Re: A modern modern Prometheus

On Aug 10, 4:00 pm, Michael Zeleny <larva...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 10, 10:09 am, Marko Amnell <marko_amn...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Aug 10, 7:49 pm, unglued <dragons...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Imagine a mad scientist whipped you together from spare parts he had
swiped from a cemetary and, being left to your own devices, you escape
from the lab as a tabula rasa. Suppose you picked up the mechanics of
language by eavesdropping on someone practicing French with a "Teach
yourself French" kit and then found a satchel with 3 books someone had
dropped.
What 3 books would suffice to turn you into a self propelled
intellectual monster ?
Marx, Le capital
Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu
Bourbaki, Éléments de mathématique

Bourbaki worked for me. But Marx's French was nothing to write home
about. If you like them girthy, try Sartre's L'Idiot de la famille.
But if you want quality instead of quantity, Descartes (Méditations
métaphysiques and Discours de la méthode) and Pascal (Lettres
provinciales and Pensées) are indispensable.

But are Descartes and Pascal proper food for
self-propelled intellectual monsters?



.

Relevant Pages

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