Science and poetry in Dante's Commedia

Abstract

This article examines Dante’s natural inclination toward knowledge in Paradise. If one could set aside—an impossible task—the literary and human value of the Commedia and read it as a scientific compendium, it would readily become clear that it is a sum of knowledge from that era, with a vision so broad that many of the poet’s intuitions and observations are problematized or debated today in scientific forums around the world.
The Florentine’s thirst for knowledge arises as something inherent to his thought. The poet was interested in theology, philosophy, politics, the natural sciences, medicine, alchemy, optics, physics, and astronomy. In him, that oft-quoted phrase of Terence would be fulfilled: homo sunt, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Several scientists specializing in black holes and Euclidean geometry (Stephen Hawking, Carlo Rovelli, Pavel Florensky, among others) have succumbed to his spell, seeing in his verses an avant la lettre anticipation of their own theories, and even a discipline as current as Neuroaesthetics carefully examines the effect on listeners of certain passages of his work