I. Mythos to Cosmos
World-views
from the Paleolithic through the (Aristarchan-)Copernican
Revolution to Willem de Sitter (>3 Mya to the early 20th
century)
In this
journey into the long prehistory and history of
humankind's cosmologies, those seekers for truth,
freethinkers, and pioneers who lived from thousands
of years to decades ago, most of them before I was
born, have become my teachers, as well as friends
and companions in that quest to understand our
Universe.
—LFG
Ancient cosmologies
Chaco canyon
(American SW)
Mythical cave
painting, Les
Trois-Freres, France: Perhaps of a
shaman as a game animal, or of a 'lord of the
beasts' deity (Aslan, 2017)
|
View from
inside a megalithic portal dolmen toward the
stars. "Looking
out from inside West Kennet"
(c)
CyberTigger.
These Neolithic structures are found in NW
Europe and in Britain and Ireland
Similar megaliths are found all over the world.
|
(http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/Anthropology/fieldschools/southwest/sw/days/05chaco/rockart.html;
http://www.mythinglinks.org/euro~west~prehistoric.html).
Contents:
- I.
Paleolithic & Ice Age humans, myths, goddesses, and
cosmologies overview (>3 Mya - ~2,600 BCE)
- A.
Paleolithic times.
- (i)
Africa, birth, and homeland.
- (ii) Artistic
expression of the cosmic brain.
- (iii)
Excursus on Our Long Cosmic Planetary
Natural History (~4.567
Gya -
Pleistocene
[Younger
Dryas]-Holocene).
- α—After
the great Ice Melt: The Younger
Dryas divide (12.8 - 11.7 kya)
- β—A
fiery dragon: The Younger
Dryas impact hypothesis
& the end of the
Pleistocene
- (iv) The
African human diaspora & our oldest
mythologies.
- (v)
Double-pronged southern & northern
migrations of anatomically-modern Homo sapiens.
- (vi) Southern
& Northern: Two diverging cosmologies.
- B.
Earliest Myths & Cosmogonies: From
more ancient Myth Motifs / Mythemes, Our
Stories Begin....Scientific study
of myth.
- (i)
The mythology and folklore database.
- α—Mythemes
from the Timeless 'southern
cosmology.'
- β—Where
there is story, there is mythos....
- γ—Excursus:
Legendary-mytheme
memories of the Younger Dryas Boundary?
- C. Anthroecology:
Human anthromes show human curation of
Earth's land ecosystems for millennia.
- D.
Mythos & Personification: And then
came the Goddesses and Gods (~500 kya -
200 CE).
- II.
Megaliths: Prehistoric Cosmologies in Stone (upper
Paleolithic-Neolithic: ~14,000 ya-1150 CE)
- A. New
World excursus: Cosmologies of the
American Southwest, Chaco Canyon (900-1150 CE)
& the ancient Anasazi, ancestral Puebloan
peoples
- III. The
Origin and Evolution of our Constellations: Prehistory
to History (~35,000 ya - IAU, 20th c CE).
- IV.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins, the PIE creation
myth, the Body as Microcosm (~20,000 - 5,000 ya), &
ancient Near Eastern myths
- (i) Mini-Excursus
on a paleolithic European 'dragon-slaying'
ritual from 17,000 ya & 'northern'
primordial cosmogonic conflict.
- A. Excursus
on ancient Near Eastern Temples as Microcosms of
Heaven & Earth with Microcosmic Concentricity
(21st century BCE - 1st century CE).
- (i)
7th-2nd c BCE: 10 creation myths in the Hebrew
bible or Tanakh.
- V. From the
mists of Mythos to the Greek 'Ionian Dawn': The first
Enlightenment (Greek; 8th-3rd centuries BCE).
- A. Chaos to Cosmos in
the Greco-Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean.
- B. The
Greek transition. From mythogeny to cosmology.
- VI. Darkening
Age: The Great Western Retreat (3rd-17th centuries CE)
- VII. The
(Aristarchan-)Copernican-Brunesian Revolution (16th-21st
centuries CE)
- VIII. The
(Aristarchan-)Copernican Revolution coming of age
(19th-early 20th centuries)
- A.
Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, and Quantum atomism.
- B. Precursors and Priority in
Special and General Relativity.
- C. Development of
Special Relativity.
- D. Development of
General Relativity.
- E. Willem
de Sitter: Applying General Relativity to
Cosmology.
- IX. Chapter I
Epilogical Question?
I. Paleolithic
& Ice Age humans, myths, goddesses, and cosmologies
overview (>3 Mya - ~2,600 BCE)
Paleolithic
times. From the dawn of prehistory, human beings have
tried to make sense of the vast world and their relation to
it. Some of the earliest obvious attempts at astronomical
cosmology seem to combine ritual with sky-gazing and
calendar making. Long before that, in the mists of the
distant past most of humankind's journey, our cosmologies
have been 'animated' with the numinous presence throughout
nature (the product of our agency-detection mechanism), with
spirits, ancestors, gods, and other mythical views of the
numinous and of Nature itself. Our world-views at this time
emerged from the story telling imaginations of our big
evolved brains. This is mythos. As we began to observe
natural regularities and eventually detected regularities
and laws in Nature, we transitioned from mythos to
the orderly world of cause and effect: Cosmos.
In
this initial section, we will trace this in outline.
(i) Africa, birth, and
homeland. The odyssey of humankind (our own genus Homo)
originated in the varied landscapes of the
geologically-active Rift Valley of Eastern to Southern
Africa within the last ~2.5 Mya. Our hominin and hominid
ancestry goes much further back in the same general fecund
region of our tiny planet, but this is the time frame of
the origin of humankind, the genus Homo.
Early evidence of hominin
bipedality in the human journey came from the Laetoli ash
beds with the momentary group footprints of members of an Australopithecus
species frozen in time from about 3.6 Mya (link).
See Leakey, M. D. & Hay, R. L. 1979. Pliocene footprints
in the Laetolil Beds at Laetoli, northern Tanzania. Nature
278, 317-323. https://doi.org/10.1038/278317a0;
Leakey, M. D. & Harris, J. M. 1987. Laetoli: A
Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania. Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press; Harrison, T. 2011. Hominins from the Upper
Laetolil and Upper Ndolanya Beds, Laetoli. In
Harrison, T. (ed.). Paleontology and Geology of Laetoli:
Human Evolution in Context. Vertebrate Paleobiology and
Paleoanthropology Series. Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9962-4_7;
Masao, F. T., et al. 2016. New footprints from
Laetoli (Tanzania) provide evidence for marked body size
variation in early hominins. eLife 5,
e19568. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.19568.
A representative fossil skull panorama of humans and human
ancestors and sister taxa from the Miocene to the present,
with the exception that I would classify our ancestral
habiline hominin with the genus Australopithecus as
Australopithecus habilis, which has also been
documented with late contemporary hominin genera, Paranthropus
(possible first user-controller of fire) and congeneric
species of our own genus Homo (link;
Space imagery of the NE African Rift Valley, http://earth.imagico.de/views/eafrica_large.jpg).
Approximately 7 Mya of hominin and hominid evolution
brought us from the forests to the plains through
tool-making, climate drying adaptation, fire-making,
symbolic thought, language, and finally the Ice Ages of
the Pleistocene, anatomically modern humanity, and
cosmology-making. The following panorama provides an
artistic form that long meandering journey from "the
sunflower forest," as Loren Eiseley called it, through to
the paleolithic dawn of cosmology-making.
And phylogenetically, on the genomic 'fossil' as well as
the physical paleoanthropological record, there is every
reason to think that even our closest living relatives
since the speciation / split within Hominoidaea to form
the Hominidae, ~7 Mya, the way toward cosmology-making was
already emerging: Suntsova, M.V. & Buzdin, A.A. 2020.
Differences between human and chimpanzee genomes and their
implications in gene expression, protein functions and
biochemical properties of the two species. BMC
Genomics 21 (Suppl 7), 535. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-06962-8.
From lower right to left, and then
up to upper left: From forest tree-dwelling facultative
bipedal hominins through obligate bipedal hominins
wandering out onto the African mixed landscapes, and
ultimately migrating outwards through the late Pleistocene
ice and the use of fire, discovering the world, and
summarizing ~6-7 Mya (http://evolution-involution.org/images/lucys_world_invol.jpg).
Since that divergence, our hominin ancestors have
acquired, modified, and utilized practical stone tools for
up to ~3.3 Mya (Harmand et al. 2015.
3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West
Turkana, Kenya. Nature 521, 310.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14464),
and these magnificent tools have been found on every
continent of the planet other than Antarctica. Aside from
these practical tools, Manuports (L. manus
'hand' portare 'to carry') are natural objects
which have been picked up from their natural context and
carried away by hominids, while largely remaining
unmodified (link)
for even longer.
These natural objects apparently acquired symbolic value
in early hominid eyes, showing that hominids started
'classifying' and 'curating' unusual objects of interest
or meaning to them (link).
Two of the very earliest such symbolic objects are the
nearly 3 Mya old reddish brown Makapansgat Jasperite
Cobble [8.3 cm X 7
cm X 3.8 cm, reddish-brown; Bednarik, 1998. The
'Australopithecine' Cobble from Makapansgat, South Africa.
The South African Archaeological Bulletin 53
(167), 4. https://doi.org/10.2307/3889256;
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3889256],
which was found a cave with Australopithecine bones and
4.8 km from its source rock. It resembles a reconstructed
Australopithecine face, and characteristics indicating
that it was held, carried, and worn from hand carry. The
reason it was carried may be because it symbolized the
empathic self-knowledge of an Australopithecine bipedal
ape!
Makapansgat Cave (South Africa) and
some of the Australopithecine fossils (https://arimotravels.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Visiting-makapan-caves-world-heritage-site-676x423.jpg; http://www.riddledchain.org/makapan.htm)
(Links: http://www.ifrao.com/manuports-and-very-early-palaeoart/; https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Makapansgat-cobble-scale-bar-7-cm-image-courtesy-of-Bernhard-Zipfel-ESI_fig2_330367438; http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.com/2016/12/south-africa-art-of-nation.html; http://www.abroadintheyard.com/wp-content/uploads/Makapansgat-pebble-c.-2.7-million-years-BP-and-a-portrait-reconstruction-of-Australopithecus-africanus.jpg).
