One Peculiar Nut 
Steven Shapin
- Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes by Richard A. Watson
For René Descartes, the problem of keeping body and soul together took three forms. First, how did thinking stuff keep company with material stuff? Soul was active, unextended in space and immortal; body was passive, extended and, if it made up the structure of a human being, distressingly mortal. And yet humans were unique hybrids, in which rational minds volitionally moved brute matter, making them something quite different from parrots, apes and ‘earthen statues’. In 1643, the young and charming Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia asked Descartes how such a thing was possible and, while Descartes responded by performing some of his fanciest philosophical footwork, he was unable fully to satisfy her on this point, hoping that egregious flattery of both her body and her soul would substitute for substance.
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Steven Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard. The Life of Science: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation will appear in the autumn.
Other articles by this contributor:
Dear Prudence · Stephen Toulmin
Hedonistic Fruit Bombs · How good is Château Pavie?
Don’t let that crybaby in here again · The Manhattan Project
Megaton Man · The Original Dr Strangelove
I’m a Surfer · What’s the Genome Worth?
The Great Neurotic Art · Steven Shapin tucks into Atkins
Tod aus Luft · The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber
When Men Started Doing It · At the Grill Station
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