![]() ![]() Kircher, the founder of Egyptology, was wildly imaginative and wholly innacurate in his decipherment of hieroglyphics (including an effort to explain Chinese ideograms by fitting China into the history of the Egyptian civilization), but his scholarship provided the historical record which Champollion later unscrambled with benefit of the Rosetta Stone - as well as fueling Europe's Chinaphilia which led, roundabout, to Leibniz getting hold of a table from the I Ching. Ptolemy, for example, was wrong about the structure of the solar system but that error fired his passion for observation which later inspired Kepler. The theme of SERENDIPITIES is the way in which falsity or misunderstanding has shaped our world for the better. ![]() ![]() His forte is exploration of the history of language and ideas and his biologic CPU is running at full throttle in this short collection of lectures originally delivered to the Italian Academy. Eco is popularly best known for THE NAME OF THE ROSE and THE ISLAND OF THE DAY BEFORE, and is Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna. ![]() If you occasionally savor pushing yourself intellectually, here's a candidate for a cool summer read way out in the deep end. ![]()
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