And the symbolic meaning and
significance of the train of manuports, such as
mimetoliths (natural objects pictured as objects of
significance) to mimetoliths modified (natural lithic
objects adapted so that their pictured significance
stands out more), and mimetomorphs modified (any other
non-lithified natural object resembling objects of
significance, and modified so that their pictured
significance stands out more).
.
(http://www.rupestreweb.info/mimesis.html;
cf. http://www.originsnet.org/pampau5gallery/index.htm).
That most rapid increase
in human brain size and symbolic representation
accompanied the earliest spread of the genus Homo
out of Africa and around the world with its changing
Pleistocene climates. This was before there was an H.
sapiens species. With these journeys of the H.
erectus within and out of Africa, the earliest
ventures into cosmology-making had arrived.
The largest brain increase in volume happened shortly
before a million years ago. After that there was a
catastrophic genetic bottleneck in our Homo
ancestral population gene pool with an effective
population size (Ne) of nearly 100,000,
new research shows that the between about ~900 and ~800
kya, there was a critical period of about ~117 kyr when
our ancestral population collapsed to ~1200 individuals
before expanding out to about ~27,000. The African and
non-African dispersals of Homo sapiens sapiens
took place after ~100 kya: Hu et al. 2023. Genomic
inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to
Middle Pleistocene transition. Science 381
(6661), 979. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487.
Early Homo facing extinction close
to a million years ago, a chronological chart (link).
The Shanghai Institute for Health and Nutrition, CAS (Hu et
al. 2023) researchers used the above formula estimates
of phylogenetic predicted branch length to infer the
existence of this ancient, extinction-threatening genetic
bottleneck. The rock art from a cliff illustrates the
concept of our beleaguered ancestors facing a danger back
then but unknown to us today (link).
It would be informative and fascinating to see how this
very much more distant genetic bottleneck may have
affected the precursors of our Paleolithic mythologies and
cosmologies. As we shall see, the much later extinction
threat at the Younger-Dryas Pleistocene-Holocene boundary
directly affected out mythologies and our
cosmologies.
Phylogenetically, the last major deep
divergence within Homo sapiens sapiens in our
native Africa occurred during Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5;
130-80 kya), specifically 135-120 kya according to
Ragsdale, A. P., et al. 2023. A weakly
structured stem for human origins in Africa. Nature
617, 755. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06055-y.
Using human DNA, Ragsdale and colleagues utilized
linkage disequilibrium and diversity-based statistics
of population admixture to test two hypotheses about
deep human genetic natural history in ancestral
Africa. In keeping with the earliest divergence by
130,000 - 120,000 ya, they found a reticulated or
network phylogeny for the population genetic
demographic history. These basic demographic models
are starting point, Ragsdale et al. (2023)
Figure 1:
To these deep African, ancestral human genetic data, one
should compare recent results which also include human
ancient or aDNA: Lipson, M., Sawchuk, E.A., Thompson, J.C. et
al. 2022. Ancient DNA and deep population structure in
sub-Saharan African foragers. Nature 603,
290. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04430-9.
This second paper, by incorporating sub-Saharan African aDNA
samples, are able to infer some population demographic
dynamics within the last 18-20,000 ya (Figure 2 of Lipson et
al. 2022).
(ii) Artistic expression of the cosmic brain. Some
of the earliest evidence of human artistic representation,
involving drilling small holes in mollusk shells of
different types, and even creating geometric patters, a
type of world-representation cosmology, were the
representational engravings by Homo erectus at
Trinil, Java, and dated by 40Ar / 39Ar
to "0.54 +/-
0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 +/- 0.05
million years" (Joordans et al. 2015. Homo
erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool
production and engraving. Nature 518, 228.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13962).
Trinil in Java is the original Homo erectus
species discovery site, and is on the southern, pre-Homo
sapiens, early human migration out of Africa. These
Trinil representational artifacts on shells have been
dated to the early last half million years:
The sequential order of the
engraved line markings have been established, and also
examine closely in certain sections (Joordens et al.
2015, extended data figure 5, excerpted legend).
The early mollusk
shell hole-drilling along with geometric
representational engraving found at Trinil has been
echoed in early human artistic-representational
development since then (cf. Joordens et al.
2015. Extended data fig 10). The fluctuating isotopic
δ18O ratios, over 2 million years, and
especially over the last 1 million years of the
Pleistocene, reveal an indication of the climate
crises and challenges our human forebears (H.
erectus; spp. neanderthalensis, & sapiens)
faced over the millennia. Our representational
geometric skills grew, skills which are important in
cosmology-making.
Another of the very earliest artistic and thus,
representation human traces are of Acheulian age (lower
Paleolithic before there was a local population of
anatomically-modern H. sapiens), and they were
found in the earlier southern route of human expansion out
of Africa along southern Eurasian continental coastlines
toward SE Asia, including Java, where Homo erectus
was first discovered, and toward where anatomically-modern
H. sapiens would later settle from a much more
recent migration about ~50,000 (~50 Kya) years ago into
Australia. This far older site, Chief's Rock, Auditorium
Cave, Bhimbetka, (central India), dates from
700,000-290,000 BCE (~702-~292 Kya) contains some innutile
cupules, one which still had traces of red ochre in it
(Bednarik, 1996. The cupules on Chief's Rock, Auditorium
Cave, Bhimbetka. The Artefact 19, 63. http://www.ifrao.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Auditorium96.pdf).
The site also had an Acheulian handaxe, a
date-characterized cultural item known from other sites in
Eurasia.
(cf.
also photo excerpt with cupules 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 above
right, link;
& link).
The
evolving creative and artistic expression
development by humans for abstraction,
representational illustration, and
reflective cognition serves as part of what
is needed for cosmology-making, as part of
human meaning-making. Another cupule
location on the central Indian subcontinent
showed evidence of likely specific
representational pattern placement of
cupules in a very early Lower Paleolithic
context, perhaps even a cosmological
placement?
The DarakiChattan Cave contains a Lower
Paleolithic human site in central India. See
Bednarik, R. 2022. Lower Palaeolithic rock
art of India and its global context. ResearchGate
citation. The artwork pictured below
is discussed by Livio Dobrez, 2011. Sex for
its own sake. Rock
Art Research 28
(2), 167, in
discussion of Correa. Varella et al.
2011. Evolutionary aesthetics and sexual
selection in the evolution of rock art
aesthetics. Rock Art Research 28
(2), 153. ResearchGate
publication).
An artistic summary from
over half a million years to less
than 50,000 years, prior to the
Upper Paleolithic flowering of
art.
(https://gingamegs.art/2020/06/05/creative-renderings-early-evidence-for-creative-minds/; cf. link;
Nat'l
Geography link).
|
>500 kya to <50 kya:
- Homo
erectus: Engraved shells,
Trinil ~540 kya
- Homo
erectus: (representational) cupule
manufacture and use, Chief's Rock ~290 kya
- Blombos
Cave
engraved ochre ~65 kya
- H.
neanderthalensis La Pasiega gallery ~65
kya
- H.
sapiens: Lubang Jeriji Saleh Cave
painting of a bull ~44 kya
- Another
even more abundant Paleolithic site with
even more abundant cupules, Chandeshwar,
India (above drawing).
|
Earth: Our
Long Cosmic Planetary Natural History
(iii)
Excursus on Our Long Cosmic Planetary Natural
History (~4.567
Gya - Pleistocene
(Younger
Dryas)-Holocene).
As we will discuss more in a later chapter of this
history, "Worlds
aplenty: Evolution of Stellar Planetary Systems
& the cosmic Origins of Life," our life-bearing planet
Earth has a deep, eventful geological natural
history of ~4.567 Gy which has been
stratigraphically subdivided with increasing
accuracy (https://stratigraphy.org/),
one with an active planetary plate tectonic history
(http://www.scotese.com/;
https://www.ancient-earth.com/).
Out of those ~4.6 Gy, life has been on Earth >4
Gy. It is this long backstory, this natural history
of life on a geologically active and
asteroidally-pelted planet which is the background
of our species, our self-awareness, and our
mythogenic cosmology-making.
Because planetary climate cycles
and variations are so critical to understanding human
self-awareness and cosmology-making, we pause to glance at
Earth's climate variation and transitions over the last
half-billion years, essentially our current Phanerozoic
Eon (538.8 +/- 0.2 Mya - Present; https://stratigraphy.org/chart#latest-version):
(Timeline not to scale;
link).
One massive planetary transition long before us was the
immense asteroidal impact in the Yucatan Peninsula which
destroyed the Mesozoic world of the dinosaurs about 66.043
+/- 0.011 Mya {cf. Renne et al. 2013. Time scales
of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene
boundary. Science 339 (6120), 684. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1230492;
cf. Cretaceous-Paleogene
boundary}, opening the way for the rich adaptive
radiation of the mammals. Since that catastrophe we may
reconstruct through various stable isotope
fractionizations serving as climate proxies, the global
climate changes within the Cenozoic Era (~66 Mya -
present). For the last 15 My, there has been an overall
cooling trend.
δ18O
stable isotope temperature proxies (link).
We may zoom in on the last ~5-7 My during the times when
bipedal primates, including our ancestors and
paleo-cousins of humankind, evolved in eastern rift-valley
Africa to further trace the climate trends, where climate
proxy isotopic fluctuations are hypothetically-modeled.
(link).
Then came the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores which showed the recent cycles
in the last few hundred thousand years:
The Vostok
(Greenland) vs EPICA (Antarctica) ice records in stable δ18O isotopic
temperature proxies (link).
We return to
the late Pleistocene-Holocene climate epochs,
narrowing our focus from the last ~500,000 y to
the last ~50,000 y to bring us through the
Pleistocene-Holocene tumultous transition and its
impact especially on 'northern cosmology-making.'
Both in the northern and southern
isotopic and ice records of the last half million
years and more, showing repeated ice ages with warming
interstadials, including the latest warming / cooling /
warming transition to the Holocene (link;
link;
Yim, 2009, link;
link;
see https://icecores.org/publications).
Between ~13 and ~12 kya (lower right), the major rise,
drop, and rise again of temperatures is associated with
the Břlling-Allerřd warming interstadial
and Younger Dryas episodes.
Fleitman et al.
