Descartes' Bones (20 page)

Cuvier's work built on that of his predecessor, the Swede Carl Linnaeus, who had ranked living creatures into kingdom, class, order, genus, and species. Linnaeus had looked to the parts of the reproductive system as a basis for classifying and differentiating creatures, but while reproduction was undeniably elemental, it was not necessarily the most useful organizing principle. Cuvier based his system instead on the correlation of parts and how those parts worked together and in a creature's environment (an animal with sharp claws also tended to have teeth appropriate for tearing into the prey it captured). He divided animals into four categories based on body structure—vertebrates, mollusks, articulates (for example, insects), and radiates (for example, starfish)—a system that remained basic to biology for most of the modern era. Cuvier applied his system with an almost mathematical logic. A ruminant animal, by definition, had to have a forestomach in which it partially digested its food, so if you found an animal with such an internal arrangement you knew it was a ruminant, and conversely if you found an animal without a forestomach it could not possibly be one that digested its food in two stages. A perhaps apocryphal story has some of Cuvier's students wrapping one of their number in a cowhide and challenging their teacher to identify the beast. As the master entered the room, the student cried, “Cuvier, I am the devil, I've come to eat you!” Whereupon Cuvier is supposed to have replied something to the effect of “Don't be ridiculous. You have a divided hoof, therefore you eat grain.”

Comparative anatomy was only one of the fields that Cuvier pioneered. His interest in bones led directly to the study of fossils. Comparing skeletons of extinct animals of different geological eras led him to conclude that the earth had endured several prehistoric cataclysms, resulting in mass extinctions. He noted, of course, the slight alterations in skeletons of seemingly related creatures but did not argue in favor of a theory of evolution. It was in the air at the time; his countryman and colleague at the academy Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had recently advanced an evolution argument. But, to the contrary, despite his many groundbreaking accomplishments, Cuvier is best known today for retarding the advance of evolution in the scientific community, keeping it from serious consideration until the publication of
On the Origin of Species
in 1859. Technically, scientifically, Cuvier's objection was based on his theory of the correlation of parts. Nature, he wrote, “has realized all those combinations which are not repugnant and it is these repugnancies, these incompatibilities, this impossibility of the coexistence of one modification with another which establish between the diverse groups of organisms those separations, those gaps, which mark their necessary limits and which create the natural
embranchements,
classes, orders, and families.” That is, every species that exists, or that ever did exist, was a functional whole that needed all of its parts to be just the way they were. A slight mutation in one part would collapse the whole system. Evolution based on small changes over generations was thus impossible. Instead, Cuvier argued for the opposite—“fixity of the species”—and did everything in his power as permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences to advance that view.

There was a less scientific aspect to Cuvier's views on evolution. He was a devout Christian, and the early nineteenth century was a time when Christians were using science to undergird the Bible. Such efforts, of course, went back to Descartes himself, who believed that his mechanistic theory of nature was in fact a defense of Christianity—that it “bracketed” the material world, making it the domain of science and leaving theology free to treat the human soul. Belief in science had grown enough by the early nineteenth century that even quite literal-minded Christians tended to look to science for evidence to support, for example, the biblical account of creation or the flood that Noah navigated.

Cuvier was a rigorous scientist and he didn't overtly manipulate data to support Christian accounts. However, he was interested in showing that science and faith were compatible, and his approach to biology and paleontology reflected that. The problem was that scientific evidence seeming to contradict basic parts of the Bible had become mountainous. He took account of the same evidence that Darwin would use to argue for changes in species over time based on natural selection but made it serve the opposite theory, one that squared with biblical views of creation. In a way, his argument has a curiously modern sound. He believed in God unquestioningly—in fact regarded it as a misuse of reason to question God—and his belief underlay his science, including his views about the “repugnance” that nature had for changes to its design. For Cuvier, in other words, nature showed the intelligence of the Creator, and the idea of species evolving over time, buffeted by random forces, was repellent both to this larger intelligence and to human intelligence. Beneath his science, then, is a nineteenth-century variant of the very current “intelligent design” theory put forth by Christian thinkers who, like Cuvier, believe that the theory of evolution does harm to the Christian account of the world.

Cuvier was nevertheless one of the models of a nineteenth-century scientist, and as such he had a love of his field's development, its increasing complexity, and also its beginnings. When, in May 1821, he received, from the hands of the Swedish ambassador to France, a package sent by Berzelius from Stockholm along with the letter describing his serendipitous discovery, he opened it with something approaching awe. Like Delambre, he had been dismayed by the discovery of the sorry state of the remains during the reburial two years before and by the absence of a skull. Now here was an object that seemed to deepen that mystery and to open another.

To be sure, the skull was no ordinary object—it wasn't even an ordinary skull. In the world of art and old paintings, provenance—a paper trail, authenticating proof of a chain of past ownership—is everything. This skull seemingly arrived with its own provenance, which deepened Cuvier's interest. He contacted Delambre at once, and the two put the subject on the agenda at the academy.

