Descartes’ Secret Notebook
Broadway Books, 2006.
Paper, 273 pages.
www.broadwaybooks.com

Though I’m a fan of Amir D. Aczel’s books, this one didn’t quite gel for me for the simple reason that the author displays some bad reasoning as he presents a thin biography of the philosopher, while pointing out several possible connections between Descartes and the Rosicrucians. Quite frankly, there is no evidence that such a shadowy brotherhood of mystics and intellectuals actually existed outside of a few extant publications and hints in contemporary letters and journals.

In the earlier pages of the book Aczel speculates that the mystic and mathematician Johann Hartmann was a Rosicrucian, and then later in the narrative, we are given to understand that Hartman was definitely a Rosicrucian. In addition we are told that Descartes was in touch with him, as well as other members of the group, on which, through reasoning equally as specious, Aczel also confers membership. These points are simply asserted, and somehow in the retelling confirmed, yet Aczel’s major thesis, that Descartes shared with the Rosicrucians the understanding that mathematics was important, but that he diverged from them by applying math, not to mystical and Hermetic themes, but to nature itself, hinges on just such assertions. Yes, Descartes journeyed to various places at various times, and certain encounters could have happened there–but these rather shaky premises do not warrant such conclusions.

On an artistic level, the book also falls short. The Descartes we encounter in these pages has about as much life as a figure at Madame Tussaud’s. Leibniz, who also makes an appearance, is even more of a cipher (pun intended).

The mathematical portions of the book are of interest, yet once again I feel that Aczel’s conclusions do not follow the evidence. The secret notebook apparently contained an early version of Euler’s theorem applied to the Platonic solids. This heralded the beginning of the study of Topology. Yet Aczel, in his epilogue, seems to suggest that Descartes was somehow cognizant in a very modern way of the geometry of space itself–which, according to a theory posited by the cosmologist Jeffrey Weeks, takes the form of a tetrahedron, octahedron or dodecahedron. Though the conclusion is meant to tie everything together, and to cause a chill to run down the layman’s spine as in Carl Sagan’s “Billions and Billions!,” it simply appears to this reader to be a non sequitur. Simple assertion without evidence is not proof.

On the positive side, some of the legends about Descartes, though sketchily retold by Aczel, are fascinating. We see the gallant genius lying late in bed thinking away, we see him with foil in hand taking on the crew of a pirate ship as his manservant cowers behind him, we see him in love with a brilliant young woman, and then as a possible victim of poisoning in the drafty halls of Queen Christina’s palace. Then we finally see the grim geometry of the savant’s skull itself, displayed sans jaw, at the Musee de l’Homme in Paris.