Serendipities: Language and Lunacy - Italian Academy Lectures

In a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities----unanticipated truths----often spring from mistaken ideas. Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously "discovering" America.