On the eve of the long awaited and much talked about release of the blockbuster Agora by Alejandro Amenabar, Hypatia is already a literary event and feeds a debate that shows no signs of fade. The figure of Hypatia, which inspired the film starring Rachel Weisz, has remained in the shadows for a long time. Hypatia was astronomer, mathematics, musicologist, physician, philosopher, and heir to the Alexandrian school massacre was done by Cyril, bishop of Alexandria. With this crime the Western culture has definitely excluded the women from the sphere of knowledge. The Life of Hypatia is one of the oldest secular parables of a conflict but still relevant: faith and reason, man and woman. The importance of this character is still underestimated: For centuries, the modern experimental science was believed to have only one father, Galileo, when in fact it also has a mother, born 1200 years before Galileo: Hypatia. The portrait that has been handed down is that of a woman of extraordinary intelligence and beauty. He was the inventor of the astrolabe, the planisphere and dell'idroscopio, as well as the leading exponent of Alexandrian Neoplatonic school. Assaulted in the street, was lacerated with sharp shells, blinded, dismembered and burned.
This assassination is considered by the great historian Edward Gibbon, English said Voltaire, "an indelible stain" in Christian history. On the character of Hypatia wrote Voltaire, Diderot, Proust, Peguy, Leopardi, Pascal, Gavino, Luzi, and many others. On Facebook there is a group that asks, declare a national holiday the day of the death of Hypatia. At the beginning of the third millennium, UNESCO, at the request of 190 member states, has created an international project that seeks to promote scientific plans for women born from the union of women of all nationalities, because currently only 5 in science % of women holds positions of responsibility. UNESCO has named this project HYPATIA.
The pazia
ANTONY AND THE ADRIAN PETTA Colavito
TUESDAY, May 4 HOURS 18.30
With the participation AUTHOR ADRIAN PETTA
to follow a toast with the guests offered by DEGUSTIBUS
LIBRARY SQUARE Centofiori DATEO 5 - Milan - (Tel 02 7381670 for confirmation)
The book is divided into two parts, one that tells the real story bringing back historical milestones and events related to the life of the scholar. The second part is a sort of "confession" in which Hypatia is the same talk, narrating his dreams, and his knowledge of the research.
