Smack bang in the middle of your brain sits a tiny structure called the pineal gland, which has puzzled neuroscientists and philosophers for centuries. Among those to speculate on the role of this ...

Rene Descartes (1596–1650) is the author of perhaps the most famous philosophical quote of all, cogito ergo sum, usually rendered as I think, therefore I am. There is however more to this quote, and ...

The French polymath René Descartes (1596-1650) lived after the Renaissance, but he personified that age's interest in mathematics, philosophy, art, and the nature of humanity. He made numerous ...

Probably the strangest biography of the year, this volume is the product of more than forty years of obsession by Watson, a professor of philosophy at Washington University, in St. Louis. He is less ...

Thinking man: Rene Descartes may have got some scientific details wrong, but he revolutionized the approach to thinking scientifically. (Courtesy: Science Photo Library) In the Wallace Collection in ...

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Most scholars consider him responsible for modern medicine’s splitting the mind and mental issues away from the ...

It was the Great Train Robbery of French intellectual life: thousands of treasured documents that vanished from the Institut de France in the mid-1800s, stolen by an Italian mathematician. Among them ...

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a brilliant philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Most scholars consider him responsible for modern medicine’s splitting the mind and mental issues away from the ...