2009. Precise timing of Dansgaard-Oeschger events 1-13 in
stalagmites from Sofular Cave, Northern Turkey. Geophysical
Review Letters 36 (19), L19707. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL040050,
over the last ~50 kya.
α—After
the great Ice Melt: The Younger Dryas divide (12.8 -
11.7 kya). Although anatomically modern humans have
been on Earth for >300 kya, surviving through the
many climatic episodes of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.58
Mya - 11.7 kya; Subcommission on Quaternary
Stratigraphy: http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/major-divisions/),
there was a catastrophic end-of-Pleistocene transition
which not only shaped our environment, but also deeply
affected our cosmology-making, particularly in the more
northern parts of our planet, a source of our "Northern
Cosmology." This most recent catastrophic transition
involved massive climate change, and as we shall see
includes emerging evidence of an impact event of cosmic
proportions to humans on our little planet. We have
re-learned about this transition in recent
years—re-learned because our ancestors witnessed it.
The causes of the megafaunal extinctions at the end of
the last Pleistocene Ice Age has been a matter of
controversy. Cooper et al. 2015. Abrupt warming
events drove Late Pleistocene Holarctic megafaunal
turnover. Science 349 (6248), 602. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4315,
have shown, using ancient or aDNA and 14C
dating, from "31 detailed time series of megafaunal
extinctions and replacements over the last 56,000 years"
that rapid interstadial warming episodes are strongly
correlated with rapid replacement or extinction of
megafaunal species and major phylogenetic branches (link,
cf. link).
Climate change versus megafaunal
extinctions: Temperature proxies are shown along the
bottom; the faunal black and red bars represent 95%
confidence intervals. Most animals went extinct during
warm interstadial episodes (shaded tan), and the last ice
age, the last glacial maximum (LGM, shaded blue) had
essentially no effect on extinctions (link,
link).
Examples of skeletons of Pleistocene
mammalian megafauna (image link;
see Martin Sweatman's general
research group blog as well as his personal
blog on the Younger Dryas & Gobekli Tepe; and
note also Ahmed Kabil's site
on Goebekli Tepe and the Younger Dryas comet).
It is interesting
that we do have independent confirmation from
ancient DNA (aDNA) genetics that some of the
Pleistocene megafauna could survive the
repeated glacial cooling and interglacial
warming cycles of the epoch and still not face
extinction until the climate turmoil at the
Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In Pečnerova
et al. 2017. Mitogenome evolution in
the last surviving woolly mammoth population
reveals neutral and functional consequences of
small population size. Evolution Letters 1-6,
292. https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.33,
the authors showed by Bayesian phylogenetics
from the mitochondrial aDNA (maternally-inherited)
genomes of
populations of woolly mammoth remains found
across the Siberian Arctic, including a
population refugium on Wrangel island which
lasted until ~4,000 ya before going extinct,
that female effective (mating) population
sizes (Nef) estimates while
holding steady over the Pleistocene began to
collapse at the transition point. In general Ne
estimates are measures of the genetic health
and viability of a population.
The Pleistocene had been a colder
epoch, punctuated with temporary rapid warming
Dansgaard-Oeschger Events (see the Cooper et al.
2015 figure above). During the Last Glacial Maximum
(LGM, ~27-~20 kya) lower temperatures had been
relatively steady for an extended interval followed by
gradual warming. Until the unsmooth Pleistocene-Holocene
transition unfolded with a very rapid warming to the
last glacial interstadial (the ), ended by a decline and steep
return to a severe cold episode (the Younger Dryas; references),
which ended with another very rapid warming ushering in
the Holocene.
Temperature stable-isotope proxies over
the last 40 kya compared between Arctic and Antarctic ice
cores records (link).
As one considers the temperature
proxies over the last 40,000 years, its important to
note that the rapid fluctuations, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger
Events, including the Břlling-Allerřd warming
interstadial and the Younger Dryas 'cold snap,'
are far more pronounced in the Northern hemisphere
(GRIP, Greenland) than in the southern hemisphere
(Vostok & EPICA, Antarctica). That
fact is correlative with, if not
causally-foundational to, the stark
differences in emphasis on epochal apocalyptic
catastrophe in the Paleolithic "northern
cosmology" compared with the more eternal,
pacific, and less apocalyptic storyline of the
older "southern cosmology" in
our mythologies. The overall profile
of the Břlling-Allerřd
warming interstadial / Younger Dryas
whiplash in global temperatures can be
summarized visually with these
figures:
The
Younger Dryas cold period following the Břlling-Allerřd
warming interstadial (link);
and climate models predict more gradual transitions
(red line) than the actual steep, rapid transitions
(blue temperature reconstruction) reconstructed from
the Greenland GRIP δ18O proxy, along with
other climate trends, including cold periods
highlighted in yellow (figure from Christo Buizert;
link).
These illustrate
precisely-timed global events by several proxies,
reflecting late Pleistocene / early Holocene
transitional climatic events, including continental
glaciation rapid melting / catastrophic flooding,
for which anatomically modern humans (any humans at
all) were actually present. The Dansgaard-Oeschger
Events of rapid temperature warming, were heightened
even further by the special circumstances in the
transition.
The approximate dating of the
three Dryas episodes, cold stadials within the
overall late Pleistocene warming trend: The Oldest
Dryas (~18-14.7 kya), the Older Dryas (~14.4-14
kya), and the Younger Dryas (~12.9-11.6 kya;
discussion on the Sundaland submergence during the
end of the Pleistocene, link).
|
All three of the
Dryas episodes are based on the
biostratigraphic distribution of the
Arctic-Alpine flowering plant species known
as the "mountain avens" or Dryas
octopetala (L).
(link;
link).
|
In one general
locality, multiple 14C datings provide
timings for a late glacial advance in that area: Young
et al. 2020. Evidence for a late glacial
advance near the beginning of the Younger Dryas in
western New York State: An event postdating the record
for local Laurentide ice sheet recession. Geosphere
17, 1. https://doi.org/10.1130/GES02257.1.
In western New York state, they took samples for
testing which were part of formations resulting from
the shorter glacial advance corresponding on the
divider between the Břlling-Allerřd warming
interstadial
warming and the Younger Dryas stadial cooling.
Břlling-Allerřd warming and
Younger Dryas (B-A/YD) intervals modified from Williams
and Farrigno (2012, figure 21) with generalized Greenland
paleotemperature curve and additional data as discussed in
text from Rasmussen et al. (2014). Red GI-1b marks
approximate location of Greenland Interstadial-1b cold
interval of Killarney Oscillation in Canadian Maritimes
(Levesque et al. 1993) that closely parallels the
proposed timing of the B-A/YD event ca. 13.3-13.1 k.y.
B.P. (link).
Those timings bracket the important climate
transitions at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch:
- Meltwater
Pulse 1A: ~14,700 ya = start
of the Břlling-Allerřd warming interstadial
(references);
- Rapid onset
of the Younger Dryas cooling =
12,900-12,800 ya (references);
What event triggered this cold snap, plunging much
of the northern hemisphere into the cold of the
Younger Dryas or Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB)? (references);
- Meltwater
Pulse 1B: ~11,700 ya = end of
the Younger Dryas, start of Holocene (references).
The changes in coastlines in
Eurasia from the eustatic low stand at the Last
Glacial Max (LGM), about 400 feet below current sea
levels.
(Image link
defunct, cf. link
and link;
see also Sundaland submergence or the 'Atlantis in the
Java Sea' site
and the connection with the LGM, the Younger Dryas, and
the Pleistocene-Holocene transition).
Locations where
biomass burning residues have been found in cores (link).
β—A
fiery dragon: The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis
& the end of the Pleistocene. The hypothesis
of a cosmic impact of cometary / bolide origin effecting
ice ages and other disasters in the setting of Cenozoic
natural history perhaps started scientifically with Hoyle
& Wickramasinghe. 1978. Comets, ice ages, and
ecological catastrophes. Astrophys. Space Sci.
53, 523. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00645040.
The linking of such a
hypothesized event to the onset of the Younger Dryas has
developed over the years into a major dissident-at-first
research program of a growing number of workers who
display their published scientific papers and their
outreach at https://cometresearchgroup.org/.
First proposed in 2007 and controversial, Firestone and
colleagues published (2007), Evidence for an
extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that
contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the
Younger Dryas cooling. PNAS 104
(41),16016. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706977104.
Figures 1 and 2 below.
Summarizing and synthesizing the work and dating of
other workers (incl. Haynes, C. V. 2005. Paleoamerican
Origins: Beyond Clovis. Eds. R. Bonnichsen, B. T.
Lepper, D. Stanford, M. R. Waters. College Station, TX:
Texas A&M University Press; pp. 113-132) at about 50
sites in North America, Firestone and colleagues found
that at the ~12.9 kya horizon, at what they described as
the abrupt onset of the Younger Dryas, or the Younger
Dryas Boundary (YDB), there is / are (along with what
other authors contributed to the list):
- A carbon-rich thin
black layer, or black mat, with in situ
fossil bones of extinct Pleistocene megafauna
together with Clovis culture tool assemblages, below
but never within or above the black mat horizon.
Within the black mat, there are abundance peaks
of...
- Magnetic grains
enriched with iridium
- Magnetic
microspherules
- Charcoal and soot
from biomass burning
- Carbon spherules
- Glass-like carbon
containing nanodiamonds
- Fullerenes ('bucky
balls') containing the more
extraterrestrially-common helium isotope, 3He
- High-temperature,
rapidly quenched microspherules and scoria-like
objects (SLOs)
- Corundum, mullite,
and suessite (Fe3Si), a rare meteoritic
mineral formed at high temperatures
- Melted SiO2
glass, or lechatelierite, with flow textures (or schlieren)
forming at >2,200 oC
- Particles marked by
high-energy interparticle collisions
- so-called YDB
spherules, dumbbells, gourds, and so on.
The work of others contributed to
that list of evidence. Bunch et al. (2012. Very
high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for
cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago. PNAS
109 (28), E1903. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1204453109)
added a number of data points from 18 YDB dated sites in
North America, Europe, and Asia, which show transient
very high temperature phenomena occurred, such as would
be generated by a cosmic impact, but not other
terrestrial phenomena (see table above after
'fullerenes').
