The Name of the Rose

Two Ways of Thinking

The film The Name of the Rose, based on Umberto Eco’s novel, is far more than a medieval murder mystery. It presents two fundamentally different ways of thinking—two approaches to knowledge that have competed throughout human history and continue to shape our world today.

The story takes place in a fourteenth-century monastery, where a series of mysterious deaths has terrified the monks. Many interpret the events through inherited religious beliefs, supernatural explanations, and established authority.

Into this world comes William of Baskerville, played by Sean Connery, a Franciscan friar whose approach is strikingly different.

William observes. He questions. He looks for evidence, develops hypotheses, and tests them against what he discovers.

Where others see the work of the Devil, William looks for natural causes.

Two Worlds of Thought

The conflict is not simply between religion and science. It is between two methods of deciding what is true.

One begins with an accepted explanation and interprets events to fit it. Authority, tradition, and established doctrine determine what may be believed.

The other begins with observation and treats explanations as provisional. An idea must survive examination of the evidence, regardless of who proposed it.

The distinction is fundamental.

In one world, reality must conform to the explanation. In the other, the explanation must conform to reality.

The Authority of Aristotle

One of the film’s most revealing elements concerns a forbidden book: Aristotle’s lost work on comedy.

The blind librarian Jorge fears laughter because it threatens the solemnity and authority upon which his intellectual world depends. He is prepared to destroy lives rather than allow the book’s ideas to circulate.

The irony is profound. Aristotle, revered as an intellectual authority, becomes entangled in a struggle over which of his ideas may be permitted.

What matters is no longer whether an idea is true, useful, or supported by evidence. What matters is whether it threatens an established system of belief.

William’s investigation challenges that system because he insists that the evidence matters more than the authority of those interpreting it.

The Map Is Not the Territory

This brings us to one of the central concepts of RISE².

Every belief, theory, doctrine, or explanation is a map—a representation of reality. It is not reality itself.

The monks possess elaborate maps of their world, constructed from scripture, philosophy, tradition, and authority. But when mysterious deaths occur, those maps do not necessarily explain what is happening.

William seeks a better map by examining the territory.

He is not infallible. His conclusions can be mistaken, and the film makes clear that even a careful investigator may misunderstand events. What distinguishes him is his willingness to revise his explanations when the evidence demands it.

That willingness is the beginning of a different intellectual world.

Why This Film Matters Today

We no longer inhabit the medieval monastery, but the habits of thought it portrays have not disappeared.

We still live among authorities, experts, institutions, ideologies, and competing explanations of reality. Many are valuable. Others are accepted largely because they are familiar, prestigious, or confidently presented.

The question is not whether we should listen to experts. Of course we should.

The question is how we determine whether their maps are accurate.

Do their explanations survive testing? Do their predictions come true? Can their claims be examined independently? Are they willing to change their minds?

These questions distinguish the pursuit of knowledge from the defense of belief.

The Name of the Rose makes this distinction visible in a way that an abstract philosophical argument seldom can.

RISE² begins with the recognition that authority is not evidence, certainty is not knowledge, and the map is not the territory.