{"product_id":"2940169878844","title":"Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason","description":"From bestselling, prize-winning author Russell Shorto comes a grand and strange history of the on-going debate between religion and science-seen through the oddly  momentous journey of the skull and bones of the great French philosopher Rene  Descartes. In this book Shorto brilliantly shows how this argument first started with  Descartes and how his ideas (and bones) have remained central to this theoretical  struggle for over 350 years.  On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most  influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely death  far from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon  secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this  devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who was  hounded from country after country on charges of atheism? Why would Descartes'  bones take such a strange, serpentine path over the next 350 years-a path intersecting  some of the grandest events imaginable: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, the  mind-body problem, the conflict between faith and reason?  The answer lies in Descartes' famous phrase: cogito ergo sum. “I think therefore I am.”  This quote from his work Discourse on the Method, destroyed 2,000 years of received  wisdom by introducing an attitude of human skepticism towards ideas of medicine,  nature, politics and society. The notion that one could look to provable facts, and not  rely on the Church's teachings and tradition, was one of the most influential ideas in  human history, ultimately creating the scientific method and overthrowing religion as  prevailing truth. Descartes' Bones is a fascinating narrative-both macro and micro  history in one-that twists and turns up to the present day.","brand":"Recorded Books, LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47114909614320,"sku":"2940169878844","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169878844_p0.jpg?v=1763786799","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169878844","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}