Below: Bunch et al. 2012 figures 1, 2, 7,
supplementary figure 1, and supplementary table 1.
|
|
|
Supplementary Table 1. Comparing
high temperature proxies from the Younger Dryas
Boundary (YDB), Trinity atomic fission detonation,
1945 (TRIN), Meteor Crater, AZ (METC),
Australasian Tecktite Field (AUST), and the 1908
Tunguska Event (TUNG).
|
Bunch
et al. (2012) also discussed a number of
papers dealing with 'black mats' of that general
time frame (cf. Haynes. 2008. Younger Dryas "black
mats" and the Rancholabrean termination in North
America. PNAS 105 (18), 6520. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0800560105,
opposed to the YDIH, and other papers), but only
found one carbon mat, the YDB black mat, which had
the predicted impact enrichment residues
described. The others from evident other causes.
Bunch et al. (2012); Supplementary
Figure S1.
A
refined YDB dating of ~12.8 kya by stratigraphy, 14C
dating, and paleo-Indian cultural transitions: The
next year, Wittke et al. (2013. Evidence for
deposition of 10 million tonnes of impact spherules
across four continents 12,800 y ago. PNAS 110
(23), E2088. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301760110)
used x-ray spectroscopy for geochemical analysis and
electron microscopy for structural analyses,
formational inference on ~700 spherules from 18 YDB
archaeological sites dated to 12.8 +/- 0.15 kya. The
dating corresponds also with the end of the Clovis
point culture in N. America and the post-YDB rise of
other cultural arrowpoints.
Wittke et al.
2013. Figures 1-3; supplementary figures 2, 4, and 11.
 |
|
|
YDB layer with
spherules and nanodiamonds, 'black mat' bounding
mammoth tooth and Clovis culture point.
|
|
YDB layer with
nanodiamonds and Holocene post-YDB cultural
artifacts.
|
The refined
dating was furthered by Kinzie et al.
(2014). Nanodiamond-rich layer across three
continents consistent with major cosmic
impact at 12,800 cal BP. J Geol. 122
(5), 475. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677046.In
2015, along with showing an impact
proxy nanodiamond dispersion across the
northern hemisphere west.
Kinzie
et al. 2014. Figure 1. Dispersal of a
nanodiamond-rich layer in the YDB impact proxy field (color
link).
In 2015, Kennett et al. summarized the data
leading to a refined dating of the end of the Younger
Dryas to ~12,800 ya using Bayesian statistical analyses
of available dates: Bayesian chronological analyses
consistent with synchronous age of 12,835-12,735 Cal
B.P. for Younger Dryas boundary on four continents. PNAS
112 (32), E4344. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1507146112.
Figure S3 of site locations along
with a summary of the Bayesian synchroneity analyzed 14C
dates in the review by Powell (2022), figure 11.
Right: 
|
Adapted image from Powell review
(2022) of calibrated radiocarbon dates of the
Younger Dryas rapid onset.
|
The climate-catastrophic results
of the YDB impact event were elaborated by and debated
in followup on the work of Wolbach et al.
(2018a, 2018b). Extraordinary biomass-burning episode
and impact winter triggered by the Younger Dryas cosmic
impact ∼12,800 years ago. 1. Ice cores and glaciers. J
Geol. 126 (2), 165. https://doi.org/10.1086/695703.
Part 2 in the same journal issue had the same title with
this addendum: 2. Lake, marine, and terrestrial
sediments. J Geol. 126 (2), 185. The
distribution of anomalous biomass burning and 'impact
winter' cooling of the climate into the Younger Dryas.
Taurid stream
swarm resonance, Dubietis & Arlt (2007).
Napier (2010) made a connection between the Taurid
meteor complex and paleolithic mass extinctions:
Palaeolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex. MNRAS
405 (3), 1901. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16579.x,
postulating that dangerous debris (50-100 km in
diameter) from a short-period comet during the Late
Paleolithic could have led to the catastrophic
downturn 12.9 kya returning to Ice Age
conditions for about 1300 years during the Younger
Dryas. This proposal was followed up by a
generalization of the possibility of cometary
streams from the Oort cloud being diverted into
Earth-crossing orbits during epochs when mass
extinctions are more likely: Napier, 2015. Giant
comets and mass extinctions of life. MNRAS 448
(1), 27. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu2681.
Napier in his analyses found a strong correlation
between dating of confirmed impact structures and
significant mass extinctions, including major
geological epochal transitions.
Napier (2015) summary of datings of impact
structures in geological natural history, extinction
episodes, and geological epoch boundaries.
In 2017, Spurný
and co-workers put forward evidence for the
Discovery of a new branch of the Taurid meteoroid
stream as a real source of potentially hazardous
bodies. A&A 605, A68. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201730787,
(cf. figures link). Following are the Spurný
figures 2, 8, 14, and 15 showing evidence of some of
115 Taurid fireballs with trajectories and orbits
characterized by visual and radio intereferometry
during the Taurid meteor shower.
The reddish-pinkish coloring marks the
fireball members of the Taurids.
The
Spurný et al (2017) results show that
perturbing resonances can shift orbits of this
dangerous stream of the southern Taurids with its
many fireballs into hazardous Earth-crossing orbits.
Further summarizing work has been done by Egal et
al. 2021. A dynamical analysis of the Taurid
Complex: evidence for past orbital convergences. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.00041.pdf.
This hypothesis (like the K-T impact boundary theory of
Alvarez) has been steadily growing in support as the
data have accumulated. By 2022, J. L. Powell, could
adequately argue, Premature rejection in science: The
case of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. Science
Progress 105 (1), 1-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/00368504211064272.
Figs. 1, 9, 11, 12, Table 3. Powell also wrote the
historical 2015 work, Four Revolutions in the Earth
Sciences: From Heresy to Truth. (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press), which discusses how the
geological sciences struggled and eventually came to
terms with the discoveries of
- (a) deep time,
including the acknowledgment of catastrophes, while
benefiting from uniformitarianism and yet escaping
the clutches of too constrained a version, a process
which started in 1805 (and continued, we might point
out well into our time, including Harlan Bretz work
in the 1920s on the Cordilleran
Ice Sheet meltwater flood episodes & their
eventual acceptance, including their linking to
the end of the Younger Dryas, see below).
- (b) continental
drift and plate tectonics,
- (c) the importance
of meteoritic impacts on Earth history, and finally,
- (d) the impact of
modern anthropogenic emissions on climate
warming.
Progress Note: The
eventual successful faring of the Younger Dryas Impact
hypothesis is an advance of the geological sciences to
continue to embrace and integrate both deep time and
catastrophism into a growing actualistic
reconstructing of Earth's natural history. This
general integration trend will greatly facilitate more
advanced correlations between Earth's episodic natural
history and the paleontological, anatomical, and
genomic natural history of the evolution of life and
life forms on Earth.
The
most dramatic effects of the Younger Dryas
Impact Event (YDIE) have been found in North
America. One of these may well be evidences of
the massive melt in the rapid Missoula Flood
in the Columbia River Valley in what is now
eastern Washington State, known first via
Harlan Bretz' pioneering research in the early
20th century: Bretz, J. H. 1925. The Spokane
flood beyond the channeled scablands. The
Journal of Geology 33 (2), 97. https://doi.org/10.1086/623179.
For a more recent reference, see Waltham, T.
2010. Lake Missoula and the Scablands,
Washington, USA. Geology Today 26
(4), 152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2451.2010.00763.x.
The melting of the Cordilleran Ice sheet led
to the formation of glacial Lake Missoula and
kindred lakes. A catastrophic event such the
YDIE might have been just enough to break the
2,000 foot ice damn holding back the
Cordilleran melt waters. The ferocity of the
Cordilleran Ice Sheet meltwaters could well
tie with the YDIE's likely focal region on the
North American continental glaciers associated
with the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.
North America
continental glaciation near the LGM (link).
When continental
glaciers extended further south, tundra with unique
wild flowers, including of the genus Dryas, as
well as boreal forests also extended much further
south, in a nested order of continental glacial
boundaries, tundra, and boreal forests (link;
link).
 |
(Representation
of the Lake Missoula flood, Pickering; link).
|
The Cordilleran Ice Sheet meltwater flood episodes in
the basinal region of what is now eastern Washington
state and the NW states as a microcosm of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition
and the effect it must have had on human
cosmology-making.
|
(link).
|
(link).
|
(link).
|
The
'channeled scablands' involved thousands of square
miles of vegetation washed away.
|
Channeled
Scablands of what is now eastern Washington state.
|
Giant
boulder in eastern Washington carried by ice
during the Lake Missoula Flood; cf. human on left
for scale.
Dry Falls, eastern Washington; once a falls for a
mighty cataract.
|
Drumheller
Channels, eastern Washington.
|
Giant
ripples (~24' high) in the Washington Scablands.
|
Camas
Prairie giant ripples, Washington.
|
In terms of human prehistory, peoples of the far older
'southern' migrations out of Africa with our oldest
mythologies were far less affected by the drastic
post-Pleistocene changes in the Earth's climate regimes
than than the peoples of the younger 'northern' migrations
out of Africa. As we shall see these differently
encountered post-Pleistocene climate regimes affected the
mythologies and cosmologies of ancient humans in two
distinct ways: (a) the older 'southern' mythos / cosmology
and (b) the younger 'northern' mythos / cosmology.
Broad
Southern and Northern migrations within and out of Africa
(link);
P.B. Demenocal & C. B. Stringer. 2016. Human
migration: Climate and the peopling of the world. Nature
538 (7623), 49. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19471;
although the arrival times of humans in the New World
is understated above
.
(iv) The African human diaspora & our oldest
mythologies. Our species of Homo was not the
first to migrate out of Africa. Congeneric species (also
of the Genus Homo) of humans from the Homo
erectus complex were the first, and then perhaps Homo
heidelbergensis.
Whomever our forebears were and
wherever they went, it is clear that our own younger
species Homo sapiens sapiens also set forth from
our native Africa and populated the world, the
understanding of which has complexified over time with new
discoveries anthropological, archaeological, and
phylogenetic / phylogeographic.
The oldest
known anatomically-modern human fossils documented so far
were discovered in Jebel Irhoud (modern day Morocco) and
dated at ~315,000 (+/- 34 kyr) years old:
Hublin, J. J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. et
al. 2017. New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and
the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature
546, 289. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336.
