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June-July 2012 - Godel Escher Bach
By Betsy , co-mod · 126 posts · 791 views
By Betsy , co-mod · 126 posts · 791 views
last updated Jun 08, 2024 07:09PM
December 2012 Emperor of All Maladies
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By Betsy , co-mod · 23 posts · 233 views
last updated Feb 16, 2020 09:48PM
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This is an interesting book, primarily about the poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. Much of the book is describes the life of Poggio Bracciolini, a very unusual man for his time; he was a classical scholar, who searched abbeys for rare books. In the early 15th century, he discovered On the Nature of Things and re-copied and translated the poem. Despite the fact that the poem was heretical to the Catholic Church, Bracciolini helped to distribute the poem, which gradually liberalized the p
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Before reading this book, I hadn't thought much about the renaissance. Sure, a few college French courses helped drive home the point that it literally means "rebirth," and I kind of knew that old books were involved, but I didn't think much about the logistics. I imagined ancient texts were found in much the same way anything else gets found, as in "Oh, by the way, I was going through storage looking for the Christmas decorations, and guess what I found: some poem by this dude Lucretius!"
Imagin ...more
Imagin ...more
By the time this book came off of hold, I had forgotten what it was about. But it was easy to figure it out. I think it was NPR that had done a piece on this magical ancient poem, lost for hundreds of years - resurfaced by the work of a rabid book searcher - which basically described such modern ideas as atoms, evolution, atheism, and no life of any sort after death - Lucretius' On the Nature of Things. And yet mostly I found this book a bore. And with two copies of On the Nature of Things in th
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Greenblatt doesn't quite prove his ambitious assertion; but produced an interesting, and thought-provoking, book. A very interesting piece of intellectual history. Recommended.
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Amazing! I've owned my copy of "De Rerum Natura" for 50 years, and didn't have any idea of how important it was. Time to reread. This book has revived my interest in philosophy and history as it relates to religion in a way I had not contemplated. Fascinating.
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Greenblatt writes of how a poem (evidently an exquisitely beautiful poem) written by a Roman Epicurean, Lucretius, was recovered and circulated by a 15th century Florentine papal scribe. And how the poem survived the Roman church's animosity to the ideas elucidated in the poem to become a foundation for Thomas More's Utopia and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and how it also formed a framework for Enlightenment scientists to view the world.
Greenblatt does an excellent job of bri ...more
Greenblatt does an excellent job of bri ...more
Marvelous, the proof of the singular role of Lucretious to the Modern was not so clear, but the exploration of the history of ideas was compelling reading, wonderful narrative flair
Shows you how very few ideas are really modern and how easy they can get lost.
Nov 18, 2011
Sunshine
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Dec 01, 2011
John J.
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Apr 16, 2012
Mary
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AER
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