Member-only story
Could Descartes’ Dog Think?
The tangled history of human attempts to understand animal minds
The philosopher, mathematician, and scientist Rene Descartes had a little dog to whom he gave the excellent name Monsieur Grat (”Mister Scratch”). He was very fond of Mister Scratch, taking him for walks, hanging out with him, and generally spoiling him. Descartes seems to have been a happy pet owner.
He may have held great affection for Mister Scratch, but Descartes did not extend kindness to all dogs. He was a scientist in the early 1600s, a period in which scientists were working hard to uncover the secrets of anatomy. They did this mostly by cutting animals up, often when they were still alive. Descartes started with fish and eventually worked his way up to rabbits and dogs.
One report describes how Descartes and his disciples nailed living dogs to boards by their paws, then cut them open to explore the workings of their circulatory systems. Descartes’ anatomical writings have unsettling passages like “If you slice off the pointed end of the heart in a live dog, and insert a finger into one of the cavities…”
How did Descartes justify torturing these animals? How could he live with himself after listening to their cries of pain? He told himself that dogs can’t think:
