Renaissance

4 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it.

1. Magic as a serious science for explaining human unreasonDuring the Renaissance, magic wasn't just fairy tales; it was a rigorous intellectual pursuit. While science sought to explain reason, scholars turned to magic to decode "unreason…
2. The Renaissance: A Period of Devotion to the Past or Progress?Was the Renaissance a scientific revolution or just an intense obsession with antiquity? While it birthed modern astronomy and cartography, many scholars argue that humanists were…
3. Businesses everywhere still keep their books the way 1290s Florentine merchants did.Double-entry bookkeeping records every transaction twice, as a debit in one account and an equal credit in another, so the books must always balance. The oldest surviving example …
4. The Medici got rich by lending money without officially charging interest.In the 1400s the Church banned usury, meaning any return on a loan beyond the principal. The Medici Bank, then Europe's largest, made its money anyway, through bills of exchange t…

All of Wealth & Business Open the feed Latest A–Z