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Weighing René Descartes’ Influence in a World Without Him
Arturo Serrano discusses ethics, political theory, and why he kills off Descartes in his novel
Arturo Serrano’s first novel in English imagines that the Mayflower was lost at sea in 1620, the English Separatists were disheartened, and the United States were never born. In this alternate history, rival empires split up the world, and those caught in the middle fight to bring an end to all empires. The novel is called To Climates Unknown. I asked the author why he chose to put a young René Descartes as a character in his novel. We’re married, so I might well have kept his answer private, but I thought you might like to hear his answer.
— Tucker Lieberman
Part 2 of your novel is called “Setback.” This is a chapter imagining René Descartes as a young man in the early 17th century: as a curious, precocious 14-year-old student, a 23-year-old plagued by existential dread and confusion, and finally as a 25-year-old who comes face-to-face with an enemy. What inspired you to imagine Descartes as a character in To Climates Unknown?
[Arturo Serrano responds:] When I was first researching events in the 17th century to get an idea of what world I would be jumping into, I focused on a particular week in September 1620 that contains the main four events I altered: the return of Danish sailor Jens Munk, the return of Japanese diplomat Hasekura Tsunenaga, the start of the Mayflower’s journey, and the plot to assassinate Chinese Emperor Taichang.
As it happens, that window of time in 1620 contains another key event: the Battle of White Mountain, which had major consequences for the balance of power between Catholics and Protestants. René Descartes was present at that battle, as a soldier in the army of the Holy Roman Emperor. So from the start I knew I wanted to do something with Descartes.
However, I was holding myself to using just one point of divergence from our timeline, and I wasn’t able to find a plausible chain of consequences that would affect that battle. So I let that event go as it went in our timeline, but chose to mess with Descartes at some later point.
