Character and Health
Le Sage described his manner of thinking and working by saying:
I have been born with four dispositions well adapted for making progress in science, but with two great defects in the faculties necessary for that purpose. 1. An ardent desire to know the truth; 2. Great activity of mind; 3. An uncommon (justesse) soundness of understanding; 4. A strong desire for precision and distinctness of ideas; 5. An excessive weakness of memory; 6. A great incapacity of continued attention.
Le Sage also suffered from insomnia, and as a result of this he often was unable to work for days. Additionally, in 1762 he had an accident which left him nearly blind.
To compensate the weakness of his memory, he wrote his thoughts on playing cards - over 35000 cards are still lying in the library of Geneva. As a consequence of his mental disposition, many of his papers remained unfinished and unpublished. For example: his main work on Gravitation; a history of theories of gravitation; a treatise on final causes; a biographical note on Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. However, some of them were posthumously published by his pupil Pierre Prévost.
Read more about this topic: Georges-Louis Le Sage
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or health:
“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“A little health now and again is the ailing person’s best remedy.”
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