This is a fascinating and rather disturbing article.

But it is important to distinguish people like Mill, who was literally hands-on, making-it-happen exploiter of people of color, and Kant, who quite likely had never interacted with a black person in his whole life. Kant's comments were stupid, but five minutes with James Baldwin and he would have recanted.

The story about Descartes is on another level, and forever changes my picture of him - not for the better. I am horrified.

Here's a nicer story to cleanse the palate.

Newton was famously prickly, and pretty mean to some famous people at the time, who could no doubt take it.

But fairly early, Newton's dog Diamond knocked over a candle and set off a fire that burnt two years of Newton's work, and also put Newton into a profound depression that lasted for over a year.

And yet when it happened, Newton famously petted the dog and said, "Diamond, Diamond, you know not what you have done."