Matthew Canonico, “The Math Behind Dante’s Divine Comedy” (2021)

“As God’s Creation, we experience a physical realm of differentiated entities and perceive multiplicity in our material reality. The character of Beatrice utilizes this fact in Paradiso 2 when she proposes the mirror experiment. The experiment combines mathematical, geometrical, and optical/physical principles to demonstrate spiritual truths. This experiment, especially its utilization of reflection, plants a seed in Dante, prodding him on his journey to the Divine: ‘Nature offers to the symbolic poet clearly denotable objects in-depth and in the round, which yield the analogies to the higher senses.’ In the Primo Mobile, Dante the poet utilizes these same principles as he approaches the dimensionless punto of the Divine, the source and ground of all being.”    —Matthew Canonico, University of Notre Dame: Church Life Journal (April 28, 2021)

Read the full analysis here.