An essay on blindness, in a letter to a person of distinction : reciting the most interesting particulars relative to persons born blind, and those who have lost their sight : being an enquiry into the nature of their ideas, knowledge of sounds, opinions concerning morality and religion, &c. interspersed with several anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others : with copper-plates elucidating Dr. Sanderson's method of working geometrical problems / translated from the French of M. Diderot, physician to His most Christian Majesty.

  • Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784.
Date:
[1780?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on blindness, in a letter to a person of distinction : reciting the most interesting particulars relative to persons born blind, and those who have lost their sight : being an enquiry into the nature of their ideas, knowledge of sounds, opinions concerning morality and religion, &c. interspersed with several anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others : with copper-plates elucidating Dr. Sanderson's method of working geometrical problems / translated from the French of M. Diderot, physician to His most Christian Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    tions. A way, in which one can fcarce a- void being miftaken in metaphyfics, is mot fufficiently fimplifying the objects under inveftigation : and an infallible fecret for coming to falfe conclufions in phyfico-ma- thematics, is to fuppofe them lefs com- pounded than they are. There is a kind of abftracftion, of which lo very few are capable, that it feems rclerved to pure intelligences : the reducing every thing to numerical unities. It mull be allowed, that the refults of this geometry would be very exaft, and its formulas very general, there being no objecfts either ac- tually exifting or pofiible, which thcl'e fimple unities could not reprefent, by points, lines* furfaces* folids, thoughts, ideas, fenfations, &c. and, if this fhoulcb prove to be the foundation of Pythago- ras’s doflrine, he might be laid to have failed in his plan, his mode of philofo- phizing being too much above us,, and too near that of the Supreme Being, who, according to the ingenious expreffion of C 4 an