One thing I found interesting about this chapter was how people like Ficino didn’t know what to do with the nature of Things. For example, in the text it states “In his twenties, Ficino was deeply shaken by On the Nature of Things and undertook to write a learned commentary on the poet he called ‘our brilliant Lucreties’. But, coming to his senses – that is, returning to his faith – Ficino burned this commentary”. (Page 221). Considering On the Nature of Things, is one of the greatest books that helped shape how the world works today, it is weird how people during this time period did not agree with it. Another thing I found interesting was one of More’s beliefs. “Even with the full force of Utopian social conditioning, human nature, More believed, would inevitably lead men to resort to force or fraud in order to get whatever they desire. More’s belief was conditioned no doubt by his ardent Catholicism, but in this same period Machiavelli, who was considerably less pious than the saintly More, came to the same conclusion” (Page 232). This was interesting to me because even with the most perfect social conditioning, humans still resort to force or fraud to achieve their desires.
One text to world connection I made while reading was the comparison between how news was spread with On the nature of Things versus how fast news spreads with social media now. Nature of Things has ideas that spread all around the world after people had read it, and the ideas traveled on and are still used today. This compares to social media because news travels incredibly quickly on there and there are many things that get posted that stay around for years and get brought back up front the past.
One question I still have after reading this chapter is did they have too many complications with disseminating the manuscript?