(Image link).
(v) Double-pronged southern & northern migrations
of anatomically-modern Homo sapiens.
Anatomically-modern humans appeared only about ~315 kya,
and with the ending Pleistocene climate shocks began their
renewed migrations as a new and restless species out of
Africa, who emerged from and then did interact with
remnant populations of earlier species / subspecies of the
genus Homo, such as descendent species of Homo
erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and such
subspecies, H. sapiens denisova, and H.
sapiens neanderthalensis. Their migration routes and
patterned diffusion has been traced by DNA trail they left
behind them (maternal mtDNA, paternal Y-chromosome DNA,
and ordinary chromosome autosomal DNA), not only in living
descendants but in ancient DNA (aDNA):
Matrilineal mtDNA (yellow migration
routes) and patrilineal Y-chromosome (dark blue spread
patterns): See van Oven, M. & Kayser, M. 2009. Updated
comprehensive phylogenetic tree of global human
mitochondrial DNA variation. Hum Mutat 30
(2), E386-E394. https://phylotree.org/
(which has the latest mtDNA tree builds). https://doi.org/10.1002/humu.20921.
Ongoing research in human
phylogeography continues to complexify this schema.
In the time encompassing the Last Ice (most recent
Pleistocene glacial maximum or last glacial maximum, LGM;
above The
Genographic Project map link):
Ice Age: Maternal mtDNA and
paternal Y-chromosome migration patterns; migration
patterns together with continental glacial extents and
climate conditions during the climate cycles of the late
Pleistocene (link;
link).
The myths,
mythogonies and their cosmogonies may be traced
based on the geographic routes of migration out
of Africa and across the globe, on an
oversimplified (I) the southerly routes and (II)
the northerly routes of myth and mytheme
migration, i.e., a trace of human
cosmology-making.
Broad
Southern and Northern migrations within and out of
Africa (link);
P.B. Demenocal & C. B. Stringer. 2016. Human
migration: Climate and the peopling of the world. Nature
538 (7623), 49. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19471;
although the arrival times of humans in the New World
is understated above.
Neolithic
art from the high cave of Llidoner in Valltorta
(Castellon Province, Spain), used here as a symbol of
our restless exploring human ancestors (link;
link,
cf. link
& link;
link;
link
on dating with tech reference to follow): Esther
Lopez-Montalvo, Valentin Villaverde, Clodoaldo Roldan,
Sonia Murcia, Ernestina Badal. 2014. An approximation
to the study of black pigments in Cova Remigia
(Castellon, Spain). Technical and cultural assessments
of the use of carbon-based black pigments in Spanish
Levantine Rock Art. Journal of Archaeological
Science 52, 535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.017.
And where there
are migrations, among human primates
with stories and cosmologies, there is
the blossoming of myth, and world-view
construction and cosmology-making.
A rather comprehensive overview and
approximate timeline of human global
migrations over the last ~200,000
years to the present:
Our major language groups and
families with their myriad individual languages and
dialects have evolved and co-spread with our human
journeys.
The evolution of major groups
of human language is congruent with human genetic
phylogeography (link;
link).
And
with our human journeys, our languages and our myths
and stories have also emerged, evolved, and traveled
with us.
(vi) Southern & Northern: Two diverging
cosmologies. In his pioneering, compilative
metastudy combining historical, linguistic, and
genetic research on indigenous mythologies around the
world, Sanskrit scholar Witzel (2012, The Origins
of the World's Mythologies. Oxford University
Press) shows that through the origin and spread of
anatomically modern Homo sapiens (what he
called the so-called Pangaean or global mythology
stage), between the Previous Glacial Maximum (PGM
~70-50 Kya) and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM ~25-15
Kya) the major division in human migration led to a
major division in mythologies and cosmogonies /
cosmologies. The cosmological mythemes diverged
between southern migration routes (Gondwanan;
Afro-AustroMelanesian) with more steady climates, and
the northern migration routes (Laurasian;
Trans-Caucasian-Eurasian-Amerind) with more turbulent
and alternating cold glacial and warming interglacial
epochs. The stability or instability of their
climatological worlds affected their mythologies and
cosmologies, and the traditions which stemmed from
each:
Marshaling the then-available (2012) interdisciplinary
data, Wetzel shows how earlier hypotheses of
comparative mythology are lacking: (a) simple
diffusional variation across geography, when myths do
not show such clinal variation (Frobenius,
Baumann, Thompson), but
rather sharp differentiations even in commonalities,
(b) supposed 'universal' psychological archetypes
(Jungian, Campbellian), which are actually not
universal, (c) outline, binary psychological
structures (Levi-Strauss), when such binary
'universality' is lacking in comparative mythologies
around the world. In short, mythologies are
conditioned by human biological and cultural
geography in the Pleistocene and Holocene, with
gradual differentiation into local cultural
specificities.
As anatomically modern Homo sapiens restlessly
traveled outward exploring the planet which they have
bequeathed to us, their conspecific descendants, they
told mythological stories which fell into the two
following main human biogeographic and cosmological
categories.
Witzel's (2012) migrational
mapping of the distribution of the two major world
mythology lineages.
The
latitudinal, human biogeographical mythemes:
Contrasting mythogonies, myths, cosmogonies, &
cosmologies summary.
I.
Southern Cosmology:
Gondwanan; Afro-Austro-Melanesian
commonalities
>315,000 ya -
50,000 ya, &c.
(distributed ancient
sources, more eternal storyline)
|
II.
Northern Cosmology:
Laurasian;
Afro-Transcaucasian-Eurasian-Amerind
commonalities
~100,000 ya
- 11,000 ya, &c.
(seems to come from a
single source, following an overall
story line, antecedent to stories of Vedic
religions, Greeks, & captured later in the
Abrahamic tradition, which evolved into the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions in the West)
|
- Eternality
of the World: Heaven, Earth, and
Sea were already existing. No cosmogony
appears
- High
God: In heaven &/or ascending
to heaven later; tends to be a deus
otiosus, removed and not caring
about events on Earth
- Series
of lower deities,
totems, tricksters, & cultural
heroes, often
children of the high god
- Primordial
age: The Dreaming (Australia)
- Creation
of humans by lesser deities from a
tree, split bamboo, clay, rocks, or
sometimes descending from gods or totems
- Humans
/ demigods show hubris and a Flood
comes as punishment, from various
sources, depending on the myth.
- Trickster
deities bring culture (fire
and food).
- No
apocalypsis:
No end of the world
Note. Comparisons between
both streams of mythological traditions allows
one, Witzel argues,
- (a) to test the
younger Laurasian 'novel' mythology
hypothesis, and
- (b) to search for
primordial elements beyond the older
Gondwanan and the younger Laurasian, such
as the recurring ubiquity of the flood
element, which is not surprising given the
world-wide effects of the Pleistocene
warming and melting episodes.
|
- Chaos:
Primordial waters / chaos / 'nonbeing'
guarded by a dragon
- Heaven
& Earth: Primordial egg /
giant / hill / island
- 'Titans':
Father Sky / Mother Earth have 4-5
generations of children (4 declining
Ages, cf. Hesiod)
- 'Olympians'
v 'Titans': Heaven is pushed up
from Earth (& Milky Way originates)
- The
light of the hidden Sun is revealed / NW
eternal winter --> 4 seasons
- Primordial
dragon killed (heavenly drink), Earth is
fertilized
- Contemporary
gods kill their predecessors
- Creation
of humans: Somatic descendants of
father Sun god = creation of humans
(chieftains) from earth, from a tree
(older), from maize, from an egg, from a
gourd
- Descent
of 'noble' lineages: First humans
/ demigods & first evil deeds /
hubris: Origin of death / the flood
- The
Flood: Punishment for hubris
- Trickster
deities bring culture (fire /
food); Cultural heroes / shamans;
humans & their rituals spread (local
nobilities arise)
- Local
history begins: Local
biogeographic-culturalisms
- Final
destruction of the World
(kosmos apocalypse)humans (&) the
gods (cf. variant of Four Ages theme)
- New
heaven and new earth arise:
Cyclical creation & destruction
Note. There is a
sense that the world is a single organic being
(emerging from incest) which is born, grows
up, matures, and ages, dying at the end.
|
It is indeed fascinating that
our earliest two major traceable streams of human
mythology have contrasting cosmologies (I) an eternal
world, and (II) a world in passing, from chaos to
destruction. Furthermore, which cosmology was used
depended on the biogeography of their ancestors
migrations. It is worth noting that modern cosmology
has undergone arguments between comparable analogs:
(II) cosmologies with explosive beginning and
apocalyptic ends vs (I) cosmologies with an eternal,
persisting cosmos without beginning or end.
B. Earliest Myths &
Cosmogonies: From more ancient Myth Motifs /
Mythemes, Our Stories Begin.... Scientific
study of myth. Humans carried their stories with
them. Human mythogenies are our begettings of our
myths, which contain our even earlier myth motifs /
mythemes, often the earliest
phylogenetically-traceable units, which can be
analyzed with human DNA biogeographic distributions.
Myths are elaborated from these traceable myth motifs
or mythemes. Just like GenBank is a database of DNA /
RNA which can be used evolutionary phylogenetics, so
databases of myths and mythemes can be used in the
phylogenies of myth, as can be seen in the analogies
between the phylogenetics of genes / genomics and of
myth ancestries (compiled by Jon White's Crecganford
channel, citing the research of Julien d'Huy):
Crecganford mythology channel (link).
Note
also the GitHub mythological queries with code (link);
authors index for the Electronic Journal of
Folklore (link)
linking also to Berezkin's page;
for popular introductions well-annotated to the
scholarly literature, see Prof. Jon White's
Crecganford video channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Crecganford),
reviewing the scholarly research of myth and
mytheme origins and phylogenies. These are a few
of the resources which we use and will cite in our
history of cosmology and cosmology-making in this
introductory chapter. Following the definitional
lead of Creganford's Prof. Jon White, we
essentially utilize William Bascomb's
classification system for defining myth, legend,
folktales, &c: Bascom, W. 1965. The forms of
folklore: Prose narratives. The Journal of
American Folklore 78 (307), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/538099.
See also Folklore: Electronic Journal of
Folklore: https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/.
