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A Passion for the Planets pp 127–153Cite as

Revolutions

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Abstract

By the time Ptolemy died, in the last quarter of the second century AD, classical civilization was already in decline, and would soon collapse. Meanwhile, Christianity had taken root. Though the classical and Christian traditions overlapped chronologically and geographically, they were utterly different in spirit and inspiration. Christianity was largely derived from Eastern mystery religions and the Hebrew Bible – the latter, however, drastically reordered and “misread,” as Harold Bloom points out, in getting to the New Testament.1

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Harold Bloom, Jesus and Yahweh: the names divine. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005, pp. 56–47.

  2. 2.

    See Cornel West, Democracy Matters: winning the fight against imperialism. New York: Penguin, 2004, pp. 146–149.

  3. 3.

    Richard Nisbitt, The Geography of Thought: how Asians and Westerners think differently … and why. New York: Free Press, 2003, p. 3.

  4. 4.

    Will Durant, The Age of Faith. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950, p. 784.

  5. 5.

    George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., pp. 22–23.

  7. 7.

    Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome: how a Renaissance genius reinvented architecture. New York: Penguin, 2000, p. 34.

  8. 8.

    King, Brunelleschi’s Dome, p. 31.

  9. 9.

    Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 483.

  10. 10.

    Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, p. 1.

  11. 11.

    Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605), bk. I.

  12. 12.

    Gombrich, Art and Illusion; figs. 35 and 36 on p. 61.

  13. 13.

    Leonard Shlain, Art and Physics: parallel visions in space, time, and light. New York: William Morrow, 1991, pp. 49–50.

  14. 14.

    Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, The Life of Filippo Brunelleschi (ca. 1480), quoted in A Documentary History of Art, vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 171 f. For an enlightening discussion, see S. Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective, New York: Harper and Row, 1975, and Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance: a tale of abstraction versus the richness of being, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 94 f.

  15. 15.

    Leon Battista Alberti; quoted in William M. Ivins, Jr., Art and Geometry, p. 70.

  16. 16.

    Ivins, Art and Geometry, pp. 70–72.

  17. 17.

    Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance, p. 96.

  18. 18.

    Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire, p. 91.

  19. 19.

    Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci; edited by J. P. Richter. New York: Dover, 1970, reprint of 1883 edition, p. 14.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 19.

  21. 21.

    Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire, p. 91.

  22. 22.

    Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1959.

  23. 23.

    J. L. E. Dreyer, A History of Astronomy From Thales to Kepler, p. 281.

  24. 24.

    Henry Adams, Mont St.-Michel and Chartres, p. 358.

  25. 25.

    Nicolas Copernicus, Commentariolus, in Edward Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (New York: Dover, 1959 reprint of 1939 edition), p. 57.

  26. 26.

    Copernicus, Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Book I, chapter 10. Alexandre Koyré points out that “it is not always, or perhaps not sufficiently, appreciated that by placing the Sun at the centre of the Universe in virtue of its dignity, Copernicus returned to the Pythagorean conception and completely overthrew the hierarchy of positions in the ancient and medieval Cosmos, in which the central position was not the most honourable, but, on the contrary, the most unworthy. It was in effect, the lowest, and consequently appropriate to the Earth’s imperfection. Perfection was located above in the celestial vault, above which were ‘the heavens’ (Paradise), whilst Hell was deservedly placed beneath the surface of the Earth.” The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus–Kepler–Borelli, translated by R. E. W. Maddison. New York: Dover, 1992 reprint of 1961 edition, p. 115.

  27. 27.

    E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, New York: E. P. Dutton, 13th ed., 1978, p. 101.

  28. 28.

    Leonard Shlain, Art and Physics, p. 59.

  29. 29.

    Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers, pp. 295–296.

  30. 30.

    Dava Sobel, personal communication; March 3, 2009.

  31. 31.

    Copernicus, Commentariolus, p. 77.

  32. 32.

    Quoted in Rosen, Three Treatises; pp. 24–25. Osiander is rehashing the argument of Simplicius, the sixth century AD author of a commentary on Aristotle’s “On the Heavens.” Simplicus had argued that the astronomers had not demonstrated their hypotheses, since the same phenomena are sometimes explained by different hypotheses.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., p. 24.

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    William Sheehan

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Sheehan, W. (2010). Revolutions. In: A Passion for the Planets. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5971-3_6

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