Full name: Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul

Author: Roy Porter Year: 2003 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Philosophy, Non Fiction, Science Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780393326963 0393326969

In this "readable and humane book" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), the late historian Roy Porter traces the course of man's philosophical journey from the superstitious, spiritually obsessed Dark Ages to our modern perspective, based on reason and grounded in the body. He demonstrates how the explosion of rational thought and scientific innovation during the Enlightenment began to change our understanding of the flesh and its relation to the soul. No longer simply a "mortal coil," the body eventually became the location, and source, of our conscious selves. Porter examines this paradigm shift through the eyes of the great thinkers of history, from Descartes to Voltaire to Lord Byron, summarizing and explicating their beliefs "in a prose that leaps resplendently from the page" (Harper's). Similar books: A Wicked Company by Philipp Blom The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler Enlightenment by Roy Porter The Seekers by Daniel J. Boorstin The Science of Freedom by Peter Gay Fire and Light by James MacGregor Burns The Enlightenment by Anthony Pagden A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren The Crisis of the European Mind by Paul Hazard The Modern Mind by Peter Watson The Rise of Modern Paganism by Peter Gay Disease and History by Frederick F. Cartwright The Beginnings of Western Science by David C. Lindberg Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith Aristotle for Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler The Invention of Science by David Wootton Civilization by Roger Osborne Reflections on History by Jacob Burckhardt Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact by Ludwik Fleck To Explain the World by Steven Weinberg