Physics in Dante’s Divine Comedy

Abstract

The Divine Comedy is a classical epic poem of Western literature. The poem describes the pilgrimage of Dante’s character through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise and the poet Dante Alighieri explores and expands, among others, the philosophic, scientific and religious perspectives of his time. The Astronomy conceptions are the most evident in his work, with the stars in concentric orbits around the Earth, but this article aims to show how concepts of the Modern Science, particularly Mechanics, Optics, Acoustics, and Thermodynamics, can be related to the poem and how they are connected with a philosophical-scientific view of the Middle Ages. Thus, it is possible to work with the History of Science, an interdisciplinary approach and the relationship between science and culture in order to promote the teaching of physics, especially in high school.