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
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....
I imagine it is definitively less sexy than the Ninth Gate
The hard part is tracking editions and verifying that you have a genuine first edition. Collectors depend on bibliographies which are themselves rare books that describe all the publications of a specific publisher or author and how to identify editions. Often there are marks but for valuable books it usually requires knowing the exact typos and changes between editions to authenticate them. There are a lot of counterfeits, both modern and contemporary to the original printing.
The other problem is that the vast majority of books are worthless unless they’re in very good condition. Not “good condition for their age” but damn near pristine, even if it’s hundreds of years old. If it’s falling apart, it’s almost certainly worthless, unless it’s an honest to god manuscript.
It’s mostly dependent on luck. It’s really hard to make a living with book collecting unless you’re running an auction house. Most companies handling estate sales are smart enough to check AbeBooks so the lucky life changing finds are getting rarer and rarer.
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/...
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.
Tsundoku is mostly about buying books with the intention to read them, but then not getting around to it.
But to many book collectors, the books are mainly or purely collection items, to be found, owned, sorted and looked at, but without any intention of ever reading most of them.
Another interesting copy is the one bound in human skin at Brown.
Shouldn't that be at Miskatonic?
