The Florentines. From Dante to Galileo: the transformation of Western civilization

The history of the city and the people who were at the roots of the Renaissance. Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that would radically and irreversibly change the entire culture of the Western world, its painting, sculpture, and architecture. New forms were acquired not only by art - the very thinking and self-consciousness of the inhabitants of Western Europe transformed. The beginning of a complete transformation of science was laid. Ideas that broke the old patterns originated and flourished in Florence. They spread throughout Europe, but wherever they took root, they retained traces of their Florentine origin. Paul Strathern is a writer, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and among his popular science works are "The Venetians," "Death in Florence," "The Medici," "Mendeleev's Dream," "Empire," and "Borgia."