This was one of those audiobooks I snapped up on my "get all the nonfiction audiobooks possible from the library" spree a few months back. From the brief description on the jacket I was intrigued but knew nothing more than that. I wish I had passed it up. It's not that it is a bad book; I simply ...
Not that interested in the topic of the book. Quick two chapters on Rene Descartes, a philosopher, mathematician, scientist in the 1600s. Died in Sweden in 1650. View the human body as a machine that can be fine tuned, and wanted to find out how to make humans live forever. Made a clear disti...
A fascinating look at the enlightenment and it's impact on modern society and belief, using the controversies surrounding the loss and location of Descartes bones to illustrate several different aspects and conflicts that have arisen thanks largely to the initial teachings of the great philosophe...
I picked up The Island at the Center of the World because it directly targets two of my own personal obsessions: New York history and Dutch language. Author Russell Shorto builds it upon thirty years of translation work by a man called Charles Gehring, a specialist in 17th century Dutch who resur...
He was a man of ambition, intellect, arrogance, and drive—in short, a man of his age. Like our own, his was an era of expanding horizons and a rapidly shrinking world, in which the pursuit of individual dreams led to new discoveries, which in turn led to newer and bigger dreams. His complicated p...
In a meeting of your Academy of Sciences, where I was present during my sojourn in Paris, I heard the report made by members of the Academy who had been present at the transport of the bones of Descartes, I believe from the Church of Ste.-Geneviève to another place. It was announced that there we...