A letter by Rene Descartes, stolen in 1840s, recovered in 2010 by online detective work. The letter was stolen by Guglielmo Libri, inspector general of the libraries of France, who stole thousands of valuable documents and fled to England in 1848. Since 1902 it's been in the collection of Haverford College, its contents unknown to scholars, and nobody there realized that it was an unknown letter. But because they had catalogued it and recently put their catalogue on line, Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos found it "
during a late-night session browsing the Internet". (A Haverford undergraduate thirty years ago had translated it and written a paper on it, in which he recognized that the letter was unknown -- but nobody followed up and the letter had sat in the library since then until it was listed online.) The letter includes some last-minute edits to the Meditations, and some thoughts on God as causa sui.
Haverford, whose president was a philosophy major, is returning the letter to the Institut de France.
posted by LobsterMitten
on Feb 26, 2010 -
21 comments
So yesterday I posted
the story about how researchers had discovered that both sexes cared about appearance when selecting dates. Today
Stanford (!!) releases the startling discovery that cars get hot when parked in the sun. Meanwhile K State learns that
women feel better about their bodies when complemented, and the other shocker story is that problem gamblers share traits with
substance abusers. And how about that New Scientist story about the fact we're
entering a dark age? So what's up with science lately, particularly in America?
posted by Fozzie
on Jul 5, 2005 -
108 comments
