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Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#51

Post by tokai »

breakfastduck wrote: post #47
spuz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere in the article does it suggest that anyone lied about the books.

It doesn’t need to. Pretty clear from reading it that no one wanted to admit they’d been stolen on their watch, so they kept up some kind of pretence of it being lost within the library so they wouldn’t be public hounded for being responsible for its loss.

That's all in your head. It's pretty clear that the library was aware that the books were missing, and that they looked for them.

What do you want to happen when unique documents disappear? Call the cops? International press conference? I assure you that professional pride is much more important for these people than being 'hounded' by the public.

While there is a good chance that it was been stolen, it could still turn up . Things can go missing for, literally, centuries in collections that are big enough.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#52

Post by dagw »

toyg wrote: post #36
dagw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

provide no practical benefits whatsoever to someone's life. I guess it provides status and bragging rights within your social circle. When you and all your friends are rich enough to be able to buy basically anything that is legally for sale, owning stuff that your neighbor cannot also just go out and buy becomes the only interesting type of purchase left to make.

> no practical benefits ... except being a tax-free investment that will likely hold value forever (because it’s effectively unique) and is often easier to secure than more typical assets (because it’s hard to resell without very specific contacts).

except being a tax-free investment that will likely hold value forever

That is a lot less likely when it comes to stolen artifacts.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#53

Post by ajnin »

twelvechairs wrote: post #30
webmobdev wrote: post #22

Hopefully it was all scanned and digitized?

And made freely available with a permissive licence

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Libraries scanning old books and applying a new copyright on them (which shouldn't be possible, scans are not a creative act) is a common issue.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#54

Post by ajnin »

konschubert wrote: post #11

Who steals this stuff? If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?

A similar behavior happens in the game ROM dumping community, owners of very rare or sometimes unique arcade boards often refuse to release ROM dumps, or do so only in a small group of individuals. They would lose nothing if they released it but I guess they take pleasure in knowing they have the exclusivity of a specific thing in the World.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#55

Post by dagw »

fakedang wrote: post #34
dagw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leonardo Da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi was sold for $450M back in 2017, where is the justification for this pricing? That particular painting was by all accounts bought by (or at least for) the Abu Dhabi tourism ministry as advertising and a centerpiece for their new fancy art museum. Although other claim it might also have been purchased for Mohammed bin Salman to go in his fancy new art museum. Either way it see…

And why shouldn't they? Is it only the West that has an exclusive right over art? If they can pay for it, and its future maintenance, and there's a willing seller, then why not? It's not like all of the Louvre's pieces were commissioned by some French king, and the same goes for MOMA or any of London's museums. In fact, let's be glad they're buying it and not looting it like the West did with a large portion of their…

And why shouldn't they?

No one is saying they shouldn't. The main thing people are questioning is the ridiculous amount of money they spent for a painting more and more people are convinced isn't actually a Da Vinici.

Secondly the painting hasn't actually showed up in any museum yet, and in fact no one knows for sure where it actually is.

Anonymous Oil Sheiks drastically overpaying (and shattering the old art sale record by over $150 million) for a painting that probably isn't a Da Vinci only for the painting to completely disappear makes for a fun story.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#58

Post by interestica »

Luckily: "The two Darwin notebooks had previously been digitised and their content is available online." .

University of Cambridge has a bit more on their "appeal" site (https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/DarwinAppeal)

The digitized notebooks are available:

[1] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00121/1

[2] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00122/1

Also, yesterday was the anniversary of the release of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life on November 24, 1859.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#59

Post by globular-toast »

wombatmobile wrote: post #10
globular-toast wrote: post #4

It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.

The value of any object is what someone will pay for it. Bill Gates paid $30.8 million for da Vinci's Codex Leicester at Christie's in 1994.

Bill Gates sacrificed nothing to acquire da Vinci's Codex.

Dave Smith sacrificed a big screen TV to acquire a new motorcycle.

Which one has more value?

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