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Wonder is the beginning of philosophy.
Someone read my name-tag and said:
"Hey, are you that person who found that Descartes letter quite recently?"
Yes, yes, that's me. [laughter]
Of course I mean Descartes is such great philosopher and of course he's a
very interesting person and thinker.
He's seen as a kind of the machine that knows everything.
But in Descartes' correspondence that's where we meet, I would say the real Descartes.
But it's there you meet the Descartes behind the published works.
That puts Descartes' philosophy and his works in a different light.
In our research we are looking for a certain kind of data so we have to go through thousands
and thousands of letters.
At times we've stumbled on things which are really, well,
we stumble upon gold.
I'd done working, I was home alone, I had a beer next to my computer and I thought well
it's been a long time since I did my regular search for Descartes and autograph letters.
Then I saw the top ten hits and I immediately noticed that number nine was new, because
well, after all those years I know who the first fifty hits are by heart.
All of a sudden my screen was filled with Descartes' handwriting.
The librarian of Haverford College put a pdf file of the collection on the internet.
That letter had been missing, and nobody knew where that letter had gone.
It's a terrific find, it's very exciting material. In those days if you wanted to know more about
science, about philosophy, you wrote to Descartes.
But nowadays, well, you don't' have to. You can just type in your questions.