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Key Letter By Descartes Found After 170 Years
Schiphol writes of a long-lost letter by René Descartes to Marin Mersenne that has come to light at Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, where it had lain buried in the archives for more than a century. The discovery could revolutionize our view of one of the 17th-century French philosopher's major works. "[T]housands of treasured documents... vanished from the Institut de France in the mid-1800s, stolen by an Italian mathematician. Among them were 72 letters by René Descartes... Now one of those purloined letters has turned up at a small private college in eastern Pennsylvania... The letter, dated May 27, 1641, concerns the publication of Meditations on First Philosophy, a celebrated work whose use of reason and scientific methods helped to ignite a revolution in thought."
Yeah, we don't have that "é " letter in our alphabet, so we must have lost it. However I'm thinking René Descartes may have just stolen it... you know how those French are...
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Chapter 1 was great, and ended in the pinnacle of the work "I think therefore I am".
After that, he couldn't go any farther, so he decided that you couldn't trust the world without the presence of God. At which point, I lost interest.
Chapter 1: A+
Chapter >1: D
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks "can I get you a beer?" Descartes replies "I think not!" and he disappears.
Thanks, I'm here all week!
Turtles.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So did they know it existed or not? Is the news just that the letter is being returned to France? Big deal.
can we have the text please? (Preferably in a human language)
(in french)
Too used to the digital age to think right about it. How something know and being somewhat available for 200 years before they were stolen could revolutionize something now because were recovered? I suppose that now that letters will be available both as scanned images, pdfs, plain text and even google books, but still, if when they were available (and if not well full copies, but at least references could have been made of the critical points) couldn't make a revolution, should have little chance by now.
Sorry, couldn't resist. Actually I guess it should be ARM with the "A" being analog (remember that?).
There was this magnificent mathematical horse. You could teach it arithmetic, which it learned with no difficulty, algebra was a breeze, it could even prove theorems in euclidean geometry, but when you tried to teach it analytic geometry, it would rear back on its hind legs, kick ferociously neigh loudly and make violent head motions in resistance.
The moral of this story is that you can't put Descartes before de horse.
*ducks*
http://www.object404.com
The letter was found at Haverford. Just out of curiosity, what's that school like? Any grads or current students out there who would like to share?
How did Guglielmo Libri the Italian mathematician got away with stealing 30,000 books and manuscript from France and got away with it. How did the official at the French Public Library not notice that one of their employee had made off with 30,000 items that does not belong to him.
was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am!"
Ceci n'est pas un post.
Goddamnit, it's not like the letter is written in some prehistoric code that will take months to decrypt. 90% of the article is about fates of the paper, less than two short paragraphs on what is written on the paper.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If only it was something useful like some math work or something we don't know. But no, it's the precursor to something that already happened. Whoopy-fucking-do.
I think there, ... fore I am!
Somewhere in the literary continuum, Dan Brown was roused from his fitful sleep and his dreams of multicolored zebra-striped kittens by a frantic phone call from his agent.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I still can't get laid at the local bars, maybe I should stop talking about Math.
Perhaps astrology might work better. Do you have any good charts?
Thanx,
Rene
> Can you imagine how many days I spent learning the friggin' difference between e, é and è?
Less days than I spent learning the friggin' difference between "taught" and "laughter".
Not to mention latter, ladder and leather.
My only consolation is that US people also can't write English, just like me.
My son was baptized in the same church Descartes (aka Cartesius) was buried. :)
Finally, someone thought, and therefore, it was.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
/. eats the "less than" and "greater than" characters, so I guess you'd have to call it ',.PYF
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Can someone please ensure that high resolution scans are taken and uploaded to wikipedia? after +350 years i doubt they're still copyrighted. if no one comes up for the costs of digitizing them I'll open a paypal (or whatever) account to raise money for it.
Historically is was a place for science and mathmatics. Since those disciplines now have there own fields, what the hell good is philosphy?
Before someone responds with the boring and done arguments, my initial goal in college was to become a philosophy professor. It was then I realized it ahs nothing new to offer the world. Even the most basic philosophy question have been answered.
Which came first, chicken or the egg? Evolution has taught is it was the egg.
If yopu walk towards something, but only half the remaining difference, will you ever get there: Quantum mechanics has shown us that, yes, we would get there because there is a smallest distance that can be moved.
These may be interesting papers because they come from a time when philosophy was critical to develop logical, rational, and skeptical questions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Meh, it's getting a bit stale. Besides, it wasn't really that funny when Decartes thought he told it in 1630.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Hey Mersenne... I heard things are positive when there is one less than what we can accomplish as two minds... so I'm going solo"
The letter was blank, though, because the writing was an independent phenomena and it went off on its own.
Chapter 1 was great, and ended in the pinnacle of the work "I think therefore I am".
Well, AFAIK, the Buddhists reject the notion of self. So for them, even the above is incorrect.
Astrology works OK, but I have found that music is the best way to snag a babe. Go grab yourself a Spanish guitar and you can't go wrong.
Yours always,
Marin
A big-name chief librarian friend of mine told me once that most "lost" documents are actually documents whose provenance is questionable and the institution is simply waiting for some legal clock to tick (statute of limitations, death of last legal descendant, lapse of insurance claim, etc) before they can be "found".
Yes, but he's come to conclude that those premises are false based on something he chose as an axiom. It's like bashing the work because he thinks it should have assumed the axiom of choice.
The author of this article used the word "lie" correctly, as in "had lain", but Slashdot can't get the usage of "its" correctly? What gives?
Now get off my lawn.
Here you go:
I have found a truly wonderful proof of the existence of God, but the margin of this letter is too narrow to hold it.
:-)
In all seriousness, here is an excerpt from the letter (with original syntax but modern spelling—all in all, it is still readily legible even today—don't know if it meets the "human language requirement, though... ;), as found from TFA :
[Mr Picot] m'a parlé en tels termes du Sieur Petit que cela m'a obligé d'adoucir ce que j'avais écrit de lui comme vous verrez en la préface au lecteur; que je vous envoie pour la faire imprimer s'il vous plait au commencement du livre après l'epître dédicatoire à Mrs de la Sorbonne et on n'imprimera point la 4e partie du discours de la méthode ni la petite préface que j'avais mise en suite ni aussi celle qui précédait les objections du Théologien mais seulement le Synopsis.
The heart of the matter is that after hearing well of one his opponents (Petit) by some visitors of him in Holland, Descartes has decided to tone down his rhetorics (presumably bitter attacks towards Petit) in his Meditations. He therefore sends this letter with explanations ans instructions to this effect to his good friend Father Mersenne in Paris, who is in charge of printing the book there.
Hope this helps
Xavier
Do I make sense? Please report if not.