the bitter end; and lesser talents would have found out soon that it is easier to save the phenomena with compass and ruler on graph-paper under a neon lamp, than by facing the scandals of nature. Luckily, Cubism was only a passing phase, because painters are free to choose their style; but the astronomers of the past were not. The style in which the cosmos was presented had, as we saw, a direct bearing on the fundamental questions of philosophy; and later, during the Middle Ages it acquired a bearing on theology. The curse of "spherism" upon man's vision of the universe lasted for two thousand years.During the last few centuries, from about A.D. 1600 onwards, the progress of science has been continuous and without a break; so we are tempted to extend the curve back into the past and to fall into the mistaken belief that the advance of knowledge has always been a continuous, cumulative process along a road which steadily mounts from the beginnings of civilization to our present dizzy height. This, of course, is not the case. In the sixth century B.C., educated men knew that the earth was a sphere; in the sixth century A.D., they again thought it was a disc, or resembling in shape the Holy Tabernacle.
In looking back at the part of the road travelled so far, we may well wonder at the shortness of those stretches where the progress of science was guided by rational thought. There are tunnels on the road, whose length in time is measured in miles, alternating with stretches in full sunlight of no more than a few yards. Up to the sixth century B.C., the tunnel is filled with mythological figures; then for three centuries there is a shrill light; then we plunge into another tunnel, filled with different dreams.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE TO PART ONE*
600
B.C.
Orphic
Mystery cult
Ionian
Philosophers
500
“
Pythagorean
Brotherhood (c. 530–450)
Philolaus (5 th cent.)
400
“
Herakleides
(c. 375–310)
Plato
(c. 428–348)
Eudoxus and Calippus (4 th cent.)
Aristotle
(384–322)
300
“
Aristarchus
(c. 310–230)
Apollonius
(250–220)
200
“
END OF GREEK HELIOCENTRIC COSMOLOGY
Hipparchus
(c. 125)
0
A.D.
100
Ptolemy
(c. 150)
“ 200
[GEOCENTRIC
COSMOLOGY BROUGHT TO PERFECTION]
Compilers
Pliny
the Elder (c. 23–79)
Plutarch
(c. 46–120)
Theon of Smyrna (2 nd cent.)
Macrobius
(c. 400)
Chalcidius Martianus Capella
(5 th cent.)
Simplicius
(c. 535)
[SOURCES
FOR THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES]
*
Only the main lines of development of cosmological systems are represented.
PART TWO DARK INTERLUDE
ITHE RECTANGULAR UNIVERSE
1.
The City of God
PLATO
had said that mortal man was prevented from hearing the Harmony of
the Spheres by the grossness of his bodily senses; the Christian
Platonists said that he lost that faculty with the Fall.
When Plato's images strike an archetypal chord, they continue to reverberate on unexpected levels of meaning, which sometimes reverse the messages originally intended. Thus one might venture to say that it was Plato who caused that Fall of philosophy which made his followers deaf to the harmonies of nature. The sin which led to the Fall was the destruction of the Pythagorean union of natural and religious philosophy, the denial of science as a way of worship, the splitting up of the very texture of the universe into a vile lowland and ethereal highlands, made of different materials, governed by different laws.
This "dualism of despair", as one might call it, was carried over into medieval philosophy by the Neoplatonists. It was the legacy of one bankrupt civilization: Greece at the age of the Macedonian conquest, to another bankrupt civilization: the Latin world at the age of its conquest by the Germanic tribes. From the third century A.D. to the end of the Empire, Neoplatonism had reigned without a rival at the three main centres of philosophy, Alexandria, Rome, and the Athenian Academy. By that process of natural selection in the realm of ideas which we have already seen at work, the Middle Ages took
In looking back at the part of the road travelled so far, we may well wonder at the shortness of those stretches where the progress of science was guided by rational thought. There are tunnels on the road, whose length in time is measured in miles, alternating with stretches in full sunlight of no more than a few yards. Up to the sixth century B.C., the tunnel is filled with mythological figures; then for three centuries there is a shrill light; then we plunge into another tunnel, filled with different dreams.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE TO PART ONE*
600
B.C.
Orphic
Mystery cult
Ionian
Philosophers
500
“
Pythagorean
Brotherhood (c. 530–450)
Philolaus (5 th cent.)
400
“
Herakleides
(c. 375–310)
Plato
(c. 428–348)
Eudoxus and Calippus (4 th cent.)
Aristotle
(384–322)
300
“
Aristarchus
(c. 310–230)
Apollonius
(250–220)
200
“
END OF GREEK HELIOCENTRIC COSMOLOGY
Hipparchus
(c. 125)
0
A.D.
100
Ptolemy
(c. 150)
“ 200
[GEOCENTRIC
COSMOLOGY BROUGHT TO PERFECTION]
Compilers
Pliny
the Elder (c. 23–79)
Plutarch
(c. 46–120)
Theon of Smyrna (2 nd cent.)
Macrobius
(c. 400)
Chalcidius Martianus Capella
(5 th cent.)
Simplicius
(c. 535)
[SOURCES
FOR THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES]
*
Only the main lines of development of cosmological systems are represented.
PART TWO DARK INTERLUDE
ITHE RECTANGULAR UNIVERSE
1.
The City of God
PLATO
had said that mortal man was prevented from hearing the Harmony of
the Spheres by the grossness of his bodily senses; the Christian
Platonists said that he lost that faculty with the Fall.
When Plato's images strike an archetypal chord, they continue to reverberate on unexpected levels of meaning, which sometimes reverse the messages originally intended. Thus one might venture to say that it was Plato who caused that Fall of philosophy which made his followers deaf to the harmonies of nature. The sin which led to the Fall was the destruction of the Pythagorean union of natural and religious philosophy, the denial of science as a way of worship, the splitting up of the very texture of the universe into a vile lowland and ethereal highlands, made of different materials, governed by different laws.
This "dualism of despair", as one might call it, was carried over into medieval philosophy by the Neoplatonists. It was the legacy of one bankrupt civilization: Greece at the age of the Macedonian conquest, to another bankrupt civilization: the Latin world at the age of its conquest by the Germanic tribes. From the third century A.D. to the end of the Empire, Neoplatonism had reigned without a rival at the three main centres of philosophy, Alexandria, Rome, and the Athenian Academy. By that process of natural selection in the realm of ideas which we have already seen at work, the Middle Ages took