Foucault's pendulum and its influence on world culture

The Foucault pendulum is a device that clearly demonstrates the fact of the Earth's rotation around the axis. It is named after its inventor, the French scientist Jean-Leon Foucault, who first demonstrated his action in the Paris Pantheon, in 1851. At first glance, there is nothing complicated in the construction of the pendulum. This is a simple ball, suspended from a tall building on a long rope (67 meters during the first experiment). If you push the pendulum, then after a few minutes the ball will move not in a straight line of the amplitude of the oscillation, but "write out the figures". This movement gives the ball the rotation of our planet.

Now the original instrument is stored in the Paris Museum of Crafts in the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, and its copies are widely replicated and used in numerous museums of natural science. On his native expanses Foucault's pendulum for some reason was used as an argument in favor of God's non-existence. However, an innocent visual aid was destined to have a wider fame - a literary one. For it served as the name for the famous novel.

The work of Umberto Eco "Foucault Pendulum" is rightfully considered a model of postmodernism. The author - a very well-read and erudite person - literally falls asleep to the reader with citations, allusions and references to other literary works, historical facts and sources. Fans of the creativity of this writer are advised to read his books, having a large encyclopedic dictionary on hand. But do not shake your knowledge and enlighten people Eco wishes - his plan is more grandiose.

The plot of the book seems quite realistic: the student Kazobon writes a scientific paper on the monastic order of Knights Templars. He becomes friendly with Belbo and Dtotallevi, employees of the publisher Garamon. Further the narrative slightly slides from the hard ground of reality into the hazy region of unverified hypotheses, assumptions, esoteric fantasies and myths. On the head of the readers are poured as historical facts about the Templar knights, as well as lengthy quotes from the Kabbalah, the "Chemical Weddings" of the Rosicrucians, and also the Gnostic formulas and information on the magical significance of the figures of the Pythagoreans. The protagonist of the novel "Foucault Pendulum" reflects on the posthumous fate of the Templar organization, especially after a certain colonel came to the publishing house and leaves them with the "Knights Order of the Order of the Temple", which is inscribed for centuries. The fact that the military disappears the next day only strengthens Kazobon's confidence that the document is not a fake.

Gradually, the main character completely lost under his feet a solid ground of truth. Pavlikians and Rosicrucians, Assassins, Jesuits, and Nestorians replace him with real people. Kazabon himself becomes an "obsessive", completely believing in the Plan, although his girlfriend Leah and assures that the document is just the seller's calculations from the flower shop. But it's too late: the excited imagination tells the hero that they should look for the telluric axis of the world in the St. Martin's Church in Paris, where the Museum of Crafts is now located and where the Foucault pendulum swings under the dome. There they are attacked by a crowd of other "possessors" who want to take over the plan and open the key to absolute power - the Hermeticists, Gnostics, Pythagoreans and alchemists. They kill Belbo and Leah.

What did Umberto Eco want to say in the novel Foucault Pendulum? That esotericism is opium for intellectuals, how is religion for the people? Or that the nav, it is only to touch it, it gets out into the real world, like a Pandora's box? Or is it that the search for a golden key, through which you can control the whole world, turns around that the seeker becomes a pawn in the game of unknown forces? The author provides the answer to this question to the reader himself.