University of Bologna
The university in Bologna, founded in the eleventh century and among the oldest in the world.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness | Carlo Rovelli | subject | Where Copernicus, and five centuries later Rovelli, found both the knowledge of the past and the nerve to overturn it. |
There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness — Carlo Rovelli (2020)
Source: There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness · Readwise highlight
The university was occupied for several months by politically engaged students. I got involved with the friends of Radio Alice, the independent radio station that had become the voice of the student revolt.
- Role: subject
- In the book: The essay “Copernicus and Bologna” opens on 6 January 1497, when a young Pole paid nine grossetti to enrol at the University of Bologna. Rovelli argues that Copernicus found two treasures in Italy: the books holding antiquity’s knowledge (Ptolemy, Euclid) and a Renaissance spirit of revolt against received systems. He then says he found the same two things studying in Bologna in the seventies: Einstein and Dirac, assigned by his professor Guido Fano, and a generation that occupied the university and dreamed of remaking the world.
- Why it matters: The university is the essay’s whole argument: a great university is a treasure-house of past knowledge and also a place where the courage to question it is nurtured. The parallel between Copernicus and Rovelli only works because both studied in the same place.