I am doing some work with the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. It's a rare book library with some of the most incredible and beautiful books about esoteric philosophy. I love it. Also know as “The Embassy of the Free Mind”
As you walk into the library, there is a big bronze statue of Marisilio Ficino. Ficino was peak Renaissance — he was head of the academy in Florence and hired by the Medici's to translate greek texts like Plato and the Hermetica into Latin, for the first time. He wrote a book called "De Mysteriis" (the mysteries) that is totally bananas.
Published 1497, it has never been translated. It contains a chapter on Ficino’s own philosophy on pleasure “De Voluptate”
The book got me to start collecting. My copy contains all kinds of marginalia… I’ve been translating the whole book with a scholar at Oxford. I’ve since built up a collection at the intersection of early science and philosophical magic. For instance, dellaporta’s “natural magic,” a book called “mathematical magic” from one of the founders of the Royal society, “arithmology” (a book about divine mathematics by Athenaus Kircher), “Secrets of Nature” by Anton von Leeuwenhoek (inventor of microscope), a book on “artificial curiosities” showing illustrations of steam powered autonomata from the mid 1500s, etc etc etc.
I think the themes of these books — consciousness, magic, intelligence, mathematics — all bring a peculiar perspective on our current AI Renaissance… so I want to use AI to help make these books more accessible and understandable
I recommend the 1621 book Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. He was a big bibliophile with a huge collection, and also melancholic, so he wrote about melancholy while pulling material from his own reading. The result is a huge book that is figuratively 50% main text and 50% marginalia; if you find a good edition where they are printed as actual marginalia instead of footnotes/endnotes, it gives a completely different perspective into the mind of the author as he wrote the book.
One big reason I go to estate sales is to perhaps one day find a treasure like this; unfortunately many a rich home has either very few books or if they do have books they are mostly junk (estate sales being homes of older folks, the book selection invariable is heavily loaded towards WW2 history) or not of interest to me (coffee table books, cookbooks, etc.)
The closest I have come is a copy of a museum exhibition catalog about Dieter Rams from 1981 that is signed by him. I bought it online. The copy was described as having a scribble on the front page and priced very low as a consequence. Years after, I saw Dieter’s signature somewhere and realized that my book was signed.
How do you identify a valuable book? Are there some 1000 well known valuable items you keep in mind? Or are you looking inside every jacket hoping to find an author's signature on a 1st edition? I assume the price of a false positive is low (ie I'll buy these dusty books for $20), but sounds like a lot of legwork.
I imagine it is definitively less sexy than the Ninth Gate
My big find was a fair-condition copy of Graham Greene’s retracted second novel in a secondhand bookstore in Canada for CDN20. It’s not in collectable condition, by any means. The spine is angled and the dust jacket is missing, but just the opportunity to read this (not that good, to be honest) book and the delight of finding a copy that I could afford were a joy for me.
The January 16, 2024 edition of the CBC radio show "As It Happens" has an interview with Gerry Vogrincic, the doctor who bought the book in 2007 and just sold it.
There's a transcript of the interview here [1]. Search for "Old Anatomy Book".
The audio for the entire episode is here [2]. I don't recall how far into it this interview occurs. (I've sometimes found their interviews split into separate clips, but if that's the case here I don't know where to find it.)
Maybe eventually. First an accurate transcription and translation of the annotations would have to be made. Then there'd have to be a lot of editorial work integrating the changed. You'd have to decide what you want--a 'reading' edition that presented a unified text? Online, with a good photographic reproduction, you could do something like what was done for Emily Dickinson (https://www.edickinson.org/)--page images with text transcriptions where annotations can be toggled on and off. You'd just need to find someone willing to pay for it.
"As much as such prices might set a gold digger's heart racing, they are not usually what motivates book collectors, whose relationship to their objects of desire is varied and complex. At a Boston fair in October, I heard a dealer with an impressive selection of dust jacket art say, "Don't judge a book by its content." However tongue-in-cheek, this twisted aphorism exposes the curious fact that many collectors don't actually read their books." https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/collecting/2008-01-18-aliso...
dr_dshiv|2 years ago
As you walk into the library, there is a big bronze statue of Marisilio Ficino. Ficino was peak Renaissance — he was head of the academy in Florence and hired by the Medici's to translate greek texts like Plato and the Hermetica into Latin, for the first time. He wrote a book called "De Mysteriis" (the mysteries) that is totally bananas.
Published 1497, it has never been translated. It contains a chapter on Ficino’s own philosophy on pleasure “De Voluptate”
The book got me to start collecting. My copy contains all kinds of marginalia… I’ve been translating the whole book with a scholar at Oxford. I’ve since built up a collection at the intersection of early science and philosophical magic. For instance, dellaporta’s “natural magic,” a book called “mathematical magic” from one of the founders of the Royal society, “arithmology” (a book about divine mathematics by Athenaus Kircher), “Secrets of Nature” by Anton von Leeuwenhoek (inventor of microscope), a book on “artificial curiosities” showing illustrations of steam powered autonomata from the mid 1500s, etc etc etc.
I think the themes of these books — consciousness, magic, intelligence, mathematics — all bring a peculiar perspective on our current AI Renaissance… so I want to use AI to help make these books more accessible and understandable
epilys|2 years ago
Ecoste|2 years ago
Jun8|2 years ago
My biggest find so far? Four volumes of the six volume set of Scribner's Sun Rise Edition for $10 apiece: https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Sun-Rise-Edition-6-Vo....
ddrmaxgt37|2 years ago
aaronbrethorst|2 years ago
fbdab103|2 years ago
I imagine it is definitively less sexy than the Ninth Gate
dhosek|2 years ago
rotifer|2 years ago
There's a transcript of the interview here [1]. Search for "Old Anatomy Book".
The audio for the entire episode is here [2]. I don't recall how far into it this interview occurs. (I've sometimes found their interviews split into separate clips, but if that's the case here I don't know where to find it.)
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/the-aih-transcript-for-...
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-2-as-it-happens/clip/...
hinkley|2 years ago
I didn't get a clear indication from the story whether anyone thought it would be worth pursuing finishing that project and publishing a new edition.
Finnucane|2 years ago
gwern|2 years ago
0xDEADFED5|2 years ago
lofatdairy|2 years ago
Another interesting copy is the one bound in human skin at Brown.
mindcrime|2 years ago
Shouldn't that be at Miskatonic?
fsckboy|2 years ago
TomK32|2 years ago
m3kw9|2 years ago