Thirty Statues: A Book of the Art of Memory & the Art of Invention

by Giordano Bruno, Scott Gosnell

Written in 1591 and published posthumously, Bruno’s Lamps of the Thirty Statues presents an advanced example of the memory palace technique, He presents a periodic table or encyclopedia of classical philosophy, representing thirty abstract ideas through images taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. These images are then given attributes which can be combined and manipulated to address fundamental arguments and isues of philosophical interest. At the same time, he develops a theogony and a categoization scheme for substances and concepts through the framework of the scale of nature and the scale of predicates or ideas.

261 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 18, 2019

About the author

Giordano Bruno (1548 – February 17, 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, who is best known as a proponent of the infinity of the universe. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in identifying the Sun as just one of an infinite number of independently moving heavenly bodies: he is the first European man to have conceptualized the universe as a continuum where the stars we see at night are identical in nature to the Sun. He was burned at the stake by authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy. After his death he gained considerable fame; in the 19th and early 20th centuries, commentators focusing on his astronomical beliefs regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas. Recent assessments suggest that his ideas about the universe played a smaller role in his trial than his pantheist beliefs, which differed from the interpretations and scope of God held by Catholicism.[1][2] In addition to his cosmological writings, Bruno also wrote extensive works on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. More recent assessments, beginning with the pioneering work of Frances Yates, suggest that Bruno was deeply influenced by the astronomical facts of the universe inherited from Arab astrology, Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermeticism.[3] Other recent studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial paradigms of geometry to language.[4]