Heaven and earth in ancient greek cosmology : from Thales to by Dirk L. Couprie PDF

By Dirk L. Couprie

ISBN-10: 1041141211

ISBN-13: 9781041141211

ISBN-10: 1441981152

ISBN-13: 9781441981158

ISBN-10: 1441981160

ISBN-13: 9781441981165

In Miletus, approximately 550 B.C., including our world-picture cosmology used to be born. This booklet tells the tale. partly One the reader is brought within the archaic world-picture of a flat earth with the cupola of the celestial vault onto which the celestial our bodies are connected. one of many matters handled in that context is the riddle of the tilted celestial axis. This half additionally includes an in depth bankruptcy on archaic astronomical instruments. Part Two shows how Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) blew up this archaic world-picture and changed it via a brand new person who is largely nonetheless ours. He taught that the celestial our bodies orbit at varied distances and that the earth floats unsupported in house. This makes him the founder of cosmology. Part Three discusses issues that accomplished the hot picture described via Anaximander. particular realization is paid to the disagreement among Anaxagoras and Aristotle at the query no matter if the earth is flat or round, and at the battle between Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus at the query even if the universe is finite or infinite.

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Extra resources for Heaven and earth in ancient greek cosmology : from Thales to Heraclides Ponticus

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Creative imagination, on the other hand, puts known empirical data into a new interpretative arrangement that helps us to understand the phenomena. Also the so-called discovery of the sphericity of the earth by Plato and Aristotle, as well as Anaxagoras’ interpretation of the celestial bodies as fiery stones, belong to speculative astronomy or cosmology. To illustrate the difference between fantasy and creative imagination one might say that the division of the celestial vault into starry constellations is a product of fantasy, whereas Kant’s hypothesis of the band of light which is called the Milky Way as a gigantic disk of stars is the product of the power of creative imagination.

The Babylonians were well-versed observers and had achieved excellent results. ). From the Presocratics, on the contrary, we hardly know of any observations of this kind. One of the few exceptions is a report by Pliny of an observation, made by three ancient observers, Hesiod, Thales, and Anaximander, of the time the Pleiades set (Naturalis historia XVIII: 213, see also DK 12A20). 2 As regards Hesiod, Pliny’s source is a lost book on astronomy that is ascribed to him. In his Works and Days, Hesiod says no more than the following: “When the Pleiades set at the end of the night, then it is the right time to plough,” and: “When the Pleiades, Hyades, and Orion set, remember that it is the season to plough” (Works and Days 681–682 and 432–433).

In ancient Egypt, Nut was not only the goddess who symbolized the celestial vault but also the one who gave birth to the sun in the morning, to swallow it again in the evening (see Fig. 7). This means that overnight the sun travels back through her body from west to east. In an analogous way, it was thought in India that the sun, during the night, followed the opposite direction along the celestial vault (from west to east) but that it had turned over so that it showed its unlighted side toward the earth (see Keith 1917: 5–6).

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Heaven and earth in ancient greek cosmology : from Thales to Heraclides Ponticus by Dirk L. Couprie


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