One of the long-missing letters of Rene Descartes, considered a founding father of modern philosophy and analytic geometry, has turned up at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia, reports the New York Times.
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.
It turns out the letter had been donated in 1902 to Haverford’s library by Lucy Branson Roberts, whose husband, Charles Roberts, was an avid autograph collector. He had bought the letter without knowing that it was stolen.
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