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| Taught by: Dr. Dario Del Puppo, Associate Professor of Modern LanguagesDante's "Commedia" is a compendium of medieval knowledge. There are numerous direct references in his poem to geography, astronomy, physics (motion), physiology (optics, anatomy, the working of the senses, consciousness), as well as to history, philosophy, religion, myth, allegory, music, art, and literature. Many of the scientific views he expresses in the Comedy were debatable then and are obsolete now. Nevertheless, they often describe the "state of the art" in the Middle Ages about human understanding of the real world. To make sense of Dante's physical world therefore is to understand how the medievals saw and spoke of reality. For us today, this also means seeing how scientific views and attitudes about the real world have changed. In short, through this laboratory component, I hope to stimulate student interest in the process of change by teaching students about "past" science. What was science for Dante, is perhaps no longer the case today. But then again, future generations might look at us as primitives! | |