Joseph Rosenblatt writes:

> Rene` Descartes walked into a bar and order a drink. When he finished the
>  bartender asked him if he wanted another. Descartes replied, "I don't think
>  so," and promptly disappeared.

I very disappointed in you, Joseph. Descartes was such a giant of the
scientific revolution that followed the Renaissance that to make humor at his
expense is, I believe, a fundamentally unpardonable gaffe.

Descartes was one of those few people, who, like Kepler, although with one
foot firmly mired in the mysticism and superstition of the past 1500-2300
years, was able to at least peek a little bit into the future that we now
inhabit. Descartes was not only a mathematician, he was also a naturalist, a
botanist, and a surgeon. Indeed, Descartes' work in surgery, and his many
dissections, formed no small part of the basis of modern biology and medicine.

However, if Descartes made any mistake, it was in his philosophical
extrapolations of his empiricisms. His famous aphorism, "Cogito ergo sum (I
think, therefore I am)," was a derivative of his intense religious desire to
find a profund distinguishing characteristic, God imposed, between Man and
the beasts.

Nonetheless, it was a mistake that Descartes should not have made. Descartes
had all of the information necessary from his researches at his fingertips to
reject that philosophy. His dissections of the organs of the horse and humans
demonstrated overwhelmingly to him that they were constructed identically,
especially so in those most complex of organs, the eye and the brain. Indeed,
the profundity of this philosophical mistake of his is now such common
knowledge that it has become folk wisdom. Almost certainly, your mother has
told you at one time or another: "Never put Descartes before the horse!"

Wirt Atmar