Quote:
Originally Posted by Synamon
I'm about halfway through. <snip>
I'm interested in how he weaves Of the Nature of Things into the Renaissance. I'm not going to be easily convinced that one poem was "responsible" for modern thought. History doesn't take place in a vacuum, there were a lot of other influences at the time, plus other Greek and Roman philosophers and scholars were read throughout history.
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Ok, I'm done. And there was very little evidence that the poem had much to do with the Renaissance. Some oblique references to atoms by a few and a resurgence of Epicurean ideas isn't very convincing. But who knows what triggers ideas or where the tipping point was. I suppose his premise is possible, if not plausible.
A question for those who have read On the Nature of Things, were there as many wild and wrong-headed ideas as there were right-thinking ideas? It seemed to me that Greenblatt cherry picked, and I'm curious if my impression is correct.