Search

He believed that mathematics not only allowed humans to understand features of the world: mathematics itself guided language, even in its externalized form on the pages of the I Divina proportione i . The fourth, concluding chapter takes an unexpected turn, since it is devoted to Giambattista Della Porta, who is better known as a playwright and the main protagonist of Italian Renaissance natural magic philosophy than as a mathematician. As Saiber notes, Della Porta's treatise, like a play he might have written for the Neapolitan stage, performs spectacular roles on the printed page. [Extracted from the article]