Great review of two new Descartes biographies that set some of the records straight on the great naturalist's works.

Despite his current reputation, the man himself seems to have been less interested in metaphysics than in applying algebra to geometry and delving into the innards of cows. He turned to philosophy relatively late in life, and out of fear that the Catholic Church would condemn his science. He would have been surprised at how he is remembered.

Most of all, he would have been aghast at the way in which “I think, therefore I am” has been ripped from its context, inflated into a one-sentence summary of his ideas, and turned into something absurd. The rot set in at the start of the nineteenth century, when Hegel made heavy weather of “I think, therefore I am” and took it to mean that thought and being are fundamentally the same thing.

IMO Descartes might have reached far more important insights had he packed a lunch and gone down by the Seine and watched the people, the ducks and nature in general, instead of lying in bed most of each day observing himself thinking, while staring at the ceiling.

That said, thank you very much for this clip K7. Descartes really did make a profound contribution to the field of philosophy, even though so much of his musings have been distorted

You're welcome. But part of the point of these books and this review was to put to rest that popular notion of Descartes. In fact, as history shows, Descartes spent little of his time on philosophy and was instead widely known for his superb hands-on experiments in nature and his contributions to math, anatomy, physics, mechanics, and other sciences.

Thanks again. I really must get my grubby little paws on these books. A must have for me.

The major distortion of his writings that has given me nightmares for more years than I care to remember was the concept that "animals" were akin to clockwork machines, and therefore one need not pay any attention to the screams when dissecting them, because they really were incapable of feeling pain, being mere machines.
.