English edition. To memorize anything, distribute vivid, emotionally stirring imagined images around a piece of familiar architecture. This is the method of loci, or memory palace method, first developed in classical antiquity. Giordano Bruno perfected the art in the late 16th Century. He published a series of books on the subject, beginning with De Umbris Idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas). His work and life would lead him across the major centers of Renaissance Europe, to the patronage of kings and nobles, the scorn and envy of academics, and ultimately to his imprisonment and...

In 1584, while living in the household of Michel de Castelnau, the French Ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth of England, Giordano Bruno completed three books of cosmological dialogues: The Ash Wednesday Supper; On Cause, Principle and Unity; and the current volume, On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds. Drawing on the work of Lucretius, Nicholas da Cusa, Nicholas Copernicus and others, Bruno developed the theory of an infinitely extensive universe, filled with stars like our sun and planets like our own. Giordano Bruno's heretical ideas and forceful personality led to a...

Ramon Lull or Llull created his Art during the 13th century as a method for debating and converting the Islamic kingdoms of North Africa and the Jewish population of Europe, following a vision experienced atop Mount Randa. The Art utilized what is now called combinatoric logic to produce arguments on any subject from simple, mechanical rules, without appeals to authority or existing literature. As such, it forms an important precursor to modern programing languages. In its own right, and through these commentaries by Giordano Bruno, it influenced Gottfried Leibniz and others seeking a...