(For more on the history and developments within
the far younger, specific Abrahamic religions,
note the interviews of scholars on the Mythvision
podcast channel). An academic anthology
combines phylogenetic methods with linguistics:
Forster, P. & Renfrew, C. (eds.). 2006. Phylogenetic
Methods and the Prehistory of Languages
(McDonald Institute Monographs). McDonald
Institute for Archaeological Research, University
of Cambridge, UK. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books. 220
pp.
Studying myth origins or mythogeny in the light
of scientific data from biogeography and DNA
phylogenetics, historical linguistics,
comparative mythology, archaeology, and cultural
anthroplogy, enables us to combine harder
sciences with the humanities including
anthropology, oral tradition, and art history to
start piecing together an objective history and
the subjective-artistic stories of humankind.
An expressionist swirl reminding one of
the Timeless origins of human myth (link).
α—Mythemes
from the Timeless 'southern
cosmology.' Some
of the earliest surviving fragments of the
'southern cosmology' mythos have been
isolated and preserved in indigenous or Aboriginal
Australia at the ultimate end of the southern
route of earliest human migrations. Australian
Aboriginal myths tell of a primordial eon
translated as 'the Dreaming' or far less
accurately but perhaps more comprehensible to
Western ears, as 'the Dreamtime.' A specialist in
indigenous studies at the University of New South
Wales (Sydney, Australia), Duane W. Hamacher in
2014 published astronomical traditions told him by
Aboriginal elders: Stories from the Sky: Astronomy
in Indigenous knowledge. The Conversation.
https://theconversation.com/stories-from-the-sky-astronomy-in-indigenous-knowledge-33140.
It is fascinating that these 'southern cosmology'
stories / myths are infused with a timeless
quality, a kind of eternal now, of the Dreaming,
an evidence of the 'southern cosmology' eternal
Cosmos, without the catastrophic and conflicted
beginnings and endings seen in the 'northern
cosmology.'
As an Aboriginal Ngarinyin elder David Bungal
Mowaljarlai explained to the author: “Everything
under creation [...] is represented in the ground
and in the sky,” a kind of cosmic unity, where
recurring myth-signs in the skies directed
Aboriginal peoples in the perennial march of
seasons and sources of food on the good Earth
below—an
advance of
indigenous
knowledge over
tens of
thousands of
years, the
longest
continuous
cultural
heritage on
Earth.
A custodian of the Western Arrernte people of the
Central Desert (Australia), Aunty Mavis Malbunka
told the following story:
The Aboriginal story
adapted from what was told to Hamacher (2014), with some
figures and other images.
Long ago in the Dreaming, a group of women
took the form of stars, and danced a corroboree ceremony on the Milky Way.
One of the women took her baby and put him
in a coolamon, or a wooden basket, and
placed the baby in the basket on the edge of
the Milky Way.
As the women danced, the baby and coolamon
slipped off of the Milky Way and came
tumbling down to Earth....
|
|
Gosse's Bluff impact crater (link).
|
After
the baby and coolamon fell, they
hit the ground, pushing the rocks upward in
a ring. That ring of uplifted rocks is
called Tnorala [i.e., Gosse's Bluff
crater, a 142 Mya asteroidal / cometary impact
crater ~5 km wide and ~150 m in height].
Upon impact, the coolamon covered
the baby, hiding him forever out of sight.
Ever since then, the baby's parents, the
Morning and Evening Stars, can be seen
looking in vain for their lost baby.
In fact, even today in the winter evening
skies, below the Milky Way, one can still
see the falling coolamon in the
semi-circular arch of stars [known to
western uranographers and astronomers as
Corona Australis, or the southern crown].
|
Corona Australis in Johannes
Bayer's Uranometria (1655; link).
|
Corona Australis (link;
link).
|
When Baidam, the celestial shark, known as the
Big Dipper in the northern hemisphere, appears
in the evening sky, indigenous Torres Strait
Islanders (off the northern coast of Australia,
near the Cape York Peninsula) know it is time to
plant their gardens with bananas, sweet potatos,
and sugarcane. Furthermore, when the nose of
Baidam touches the horizon just after sunset,
they know that it is shark breeding season and
thus dangerous to be in the water.
|
Arcturus called
Marpeankurric in the western Victoria
lands of the Wergaia people, is the name
of a woman who, in a time of winter
drought and hunger. Marpeankurric
was looking for food
and after a great search found an ant nest
and dug up bittur, or thousands of
nutritious ant larvae so her people
could be fed and survive the winter
drought. After her passing, Marpeankurric
ascended into the heavens and
became the star Arcturus. So
when Marpeankurric
arises in the
evening, the women
is again telling
her people that it
is time to harvest
ant larvae for
food.
|
There
are more such stories, and legendary marks of the
calendrical year, from among the very ancient
indigenous Australian Aboriginal myths. As
Hamacher (2014) points out, precession (change in
the orientation of Earth's rotational axis) would
make different night skies / seasonal patterns,
suggesting that Aboriginal Australian astronomical
observation and knowledge would have developed
greatly over the >50,000 years humans have
lived there.
It is interesting that these southern myths deal,
not with catastrophic cosmic cycles, but with the
ebb and flow of seasons and the lapse of ages in
the eternal now.
Bibliography of
Hamacher's 2014 work on indigenous Aboriginal cosmology
- Hamacher, D. W. 2012. On
the Astronomical Knowledge and Traditions
of Aboriginal Australians. Doctor of
Philosophy dissertation. Sydney, Australia:
Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie
University.
- Hamacher, D. W. &
Frew, D. J. 2010. An Aboriginal Australian
record of the great eruption of Eta Carinae.
Journal of Astronomical History &
Heritage 13 (3), 220-234.
- Hamacher, D. W. &
Goldsmith, J. 2013. Aboriginal oral
traditions of Australian impact craters. Journal
of Astronomical History & Heritage
16 (3), 295-311.
- Hamacher, D. W. &
Norris, R. P. 2011. "Bridging the gap"
through Australian cultural astronomy. Archaeoastronomy
& Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges
between Cultures. Edited by Clive
Ruggles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press; pp. 282-290.
|
(2014 paper Academia link).
To these increased details about human DNA
biogeography of the 'southern cosmology' mythos
over the last 200,000 years in Africa, we are now
able to show on the 'northern cosmology' front
that anatomically-modern humans arrived into West
Eurasia (Europe) in three waves, which have been
documented and dated archaeologically as occurring
at (a) ~54,000 ya, (b) ~45,000 ya, and (c) ~42,000
ya (link)
according to Slimak, L. 2023. The three waves:
Rethinking the structure of the first Upper
Paleolithic in Western Eurasia. PLoS ONE 18
(5), e0277444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277444;
Figure 9, illustrating by map diffusion and stone
tool culture in the three waves (top to bottom): .
The encounters of anatomically modern Homo sapiens
with the Neanderthal humans are understandable because
of paleontological biogeography as well as
phylogenetics.
(link).
And
Neanderthal humans were human in every meaningful
sense, including speech (Conde-Valverde, M.,
Martinez, I., Quam, R.M. et al. 2021.
Neanderthals had and Homo sapiens sapiens
have similar auditory and speech capacities. Nat
Ecol Evol 5, 609. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01391-6))
and art, including symbolic art (Pitarch Martí, Africa, Zilhăo, J., d'Errico, F., & Ramos-Muńoz, J. 2021. The symbolic role of the
underground world among Middle Paleolithic
Neanderthals. PNAS 118 (33),
e2021495118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021495118):
Inner ear bones and crania of
modern H. sapiens and Neandertal H.
sapiens: reconstructed Neandertal woman (link);
And so we can safely include
art going back half a million years to Homo erectus,
and since, summarizing all of that artistic creativity
associated with our genus Homo across two species,
and two likely subspecies, and summarize that to which we
above referred, thus:
β—Where
there is story, there is mythos.... And
so where there is art, there is story, because art is
story! Where there is story, there is myth. And where
there is myth, or mythos, there are world-views,
and where there are world-views, there exists in those
very world-views, cosmos (ordered human
conceptions of the Universe), or cosmologies. That is
the history we trace here. And yes, of course that
includes also among the Neanderthal Homo sapiens
of 75,000 years ago, as it does the Homo erectine
humans of ~2 Mya to ~1.7 Mya to half a million years (~540
kya) ago, and perhaps back to bipedal representatives of
our subtribe Homininae >3 Mya. In recapitulation, the
story of cosmology must begin with the first tool-makers,
as summarized above.
.
Researchers now
realize that this includes
sculpted cave art by Neandertals from ~75 kya (link).
In an
important paper, we now have further evidence of art
among Neanderthal human beings: Pitarch Martí, A. et
al. 2021. The symbolic role of the underground
world among Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals. PNAS
118 (33), e2021495118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021495118.
Pitarch Martí
et al. (2021) Figure 2. Non-local red pigment
imported into the cave by Neandertal human beings.
Why may we call Neanderthals, Homo
sapiens? Because there has been direct
introgressive, fertile hybridization events, meaning
biologically they are the same species, without a
reproductive barrier: Perhaps the evolutionary split
(before extinction) should separate us all as Homo
sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens
neandertalensis. Before the latest data from 2023,
there was evidence of two genetic introgressive
hybridization events between Homo sapiens sapiens
and Neanderthals, Homo sapiens neandertalensis.
Gene flow means that we were ultimately all the same
species (cf. Ernst Mayr, biological species definition:
Mayr, E. 1942. Systematics and the Origin of Species.
New York, NY: Columbia University Press, discussed in de
Queiroz, K. 2005. Ernst Mayr and the modern concept of
species. PNAS 102 (suppl_1), 6600. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502030102).
(link).
The northern and southern migration patterns of Homo
sapiens are also inferred and putatively
hypothesized from evidence of encounters with Archaic
humans.
Image derived from research associated with the Max
Planck Institute (link).
To the ancient migrations above, we can now add that
before 195 kya, there was an ancient introgressive
hybridization between one group of Homo sapiens
from sub-Saharan Africa with Neanderthals when they had
migrated into Eurasia (Live
Scinece link). The study is by Harris et
al. 2023. Diverse African genomes reveal selection
on ancient modern human introgressions in Neanderthals. Current
Biology Oct 13, S0960-9822(23)01315-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.066.
