New book. May be of interest to some of those who follow this blog. The Cartesian Brain , a collection of essays edited by Denis Kamboucher, Damien Lacroux, Tad Schmalz and Ruidan She, has just been published by Routledge. It looks at Cartesian writings far beyond the Meditations . One might get from the Meditations the impression that Descartes didn't care all that much about the brain, and nascent neuroscience. After all, the "I think" is accomplished by an incorporeal spirit. Actually, it turns out, he did care about the particulars of the human brain. and not just the pineal gland either. One fascinating tidbit I get from the review of this book recently posted in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews is the applicability of the "law of the conservation of motion" to the action of mind on brain. I put the phrase in quotes because in Newtonian and post-Newtonian physics, our physics, there is no such law. There is a law of the conservation of momentum: but tha...