Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives message of the book is the importance of exploring new ideas beyond the ones that have been traditionally passed down. The title word "Sum" refers to the Latin for "I am," as in "Cogito ergo sum". Like Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", "Sum" does not fit entirely into the traditional category of a novel. "Sum" has been called "philosofiction", an "experimental novel", and "a collection of thought experiments". Most of the stories are understood to "posit the afterlife as mirroring life on Earth" The New York Times Book Review called Sum a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection [which] belongs to that category
Cogito, ergo sum further knowledge; rather, it is the firm ground upon which he can stand as he works to discover further truths As he puts it: Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakable. (AT VII 24; CSM II 16) According to many Descartes specialists, including Étienne Gilson, the goal of Descartes in establishing this first truth is to demonstrate the capacity of his criterion — the immediate clarity and