Serendipities: Language and Lunancy - Softcover

In a careful unravelling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities – unanticipated truths – often spring from mistaken ideas. From Leibnitz's belief that I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaken identification of a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Eco tours the labyrinth of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange. He shows how Columbus' assumption that the world was much smaller than it is led him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously 'discover' America; and how the fictions that grew up around the cults of the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar were the result of a letter from the mysterious 'Prester John' – undoubtedly a hoax – that provided fertile ground for a series of delusions and conspiracy theories based on religious, ethnic and racial prejudices. While some false tales produce new knowledge (like Columbus' discovery of America) and others create nothing but horror and shame (the Rosicrucian story wound up fuelling European anti-Semitism) they are all, Eco shows, powerfully persuasive.

With the startling combination of erudition and wit, bewildering anecdotes and scholarly rigour that are Umberto Eco's hallmarks, Serendipities is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas..