René Descartes: The Story of a Soul (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 309 while Boyle refused to commit himself on this issue. One reason Hobbes did not consider observation to be decisive is that many people had observed spirits, that is, "insubstantial beings," a claim that Hobbes knew had to be wrong. Boyle believed that there were reliable sightings of spirits and endorsed the work of Cambridge theologians to assemble "reliable spirit testimonies to use against Hobbists" (2o9). For Boyle and his allies, it was important to devise ways of increasing the range of sensations since matters of fact are wholly within the domain of the senses. Scientific instruments serve this purpose; they allow humans to experience things that they otherwise could not. Instruments, Boyle said, are "artificial Organs." Because Hobbes was on the losing side of this debate, historians of science and philosophy have almost unanimously judged Hobbes's arguments embarrassingly poor, perhaps often without even reading them, or ignored them completely. Shapin and Schaffer take on the task of narrating the actual debate and showing that Hobbes's arguments are not patently bad. Indeed, they conclude by saying that Hobbes was correct in arguing that knowledge, "as much as the state, is the product of human action." According to the authors, the dispute between Hobbes and Boyle was a conflict between two different language games of science and that, although Boyle's language game in fact came to dominate science, it is not obvious that it needed to. Not just science was at stake for Boyle and Hobbes. The authors do an excellent job of showing the interrelations between science, religion, and politics. Experimentalists were for toleration in both religion and politics; their opponents promoted dogmatism and absolutism. One of the many interesting aspects of this book is the discussion of the disparate "literary technologies" of Hobbes and Boyle. Although both used the dialogue form, Boyle's dialogues advance dialectically with each character contributing something to the final solution of the problem discussed and each giving something up. Hobbes's dialogues are dogmatic; the character who represents Hobbes's views wins every point of contention and in the end persuades the other speaker who represents the opposition. In addition to Hobbes, the authors have interesting discussions of other thinkers who disagreed with Boyle to a greater or lesser extent, notably the Jesuit and Aristotelian Franciscus Linus, the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, and the Dutch mathematician and physicist Christian Huygens. A clear, accurate but not overly literal translation of Hobbes's Dialogus physicus is included at the end. The book is so rich in detail that it defies adequate summarization in a brief review. I highly recommend it to be read carefully. A. P. MARTINICH University of Texas at Austin Herman R. Reith. Ren~ Descartes: The Story of a Soul. Lanham: University Press of America, a986. Pp. xiv + 197. Cloth, $23.75. Paper, $12.5o. Reith sees "Descartes as a man who tried rationalism, found it wanting, and finally rejected it in favor of fideism" (2). "At heart, he was basically a voluntarist, a fideist, 31o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:2 APRIL 198 9 and an occasionalist" (i96). Reith believes that "Descartes was not secretly an atheist" (2). He thinks "it is not necessary that Descartes' philosophical system be in agreement with his personal life" (3), but "if one were to adopt the view that God does not exist... Descartes' philosophical system ... would collapse, for rightly or wrongly, Descartes made truth depend on God's free will" (4). Thus, "even if Descartes were in his private life an atheist, without God, the certitude, comprehensiveness, and deductive fertility of Cartesian metaphysics would be absent" (74). Descartes' metaphysics itself demands God because of the seriousness of the distinct possibilities of an evil demon and a deceiving God. Reith argues that "Descartes was rationally obliged and willing to give up absolute truth as it would be found in God, for that kind of knowledge is unattainable .... But does that settle accounts with the absolute skeptics... ? Obviously not. But the question of absolute truth was not an issue for Descartes just as it was not for Augustine" (7o). Reith's exposition of Descartes's philosophy in the context of seventeenth...