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VMs: Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz
I'm trying to find a copy of the letters between Caramuel/Marci
(unpublished) and Caramuel/Kircher... these last were published in:
"Juan Caramuel. Su epistolario con Atanasio Kircher, S.J., in: Revista de
filosofía XII/44 (1953), 101-47"
Small bio: Juan CARAMUEL y LOBKOWITZ, a Spanish Cistercian monk, scholastic,
philosopher and moral theologian, also linguist, music innovator,
mathematician and architect. * b. 23 May 1606 in Madrid, as a son of a
Luxembourg engineer and a Bohemian mother, Ý 7 September 1682 as a Bishop
for Vigevano in Lombardy.
This intriguing character was in Prague since 1647, where he deepened his
study of classic languages as well as the Kabbala in contact with Jewish
scholars, until1654 when his old friend Fabio Chigi was appointed Pope
Alexander VII. He worked on the project of a universal science, which he
wanted to develop from mathematics, comparative grammar of the languages and
the Lullian combinatorial mathematics. Its ` Mathesis biceps et new facts '
(1670) was considered as the largest mathematical encyclopedia of his time.
In the history of mathematics, Caramuel is seen as a founder of binary
mathematics, and in architecture as the inventor of a new mathematical
method (`Architectura obliqua '). He controlled many languages, among them
also Hebrew and Arab, sketched even a grammar of Chinese.
Comments/hints are very welcome.