Love Medicine

Love Medicine
Detail of beadwork from an Ojibwe medicine pouch

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Leaving Hell

I didn't really understand how exactly Dante and Virgil leave hell. I know that they climb down the devil's back into the ice but I don't really get what happens when Virgil turns his head to where his feet where and leads to there exit. Can anyone explain what happens?
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5 comments:

Jessica Deckard said...

The center of gravity shifts.

Galileo [Italy], who argued that the sun was the center of the solar system (not the word he used) and discussed orbits, among other things, and lost his head for these ideas, lived from 1564-1642.

Isaac Newton [England] lived from 1642-1727. He articulated our ideas about gravity.

So, you see that Dante was about 300 years too early to understand the basic mechanics of gravity and physics. Remember he also predates the age of Exploration, so knew little about the other side of the earth. Marco Polo was born about 100 years before Dante, but his explorations of the world were limited (he spent a lot of time in Mongolia) and he wasn't a great sea voyager. Most of his travels were over land. Although Dante must have read Marco Polo's accounts, they wouldn't have helped him explain what the other side of the earth looked like.

Dante seems to have some sort of an idea that the center of the earth should be the place where gravity shifts, be he doesn't articulate it well.

November 21, 2008 at 9:05 AM
Jessica Deckard said...

Gravity hadn't been called "gravity" yet - not until Newton. So it's a mysterious force that holds us here and makes things fall, but the old "feather and brick in a vacuum trick" hadn't been imagined.

November 21, 2008 at 9:07 AM
Anonymous said...

http://www.ackland.org/projects/witnesses_to_an_age_in_transformation/satan_figure_3.jpg


this is a great picture of satan as the center of hell which kind of shows dante's confusion on the conecpt of gravity

November 21, 2008 at 3:28 PM
Anonymous said...

http://www.ackland.org/projects/witnesses_to_an_age_in_transformation/satan_figure_3.jpg


this is a great picture of satan as the center of hell which kind of shows dante's confusion on the conecpt of gravity

November 21, 2008 at 3:28 PM
rbreaux said...

It is really remarkable that someone who has very little knowledge of the shape of the Earth and Solar System was able to figure out the center of gravity.

November 24, 2008 at 7:55 AM

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