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."

Comments

I'm guessing the letter was: "é "

[thomasdz]

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...

Re:I'm guessing the letter was: "é "

[Anonymous Coward]

English is worse because you have e, e and e that are pronounced differently, but there is no accent to tell which pronunciation to use.

Re:I'm guessing the letter was: "é "

[biryokumaru]

Oh, that's not a problem. You can hear it.

Re:I'm guessing the letter was: "é "

[Unordained]

é is like the "eh?" in "Let's go see The Phantom Menace, eh?" (canada)
è is like the "eh." in "The Phantom Menace? Eh. I'm in no mood to ruin my childhood memories."
ê is like an appropriately-angry version of è.

Rene Descartes

[sxltrex]

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!

Re:So

[Culture20]

can we have the text please? (Preferably in a human language)

Sorry, it's written in French.

How about horses?

[naz404]

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*

Re:It said that Descartes liked turtles.

[mcgrew]

It's turtles all the way down, young man.

Re:So

[DriedClexler]

I think it's the variant on the old joke.

"For 30 years, the guard at the French Public Library for the evening shift noticed Gugli walking out with a book tucked under his arm. He always make sure to talk to Gugli, as Gugli would look very suspicious, as if he'd done something wrong. The guard always figured there wasn't something quite right about Gugli. So he'd search him, but always find nothing.

"After retiring, the guard wanted this mystery solved, so one day he followed Gugli home. He asked, 'Okay, I know you've been making some kind of mischief all these years, but I've never been able to figure out what. What have you been stealing?'

"Gugli responded, 'Books!'"

Dear Marin

[goffster]

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