On April 30, 1821, the Academy of Sciences met at its home on the banks of the Seine. The members included some of the most famous names in the history of science, among them Berthollet, who helped create the language of modern chemistry; Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, he of the evolution theory; Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, who formulated several laws of physics, codiscovered the actual chemical composition of water, and did the underlying work that led to the “alcohol by volume” calculation that is found on every bottle of wine, beer, and spirits; Pierre-Simon Laplace, who extended the work of Newton in mathematical physics and theorized on the origin of the solar system; and André-Marie Ampère, a discoverer of electromagnetism, for whom one of the basic units of electrical measurement is named. They heard a report on the inflammation of the membranes of the central nervous system. A member named Poyet presented some examples of new methods of bridge construction he had developed. There was a report on the medicinal properties of flowers of the Antilles. Then the assembled luminaries gathered around the object that Cuvier placed before them and studied it with, as the chemist Berthollet said, “a religious reverence.” Cuvier read Berzelius's letter recounting how he came to be in Paris at the time Descartes was reburied and heard of the absence of a skull among the remains and how, only a month earlier, he discovered that a skull purported to be Descartes' had come up for auction. “Our minister in Paris, M. le comte de Löwenhjelm, who left here the day before yesterday, was kind enough to take charge of the transport of this relic,” Berzelius's letter said, “of which I pray you, Monsieur, to make use that you judge reasonable.”

The skull was missing its lower jaw but was otherwise intact. With its empty black sockets it gazed back at this historic collection of wise men as if chiding them for whatever smugness they may have accumulated in their quest to advance knowledge, forcing them to ponder the hard limit they all faced, the remorseless indifference of death.

At the same time, it offered a challenge. For these were all men who had devoted their lives to solving nature's puzzles, for whom
method
had become second nature, and here was a puzzle about the man who was arguably the father of all their varied disciplines, the very originator of “the method.” The tantalizing thing was that the skull was covered with intricate pen marks. Many were signatures, marks of ownership. But splayed across the top, in fl owing Latin cursive, was a poem that fairly shouted at the observers:

The questions piled up. Who had written this, and when? What did “hidden” mean? Was it possible that the bones they had reburied in St.-Germain-des-Prés were not Descartes'? Was this indeed Descartes' skull, and if so how had it gotten separated from the body? What exactly had happened to the remains of René Descartes in the 171 years since his death?

A further clue—seemingly a fairly massive one—also offered itself on the skull. This one was right in front, scrawled across the forehead. It was written in Swedish, but Berzelius had provided a translation:

Cuvier had done some investigative work and was inclined to support the authenticity of the skull. For corroboration, he placed alongside it an engraved portrait of Descartes and pointed out for the savants what he took to be similarities in cranial features. But more work needed to be done. There were all sorts of oddities; for one, above the sentence about the mysterious Planström were some barely legible words—a name that was hard to make out, “1666” again, and once more the Swedish
“tagen,”
which Berzelius told them meant “taken.” Cuvier wanted further information about “this precious relic.” The members agreed that someone should continue the research. Then they moved on to other business, perhaps no less of interest, with a Monsieur Virey rising to present his paper on “The Membrane of the Hymen.”

I
T WAS
D
ELAMBRE
who took up the matter of investigating the skull. Delambre revered Descartes as a father of science. Delambre also knew that his own major work in the service of science was behind him. He was seventy-two years old and not in good health; the odd little task he was about to undertake could become a coda to his scientific career.

At the meeting of the academy on May 14, 1821, he presented his findings in a report that ran to three thousand words; his reading of it took up nearly the entire session. He titled it “Skull coming from Sweden said to be that of Descartes: Facts and Reflections,” and indeed it was organized into a series of “Facts” each followed by a section labeled “Remarks.”

But if his colleague Cuvier was anticipating an exhaustive confirmation of his own speculations, he was to be disappointed. Having completed his investigation, Delambre felt strongly enough about the matter that he deemed it necessary to assume the role of opposing attorney. Across the top of his report he scrawled his conclusion: “M. Cuvier . . . believes that the skull is that of Descartes, because he finds great conformities with the engraving, and I believe the opposite.”

He began reading aloud. He gave his colleagues a history of the pertinent events associated with the bones of Descartes, culminating with the third burial ceremony, two years earlier, at which he and others were shown the contents of the coffin, whose meagerness he characterized as “really a bit remarkable.”

Then he turned his attention to the object before them. The marks tattooing its surface were intriguing, he admitted. “But,” he said, “what proof have we from elsewhere regarding its authenticity? Some inscriptions, more or less effaced, that one makes out on the convexity, which are the names of the successive owners, with some dates and nothing more.” True, there was what seemed to be a testimonial of some sort on the skull. But who was to say who this Planström was? And what information could be had about the presumed accuser who had written this barely legible sentence about him? One could infer almost anything from it. Even if Planström had indeed taken the skull in 1666, it didn't indicate when the skull was actually separated from the body. That could have been done “either at the home of Ambassador Chanut, immediately after the death, or in the provisional grave of 1650, or in the tomb of stone, or in the presence of Terlon in 1666, or finally at Peronne when the cask was opened by the customs officials.” It was even possible, Delambre added, that it had been removed for a particular purpose that was part of the historical record. It was known that Chanut had had a death mask made of Descartes, from which a French artist named Valary who had been a regular of Christina's court had sculpted a bust (both the death mask and the bust subsequently went missing). Could it not have been that the sculptor “separated the head from the trunk in order to cast it at his ease and that he then neglected to return it?” Delambre asked his colleagues. “One at least has to admit that it has some plausibility.” That would mean there was a gap of sixteen years from the time the head was separated from the body until this novel record on the forehead of the skull indicating that Planström had “taken” it. How did one know that someone early on, knowing of the fuss over the unburying of Descartes' bones, had not had the notion to adorn a random skull with writing in order to perpetrate a prank or deception, perhaps to make money? And once the first owner was deceived, all the others would have accepted the provenance as genuine. All they had, Delambre insisted, was “one assertion lacking proof” that the brain inside this skull had once thought “I think, therefore I am.”