The young Descartes: nobility, rumor, and war

René Descartes is best known as the man who coined the phrase 'I think, therefore I am.' But though he is remembered most as a thinker, Descartes, the man, was no disembodied mind, theorizing at great remove from the worldly affairs and concerns of his time.

Far from it. As a young nobleman, Descartes was a soldier and courtier who took part in some of the greatest events of his generation - a man who would not seem out of place in the pages of The Three Musketeers.

In 'The Young Descartes', Harold J. Cook tells the story of a man who did not set out to become an author or philosopher - Descartes began publishing only after the age of forty.

Rather, for years he traveled throughout Europe in diplomacy and at war.