Is God a Mathematician_ - Mario Livio [43]
Descartes published his first masterpiece on the foundations of science, Discourse on the Method of Properly Guiding the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, in 1637 (figure 22 shows the frontispiece of the first edition). Three outstanding appendices—on optics, meteorology, and geometry—accompanied this treatise. Next came his philosophical work, Meditations on First Philosophy, in 1641, and his work on physics, Principles of Philosophy, in 1644. Descartes was by then famous all over Europe, counting among his admirers and correspondents the exiled Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–80). In 1649 Descartes was invited to instruct the colorful Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–89) in philosophy. Having always had a soft spot for royalty, Descartes agreed. In fact, his letter to the queen was so full of expressions of courtly seventeenth century awe, that today it looks utterly ridiculous: “I dare to protest here to Your Majesty that she could command nothing to me so difficult that I would not always be ready to do everything possible to execute it, and that even if I had been born a Swede or a Finn, I could not be more zealous nor more perfectly [for you] than I am.” The iron-willed twenty-three-year-old queen insisted on Descartes giving her the lessons at the ungodly hour of five o’clock in the morning. In a land that was so cold that, as Descartes wrote to his friend, even thoughts froze there, this proved to be deadly. “I am out of my element here,” Descartes wrote, “and I desire only tranquility and repose, which are goods the most powerful kings on earth cannot give to those who cannot obtain them for themselves.” After only a few months of braving the brutal Swedish winter in those dark morning hours that he had managed to avoid throughout his entire life, Descartes contracted pneumonia. He died at age fifty-three on February 11, 1650, at four o’clock in the morning, as if trying to avoid another wake-up call. The man whose works announced the modern era fell victim to his own snobbish tendencies and the caprices of a young queen.
Figure 22
Descartes was buried in Sweden, but his remains, or at least part of them, were transferred to France in 1667. There, the remains were displaced multiple times, until they were eventually buried on February 26, 1819, in one of the chapels of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés cathedral. Figure 23 shows me next to the simple black plaque celebrating Descartes. A skull claimed to be that of Descartes was passed from hand to hand in Sweden until it was bought by a chemist named Berzelius, who transported it to France. That skull is currently at the Natural Science Museum, which is part of the Musée de l’Homme (the Museum of Man) in Paris. The skull is often on display opposite the skull of a Neanderthal man.
Figure 23
A Modern
The label “modern,” when attached to a person, usually refers to those individuals who can converse comfortably with their twentieth (or by now, twenty-first) century professional peers. What makes Descartes a true modern is the fact that he dared to question all the philosophical and scientific assertions that were made before his time. He once noted that his education served only to advance his perplexity and to make him aware of his own ignorance. In his celebrated Discourse he wrote: “I observed with regard to philosophy, that despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best