There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness: And Other Thoughts on Physics, Philosophy and the World by Rovelli Carlo

Author:Rovelli, Carlo [Rovelli, Carlo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
Amazon: B09FBWXNLG
Goodreads: 199896754
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-10T07:00:00+00:00

Leopardi and Astronomy

February 12, 2017

Giacomo Leopardi is, with Dante, Italy’s greatest poet. But poetry wasn’t his unique interest. His History of Astronomy: From Its Origins until 1813 is astonishing. It consists of three hundred pages of dense erudition in which he traces the evolution of astronomy from antiquity until his time, the nineteenth century, citing with punctilious detail all of the sources, with a comprehensiveness and an expertise that is perhaps not to be found (and they must forgive me for this) even among my colleagues who are historians of science. And all this was achieved by Leopardi when he had reached the ripe old age of . . . fifteen!

This book by the young poet is one of the clearest testimonies to the intersection between science and literature that is at the heart of the best of Italian culture. The cultural formation of our two greatest poets, Dante and Leopardi, includes extensive and in-depth knowledge of the science of their time; deeply absorbed, properly understood, becoming in the process a genuine source of their poetry.

Leopardi covers the history of astronomy from its obscure beginnings among the Chaldeans right up until the year his text was completed. It is not a treatise on astronomy. He does not go into technical detail where he has no competence to do so. But this makes even more impressive his lucidity when evaluating diverse contributions to the subject, and his ability to extract the pith of all the major results. With an almost uncanny maturity for his age, he manages to combine an endless wealth of bibliographical detail with a clear presentation and synthesis of it. How a boy of fifteen could acquire such erudition and the capacity to digest and explain the subject is something of a wonder. Even at this age, Leopardi was exercising the exceptional intelligence that many who came across him in person remarked upon.

The meaning of the work becomes clearer if we take into consideration the context from which it emerged. Leopardi was living in isolation in Recanati, a provincial village in a remote part of central Italy. His father, Monaldo, a conservative closely adhering to the authority of the Church, was strongly opposed to the ideas of Copernicus, while Giacomo at the age of fifteen passionately believed in them. For all its erudition, the book is really an act of rebellion.

As in his Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients, which follows his work on astronomy, science is felt to be a tool for growth, for eliminating the errors of ignorance and bigotry that the young Leopardi perceives all around him. This is the period of what he later called his “mad and desperate” studies, during which he practically teaches himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew, as well as English, French and Spanish. He is completely absorbed by this.

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