The popular journal Scientific American
hosted an article following up on scholarship
regarding one of the earliest northern myths, the
Cosmic Hunt: Julian
d'Huy. 2016. Scientists trace society's myths to
primordial origins. Scientific American
315 (6), 62. Dec 2016: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-rsquo-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/?ref=longnow.org.
Scientific American. December 2016 (link).
The convergence
of comparative mythology methods and phylogenetic
algorithmic methods, such as are used in tracing
evolutionary ancestries and phylogenetic trees
with DNA, can be utilized in an interdisciplinary
way to trace the origins and age of myths. A
couple representative papers, and a monograph may
be illustrative of the trend: d'Huy, J. 2013. A
Cosmic Hunt in the Berber sky: a phylogenetic
reconstruction of Palaeolithic mythology. Les
Cahiers de l'AARS 16, 93. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259193627,
building on earlier work, d'Huy, 2012. Un ours
dans les etoiles: recherche phylogenetique sur un
mythe prehistorique. Prehistoire du Sud-Ouest
20 (1), 91. https://hal.science/hal-00825883.
d'Huy (2013) found that the Paleolithic myth of
the Cosmic Hunt involving the Bear or the Big
Dipper could be phylogenetically traced spreading
outward from Siberia / Central Asia, west toward
ancient Greece, and eastward across to what is now
British Columbia and northeastern North America
(d'Huy, 2013; Figure 1).
d'Huy (2013).
d'Huy
(2013) found convincing the localization of the
protomyth in the Yenisei River basin in north
central Eurasia as suggested by Berezkin 2005. The
cosmic hunt: variants of a Siberian-North American
myth. Folklore 31, 79-100. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26484663.
This map of the Yenisei River
basin shows one of the cultural dispersal origin
sites for the Cosmic Hunt myth involving the Big
Dipper out of Russian / N Central Asia as
documented in d'Huy (2013), and discussed in a
video, "The OLDEST story in the World - The Cosmic
Hunt - An INCREDIBLE Discovery" by Prof. Jon D.
White on the Crecganford academic myth channel (https://youtu.be/ANRw-3C_MYA).
Similar to the DNA data, the collected 93
mythemes in 47 versions in the (growing) database were
analyzed by phylogenetic reconstruction methods for
the ancestral states of mythemes and protomyth itself
in the Eurasian root, using the majority of widely
shared mythemes as the better root. In addition to the
neighbor-joining algorithym (d'Huy, 2013; Fig. 1
above, citing d'Huy, 2012), the author also used
maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian
inference, simulating DNA evolution on the
phylogenetic tree using chosen models (Jukes-Cantor
under a general time reversible [GTR] substitution
model with gamma-distributed rate variation across
variable sites and some proportion of invariant sites;
see Methods). In reconstructing the first state of the
(proto)myth, the parsimony treelength was calculated
for the tree and matrix, using character matrices from
the data files, where the branches of the tree
branches were rearranged by subtree pruning and
regrafting to make a majority consensus tree, where
only clades (branches) in >50% of the trees present
(200 trees; length of 213) were retained (d'Huy, 2013;
Fig. 2). A high retention index (RI of 0.6966) and
consistency index (CI >0.60) showed that most
mythemes were shared by common descent and an inferred
low horizontal transmission rate.
d'Huy, 2013, Fig. 2; Jay Coskey 2018
slideshare interpretation and discussion.
We return to the specifics in the pioneering work of
Berezkin (2005). The
Cosmic Hunt: Variants of a Siberia - North
American myth. Folklore 31,
70. https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/dat/fl031FX000186.htm:
Of the great northern
Cosmic Hunt myth(s) and myth variants, Prof.
John D. White (Crecganford)
has made a reconstruction (in story form,
adapted below) of perhaps an earliest traceable
remnant, involving a solitary hunter and most
likely an ungulate like an elk, taking into
account the slightly different position of the
Big Dipper in the sky ~40,000 ya (the 'Dipper bowl'
representing the hunted animal):
One
morning a Man is walking through the
forest, and carries with him a spear and a
pot, for he is hunting and hungry, as he
hasn't eaten a substantial meal in a
couple of days. And as he walks along a
trail by the foot of the mountains, he
sees, by a stream, and drinking from it, a
Mother Elk. Man thinks he can hunt the
Elk, and so he aims his spear, but as he
throws it, the Elk notices him and is so
startled that she runs up the mountain and
jumps high in the Sky, catching the Sun in
her antlers, and then so scared, she
continues to run across the mountain tops,
running away as fast as she can. Man picks
up his pot and his spear, and chases the
Elk, up the mountains, and all the time
the Elk is moving the Sun. The Man knows
he must stop the Elk, for the Sun can not
be lost for there would be no more
daytime. And Man gets close to the Elk
once more, and throws his spear, his aim
good. Again, the Mother Elk is aware of
the hunter and jumps high in the Sky to
avoid the spear, and the Sun falls from
the antlers of the Elk, and falls behind
the mountains. Day turns to Night as the
Sun disappears. But the Mother Elk did not
jump fast enough, and she is hit by the
spear. And it releases the magic of the
Sun which still lingers around the Elk,
and as she dies she is turned into stars
in the Night Sky. And the magic of the
Stars consumes the man, and turns him into
a star chasing her, pot to his side, and
spear thrown. And if you look today you
will see throughout the year the Man
chasing the Elk in the Night's Sky, until
the Winter, that is, when the Elk lays on
the ground having been speared. But the
Mother Elk is a special creature, and she
has given birth to a calf during the days
of the Hunt, a calf who will no doubt be
seen wandering by the mountains when the
days get longer again. And so allows the
Hunt to carry on.
|
Adapted from the Crecganford video link,
"The OLDEST story in the World - The Cosmic
Hunt - An INCREDIBLE discovery" (>40,000 ya).
Within such a myth tradition,
some original story gave birth to the many
variants of the great northern Cosmic Hunt myth,
documented above. Was there an even older
story? Or more likely, a far older
myth motif, surviving longer than
any whole myth? And did those even
older myth(s) / motifs originate
with humankind itself in the global
South? We will return to these
questions.
By comparison, Aubert, M., Lebe, R.,
Oktaviana, A.A. et al. (2019.
Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric
art. Nature 576, 442.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1806-y),
point out that while paleolithic art
with animals in Europe is relatively
late in the European Paleolithic art
expansion (starting ~40 kya), only
appearing about 21-14 kya in the
Lascaux Cave shaft in France (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1806-y/figures/3),
their discovery of the earliest known Paleolithic
art with a hunting narrative to date is from
Liang Bulu'Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia),
dating to 43.9 kya. The authors comment, "The
ability to invent fictional stories may have been
the last and most crucial stage in the
evolutionary history of human language and the
development of modern-like patterns of cognition"
(link).
Or it could be far older just as Homo sapiens
ourselves go back hundreds of thousands of years.
A human cosmology is basically a story about the
World / Cosmos.
A Paleolithic
hunting representation from what is now Indonesia
The hunting tale tableau at Liang
Bulu'Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia, SE Asia; link).
Ernits,
2010. Figures 1-8 are further illustrations of the
widespread myth of the Cosmic Hunt (see references
above).
Further work on the phylogenetics of myth has been
done in
Tehrani, J.J.
& d'Huy, J. 2017. Phylogenetics meets
folklore: Bioinformatics approaches to the study
of international folktales. In: Kenna, R.,
MacCarron, M., MacCarron, P. (eds). Maths
Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient
Narratives. Understanding Complex Systems.
Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_6.
In 2017, three authors
analyzed a series of mythological motifs associated
with asterisms / constellations that we now call the
Pleiades and Orion by applying phylogenetic techniques
to these motifs across the world migrations of humans
including humans in the Americas: d'Huy, J., Sorbonne,
P. I., & Berezkin, Y. E. 2017. How did the first
humans perceive the starry night? – On the Pleiades. In
Leslie-Jacobsen, H. F., Hopkins, J. S., & Guyker,
R. W. Jr. (eds.). The Retrospective Methods
Network (RMN) Newsletter 2016-2017
(12-13), 100-122. https://www.academia.edu/109407300/.
(Folklore
Studies / Department of Philosophy, History,
Culture, and Art Studies. Helsinki, Finland:
University of Helsinki). Their
goal was to know which celestial mythological motifs
could be traced all the way back to the earliest
migrations out of Africa and subsequently into the
human biogeographical cultural regions across the
globe.
.
Figures and tables
from d'Huy, Sorbonne, & Berezkin (2017):
|
|
Color coded to 'cultural areas'
in Fig. 5 (below) and in this figure: 'Out of
Africa & early human migration' (turquoise),
'subsequent developments in Eurasia' (deep
blue), here: North America: 'California, Plains,
Coast Plateau' (R: deep pink) and 'Great
Southwest, Chaco [Canyon], and S. America:
'Guyana' (Central: deep pink),
Australo-Melanesia: 'Melanesia' and 'Australia'
(Central: yellow).
|
|
Table 1 continued....
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Color coded to 'cultural areas' (cf. Fig. 4 and
5): 'Southwestern Africa'
(Turquoise), N America: 'Great Southwest' (deep
pink), '... Eurasia' (deep blue).
|
|
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|
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d'Huy, Sorbonne, & Berezkin (2017).
γ—Excursus:
Legendary-mytheme
memories of the Younger Dryas Boundary? Speculatively
we may ask: Do we have independent
legendary-historical confirmation of a
catastrophic event coinciding with Meltwater
Pulse 1B (~11.7 kya) in a report in Plato's Timaeus
21a-26a (written ~360 BCE; https://archive.org/details/timaeuscritiascl00plat/page/36/mode/1up,
Greek text & translation from Bury, R.G.
1929. Plato, Vol. 7, LCL. Cambridge, MA:
Plato Volume IX, Timaeus. Critias.
Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles, link;
cf. critique
of Solon's Egypt journey in Timaeus).
Plato recounts a journey by his ancestor, Solon
(c 630 - c 560 BCE) an important Athenian
lawgiver to Egypt where he encountered an aged
Egyptian priest (keeper of temple records) who
told of prior destructions of civilization
beyond the Nile to the north and elsewhere,
including "an old tale" of an advanced and
fierce nation of warriors on an island,
Atlantis, to the west beyond the "pillars of
Heracles" (Strait of Gibraltar) who made war and
attempted to subjugate the Mediterranean world,
including the ancient Greeks, but who were
resisted. Proud and immoderate beyond their
means, a great disaster came and their island
submerged beneath the ocean, and this was the
most recent destruction of the world. Solon
asked for details and was told that it occurred
~9,000 years ago.
