Sometimes it takes a fancy French philosophy professor to ask a simple question: what happens when you treat your own life as an experiment?

Perhaps not the whole thing at once. But the mini-events. Your life as a short series of lab protocols.

This is what Roger-Pol Droit asks us to do in his charming Parisian way. He is a philosopher and researcher at the Centre de la recherche scientifique. He's also a columnist for the French daily Le Monde. Wearing both hats, he combines the depth of a philosopher with the wit of a sly, journalistic critic.

Author Roger-Pol Droit. (Faber and Faber)

You don't need to know your Descartes or Plato to appreciate Droit. You simply have to pay attention. His is a seemingly amenable philosophy.

Droit is the author of 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life. It was first published in French in 2001 and in English the next year.

Since then, it's been translated into 22 languages. In the U.S., it was given the title Astonish Yourself. American publishers didn't want to frighten off readers with a scientific sounding treatise.

What is your name

I have seen people reading this book on the subway and in coffee shops, and then closing their eyes to test out his experiments in that movie screen that is the theatre of their own minds.

As a philosopher, Droit is very much under the influence of Eastern philosophy. His intention is to "provoke tiny moments of awareness." These tiny moments can take a few minutes, a few hours or the rest of your life.

His first experiment is to "call yourself." To do this, sit down in the middle of a room and attend to the silence. Listen hard to the slightest sounds, he says. Then start uttering your first name out loud.

At first you might feel your name is simply going off into space. It may seem ridiculous, Droit admits. Then you start playing with the different sounds of the word that is your name, lengthening the vowels or stressing the syllables.

After a while, Droit suggests, you might get the feeling you are being called. Who is doing the calling? A very existential question. Your voice begins to appear as an "other," almost a double. Who is this person, you ask?

This experiment, Droit tells us, should take about 20 minutes.

I think therefore

Now, this is not a frivolous question. René Descartes, the hero of French philosophy, asked this question in his own way in the 17th century. He stripped his mind of his own ideas about himself and then built that self from the ground up.

"I think, therefore I am," he said. But that famous formula really doesn't convey the startling profundity of his experience.

In his Descartian way, Droit urges us to take a word, any word, repeat it and empty it of its meaning. The word will become a series of "absurd and meaningless noises." In this way, the word dries out and crumbles, he says.

This experiment on the tenacity of language should last two or three minutes.

You may ask, what's the point? (I'd like to assure you that this experiment shouldn't cost the Canadian taxpayer a penny.)

Well, the point is that the question of language and meaning is a serious one that has perplexed philosophers, especially in the 20th century, who asked how language shapes us. Is it from the inside out as we interpret certain words? Or is it something in the social broth?

Certainly you don't have to be a philosopher to ask this question. The question of language and culture is central to our national identity. And not just in Quebec, but in our cities where a vast stew of languages is always simmering.

First, close your eyes

There are so many intriguing exercises in Droit's book. There are in fact, 101 (as in Life 101, an introductory course).

They go from the mundane to the deep core of what comprises human experience. Some examples:

Peel an apple in your head. Imagine your imminent death. Telephone someone at random. Try to feel eternal. Watch somebody sleeping. Shower with your eyes closed. Become music. Try to measure experience.

The duration for attempting to measure experience, writes Droit, is a lifetime.

With all these experiments, Droit suggests employing mental props such as rulers, weights, tension meters, particle accelerators, etc.

But there is a simple lesson here, he points out: "Life can be described by a series of equations, a dense grid of size, mass and energy. But none of this can measure experience."

We probably all know this intuitively. We know a human being isn't simply a compilation of data or a mass of particles. But we say this while insisting on measuring things we can't really measure, so we can pretend to understand what escapes our slippery attention.

In fact, the life that we see before us is so obvious, so seemingly boring, that it escapes comprehension almost all the time.

That's the point of the increasing emphasis on what is often called mindfulness, which is sifting through our culture, be it in our gyms and yoga studios, or in psychological journals and certain TV cop shows.

Paying attention to what's in front of us takes patience and fortitude. Just try counting to 10, or eating a single raisin, and see if you don't get distracted by your fitful "monkey mind."

If you are still resisting Droit's entreaties, you don't have to perform the more quixotic experiments he supplies, like reciting the telephone directory on your knees or seeking out the infinitesimal caress (though that one might help a flagging relationship).

But you can always try experiment #61: "Rant for ten minutes." Afterward, says Droit, "Breathe. Drink a glass of water. Open the window. And remember that an anger tantrum might be nothing more than this."