Comment by cokernel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cokernel | Hacker News Reader

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I'd be interested in a citation for this, if you have one handy. I've read that he wrote about this in a letter but I haven't been able to find it. The closest I've been able to find is (via WP):

> The word [orangutan] comes from Bontius (1631, Hist. Nat. et Med. Ind. Orient.) who claimed that the Javanese had informed him that orang-utans could talk, ‘but do not wish to, lest they should be compelled to labour’.

Dellios, Paulette (2005). A Lexical Odyssey from the Malay World. The Proceedings of the European Integration-Between Tradition and Modernity Congress, Editura Universităţii "Petru Maior", Volume Number 1, 2005, ISSN 1844-2048, pp. 460-463. http://www.upm.ro/facultati_departamente/stiinte_litere/conf...

Bontius's book looks like the sort of thing Descartes would have read, so I'd be interested in reading his reaction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

>Mr. Clerselier has written me that you are expecting from him my Meditations... in order to present them to the queen of the land. ...If I had only been as wise as they say the savages persuaded themselves that the monkeys were, I never would have become known as a maker of books: Since it is said that they imagined that the monkeys could indeed speak, if they wanted to, but that they chose not to so lest they be forced to work. And since I had not the same prudence to abstain from writing, I now have neither as much liesure nor as much peace as I would have had if I had kept quiet. But since the mistake has already been made, and since I am now known by an infinity of people at the academy, who look askance at my writings and scour them for means of harming me, I do have great hope of being known to persons of great merit, whose power and virtue could protect me.

>Letter to Pierre Chanut (Nov. 1, 1646) as quoted by Amir Aczel, Descartes' Secret Notebook (2005) citing René Descartes: Correspondance avec Elizabeth et autres lettres (1989) ed., Jean-Marie and M. Beysaade, pp. 245-246.

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