For a long time, I have imagined that when I’m retired (of course, at the moment, who actually believes anymore that they can retire at all), I would spend a lot of pleasurable time examining medieval manuscripts in all kinds of European libraries and monasteries and write a full history of the square of opposition. Now, it seems that the modern age has made that vision a bit moot. The New York Times today reports about the digitization of the abbey library at St Gallen, Switzerland. A quick check of what’s already online shows some manuscripts about logic and semantics. Here’s a square of opposition from a manuscript containing a copy of Apuleius’ Peri Hermeneias:
So, now I can do some of this work during my free (hah!) time rather than wait until I’m 74.