Descartes' secret notebook

by Amir D. Aczel

A portrait of the great 17th century philosopher and mathematician looks at the contributions of Rene Descartes. His interest in mysticism and probable membership in the occult brotherhood of Rosicrucians, and his secret notebook, which he kept in code, attempting to redecipher the contents of the long lost volume. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is one of the towering and central figures in Western philosophy and mathematics. His apothegm "Cogito, ergo sum" marked the birth of the mind body problem, while his creation of so-called Cartesian coordinates has made our intellectual conquest of physical space possible. But Descartes had a mysterious and mystical side, as well. After Descartes' death, Gottfried Leibniz, inventor of calculus and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, moved to Paris in search of this notebook and eventually found it in the possession of Claude Clerselier, a friend of Descartes'. Liebniz called on Clerselier and was allowed to copy only a couple of pages,