With “Descartes’ Bones,” Russell Shorto has written an intellectual history of the 350-year-long debate between religion and science, and the repercussions of the ways we approach those two subjects.

Tied in with this discussion is the mystery of what happened to the bones and the separated skull of the most celebrated thinker of his time — the man who coined the phrase: “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) — René Descartes, who is given credit for sparking the great debate.

Descartes, a practicing Catholic, tried to keep his ideas that led to modernism separate from his religious beliefs, but many of his associates and followers felt they were a call to atheism.

This is a fascinating, colorful and readable account of the birth of science, the rise of democracy, the mind-body problem, the industrial revolution and the conflict between faith and reason. The story also follows the individuals — Luis XIV of France, a Swedish casino operator, poets and playwrights, philosophers and physicians — who used Descartes’ bones for scientific studies, stole them, sold them, revered them as relics, had pieces made into rings, fought over them and passed them surreptitiously from hand to hand.

The book also looks at those great thinkers and scientists who set the tone for the modern world: Franz Joseph Gall, Jean-Pierre Flourens, Georges Cuvier, Anders Celsius, John Jacob Berzelius, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and many others.

“Descartes’ Bones” is a historical detective story about the creation of the modern mind, with twists and turns leading up to the present day, and is well worth reading.

— Gerald Fowles
Friends of the McMinnville Library