Fascinating: "But those bodies manifest it more clearly which are not perceived to emit light; nevertheless, they are not perceived under any [light] than their own, [such as?] the species of firefly, rotting wood, marine fish, the eyes of cats..." (Clarius verò id manifestant illa corpora quæ lumen emittere non sentiuntur, sub alio tamen non cernuntur, quàm suo, quod genus cincindulæ, ligna putria, pisces marini, felium oculi)
Cats' eyes generate their own light! Checkmate Boulliau, 1637!
@greyor well let us know if you figure it out! I’m definitely curious now
@Satsuma will do! It is so bizarre how much this dude wrote. Every time I finish a project, the prof I am working for pulls out another more obscure work of his. As he said, the mainline stuff is done, and all that remains is "the goofy shit." I am digging it, lots of philosophical and physics/mathematical treatises. I know next to nothing about the latter in real life, but the Latin overall makes sense.
@greyor the goofy shit is more fun to translate I’m sure :D
And it’s cool that he’s written enough stuff that you can have like, an ongoing translation relationship? I imagine there are all sorts of writing quirks of his that you’ve gotten used to since you started
@Satsuma oh sorry. So the prof I am working with studies history of science. Ismaël Boulliau (Latin: Ismael Bullialdus) (1605-1694) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and general polymath. This prof has spent much of his career studying Boulliau and his more famous friends like Kepler, Descartes, and others... another luminary was Pierre Gassendi (Petrus Gassendus) of Digne in Provence. They had a cool correspondence network called the Republic of Letters (respublica literarum).
@Satsuma but yeah I have been working with this prof on and off since 2010 on various projects. And I definitely have gotten to know Boulliau's style, worked on hundreds of pages of his work!
@Satsuma shit so sorry to infodump on you 😬
@greyor no it’s fine! Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out
@Satsuma Yeah I can't figure it out either. Once I finish transcription and start proofing/correcting the translation maybe it'll make more sense.
Boulliau was a weird fuckin' guy but his Latin is wonderfully Ciceronian in many ways, and he was quite brilliant.