spy in the service
of Jesuits. The book also gives details
about the incident with the Cardinal Bellarmine
that condemned Copernican theory and proscribed
Galileo from holding these views or promoting
them a situation that later caused trial
and condemnation of house imprisonment
for Galileo by the inquisition. Grayling
views about the incident contrast with
the episode described by Isabelle Stengers
about the Galileo Affair in which the
cardinal Bellarmine in fact do not proscribe
Galileo to hold his theories as a scientific
hypothesis but as undeniable truth she
describes that Galileo in return creates
a fuzz in which he proclaims himself as
a victim, gains popularity, and sets the
conditions of a modern science that vindicates
itself with violence. This battle is perhaps
one of the most contested chapters of
history that serves as the foundation
of modern science and independence of
modern thought from the Church. In that
way Grayling establish parallels between
Galileo, which is considered the father
of modern science, with Descartes considered
the father of modern thought.
The text is recommended for those interested
in a complete, descriptive, and rather
thrilling biography that reads like a
polemic detective adventure that describes
his struggles with reason and faith and
how he become one the greatest philosophers
of our time in spite of his own personal
wars and fears of madness. It is a biography
but the level of description is similar
to a novel. From Grayling perspective,
writing about the life of whom is considered
the father of modern thought centuries
after his death presents inevitable ground
for speculative research that he present
no apologies for. Grayling considers biography
as an act of healthy voyeurism with pedagogical
value. In the last chapter he also compares
Descartes’ endeavors with Nietzsche,
Wittegenstein, Kant, and Locke.
References
SERRES. M (1995) History of Scientific
Thought: Elements of History of Science.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
