Thirty Statues: A Book of the Art of Memory & the Art of Invention

Written in 1591 and published posthumously, Bruno’s Lamps of the Thirty Statues presents an advanced example of the memory palace technique, He presents a periodic table or encyclopedia of classical philosophy, representing thirty abstract ideas through images taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. These images are then given attributes which can be combined and manipulated to address fundamental arguments and isues of philosophical interest. At the same time, he develops a theogony and a categorization scheme for substances and concepts through the framework of the scale of nature and the scale of predicates or ideas. First English Translation.