Select the quantity of the product you desire and click the "Add" button. Read Less Below is a list of products arranged by condition. With erudition, anecdotes, and scholarly rigor, this new collection of essays is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas. What Should I Read Next Book recommendations for people who like Serendipities: Language and Lunacy by Umberto Eco. Best-selling author Umberto Ecos latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the linguistics of the lunatic, stories told by scholars. Uncovering layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, Eco offers with wit and clarity such instances as Columbus's voyage to the New World, the fictions that grew around the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar, and the linguistic endeavors to recreate the language of Babel, to show how serendipities can evolve out of mistakes. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Umberto Eco offers a dazzling tour of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange to make sense of the world. Umberto Eco's large oeuvre can be divided into four groups: his scholarly work on semiotics, his amusing essays and plays on genre, his fiction, and his works for the mythical 'general reader.' This last group, to which Serendipities belongs, is the least effective and worthwhile, and this book is not a major contribution to that group. Serendipities is a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, a brilliant exposition of how unanticipated truths often spring from false ideas.
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