.png)
|
Solon asked for details, and
the aged priest told him ~9,000 years ago.
|
Ancient Greek Report of Plato in Timaeus
21a-26a (~360 BCE)
- Solon (c630 -
c560 BCE)
- +9000 = 9630
BCE - 9560 BCE
- 11,630 - 11,560
ya: Destruction of the kosmos /
"world" and the submergence / subsidence of
"Atlantis."
|
The
Paleo-climatological data
- Meltwater
Pulse 1A: ~14,700 ya = start of the
Břlling-Allerřd warming interstadial;
- Rapid
onset of the Younger Dryas cooling =
12,900-12,800 ya;
- Meltwater Pulse 1B:
~11,700 ya = end of the Younger Dryas
|
A summary timeline of catastrophic events in
the last 13,000 ya, and possible mythic /
symbolic representations of cometary
cataclysm.
Illustration by Arthur Koopmans (https://www.secretsofthenorse.com/tag/catastrophism/page/2/),
who wrote blogs parts 1,
2,
and 3
about "comets and catastrophism" on his Secrets
of the Norse website on Norse mythology.
"Plato meets the meteorite:
Solon, Egypt, and Atlantis" (blog
link).
|
 |
"Akhenaten and Nefertiti
worshiping the multi-rayed Aten, 18th
Dynasty. Notice how they're holding what
seems like hallucinogenic blue lotus
flowers? Perhaps they were tripping while
basking in the light of a giant comet! - source";
blogger Koopmans freely speculates that
"winged disc" and "monotheism" such as that
of Aten or Ahura Mazda may have arisen
because of cometary imagery c1500 BCE (link).
|
"The Ragnarok myth
explicitly mentions the falling of stars
from heaven - screenshot from the Mind
Escape Podcast" (link).
|
"A Zoroastrian winged disk
symbol with what appears to be a deity or
king on it. [Faravahar
relief in Persepolis]" (link).
|
"'Medusa' by Jacek
Malczewski (1900) - source"
(link).
|
"Excerpt from 'Phaeton' by
Gustave Moreau (1878) - source.
The artist depicts Phaeton with long,
disheveled hair."
|
"'The Primeval Giant Ymir' by
Emil Doepler (1900)" (link).
|
"Thor's hammer was
originally not a hammer, but a whetstone or
grindstone, possibly meteoric in origin. [Thor's
Hammer, Skane]" (link).
|
"Left:
a symbol of the Sumerian goddess Inanna.
Right: Engraving of a comet with tail" (source;
link).
|
"List of suspected comet symbols in
Norse mythology - screenshot from the Mind
Escape Podcast" (link).
"A vintage print from 1860 showing
comets that have appeared in a variety of shapes" (link).
"The 'Great Comet of 1861,' drawing
by E. Weiss [Comet C/1861
J1]" (link).
Goebekli Tepi
(9500-8000 BCE = 11,500-10,000 ya)
(link).
(link).
"Depictions of comets
compared with the constellations Scorpio and
Coma Berenices. Experiences with large and
bright comets were likely passed on in the
form of star myths" (link).
|
"Screenshot[s] from Martin
Sweatman's blog, showing a collage of comet
illustrations - source"
(link).
|
 |
Vulture Stone (Goebekli Tepe)
a commemoration of the time of the Younger
Dryas impact? (link).
|
The Vulture Stone is a
"datestamp: World's oldest monument [Goebekli
Tepe] memorializes the Younger Dryas impact"
event (link).
|
"The
constellation Ophiuchus as a spear-wielding
god, with Scorpio and the golden-red Antares
beneath it" (link).
"Screenshot from Martin
Sweatman's blog, showing a collage of
suspected comet symbols - source"
(link).
|
With the apparently drastic effects
of the YDIE and the climate change
whiplash of the end of Pleistocene
to Holocene climate regime
transition, especially near the
effect epicenter of the YDIE, it is
not surprising that the appearance
of civilizations immediately
thereafter, such as Goebekli Tepe,
and so forth should excite the kind
of controversial claims such as
appear in Graham Hancock's work,
such as that the Sphinx may be older
and may remember in body form the
constellation location of the Sun at
spring equinox at the time of the
disaster.
(Old
link).
Now the particular
Hancock-speculated scenario regarding 'Atlantis' may
well be questioned as the reality often may be more
complex, as Crecganford's Prof. John White has
summarized in "Atlantis: The TRUTH behind Plato's
Story" (video
link).
Having dealt in brief and rather specifically and
speculatively with the late Pleistocene-Holocene
Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) / Meltwater Pulse 1B
(11.7 kya) transitions, we turn for a short interval
to the broader question of human ecology in
Pleistocene-Holocene transition, a subject of some
debate in academic circles.
C.
Anthroecology: Human anthromes show human curation
of Earth's land ecosystems for millennia.
There's a long persisting myth that humans have not
affected natural biomes, except destructively and in
very recent centuries. Research has now shown that
this is very likely wrong: Ellis et al.
2021. People have shaped most of terrestrial nature
for at least 12,000 years. PNAS 118
(17), e2023483118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118;
(since with updated
figures 1-4), in ways which were not destructive.
The old Greek myths told of a primordial golden age.
While that was myth, there is an element of truth in
that humans have lived quite harmoniously with the
lands of Earth for untold millennia. A whole
database on the advances in anthroecology has been
published and is expanding: https://anthroecology.org/,
including an interactive guide to anthromes (link).
Concepts such as 'domesticated forest' have arisen
to describe human-shaped ecology, including in the
Amazon Basin: Levis et al. 2018. How people
domesticated Amazon forests. Front. Ecol. Evol.,
Sec. Agroecology 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2017.00171,
which is one of a whole set of 21 Frontiers
papers on the 'Ecology and evolution of plants under
domestication in the Neotropics,' frontiers
link:
Ellis et
al. (2021). Updated Figures 1-4. A further
elaboration of the database is further referenced in
Ellis, E. & Nicolas Gauthier, N. (2023).
Anthromes 12K DGG v1 shapefile. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SZFCPX.
If we move
back further in time into the Pleistocene (~2.58 Mya
to 11.7 kya; link),
we also find, as another study shows that even on
island archipelagos where extinctions are more
likely, and where extinctions have been interpreted
as anthropogenic, the arrival of hominins and of Homo
sapiens usually did not cause the Pleistocene
faunal extinctions: Louys, J. et al. 2021.
No evidence for widespread island extinctions after
Pleistocene hominin arrival. PNAS 118
(20), e2023005118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023005118;
(cf. Livescience link),
along with Supplementary
information, containing tables with dates of
hominin and Homo sapiens arrivals usually
long-predating faunal extinctions, and mostly
showing no association between hominin and Homo
sapiens arrival times and faunal extinctions.
Louys et al.
(2021); Figures 1-4.
In summary,
the arrivals of hominins (~1.3 Mya-<500 kya)
including Homo erectus, Homo
heidelbergensis, Homo antecessor, and
the island diminutive Homo floresiensis and
Homo luzonensis, as well as of our own
species Homo sapiens (~100-14 kya) were not
associated with but rather mostly preceded the
widespread megafaunal extinctions by hundreds of
thousands and tens of thousands of years
respectively (cf. dates in Supplementary tables).
The extinctions were rather associated with
climactic changes, volcanic eruptions, &c., and
only later modern human cultural and technological
colonization since the 'age of exploration.' The
implications are that hominins / humankind are not
ecological intruders but rather healthy migratory
participants in the Pleistocene-Holocene
ecosystems of Earth, even in sensitive island
ecosystems.
D. Mythos & Personification: And then came the
Goddesses and Gods (~500 kya - 200 CE). One of
the most striking set of symbolic emblems of the
sacred or ultimate for tens of thousands of years
(~< 300 kya) were the so-called "Venus" or "Venus impudique"
exaggerated and stylized female figurines found across
Paleolithic Eurasia. Over 200 of them have been found.
The very earliest of them is putatively the quartzite
"Venus" of Tan-Tan, north bank of the Dray River,
Morocco (between 500 - 300 kya) and the next oldest,
the scoria "Venus" of Berekhat Ram, Golan Heights (280
- 250 kya) respectively, both of which have been
argued to have indications of hominin / human
alterations.
(https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/10/venus-of-berekhat-ram-worlds-oldest.html;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Tan-Tan;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Berekhat_Ram).
The later "Venus" figures are far less ambiguous. These
may have represented a Great Goddess / Earth Mother,
perhaps the first "supreme creator / deity" in human
prehistory:
Left to Right (by row): Mammoth ivory
"Venus" of Hohl Fels (40 - 35 kya); ceramic "Venus" of Dolni Věstonice (31 - 27
kya); ochre-tinted
oolitic limestone "Venus" of Willendorf (26 - 24 ka);
limestone "Venus" of Laussel (~25 kya);
La Venus impudique (Paleolithic); mammoth ivory
"Venus" of Brassempouy (26 - 24 kya); "Venus 4" from Kostenkyi (25 - 20
kya).
Some "Venus" figures transitioned to more abstract stylized
in the later Paleolithic - Mesolithic: "Venuses" of Balzi
Rossi (25 - 18 kya); "Venuses" from
Goennersdorf (15 - 11.5 kya); "Venuses" from Peterfels (15 -
11.5 kya); "Venus" of Monruz,
Neuchatel (11 kya).
Although on the apparent wane, the "Venus" cult continued
into the Mesolithic (20-8 kya SW Asia), the Neolithic
(12-6.5 kya), and later:
"Venus" of Halaf culture, Mesopotamia (8 - 7.1 kya); "Venus"
of Mehrgahr, Indus Valley (~5 kya).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man; https://www.pinterest.com/pin/544161567475244453/;
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/316870523782538423/).
Late in the eon of the
"Venuses" a mythological transition may have begun. In the
late Paleolithic, another new more male-composite
mythological figure began to appear, as a statue and also
in cave art. Here is one of the earliest examples of this
emerging genre of mythological chimerae: The Lion-Man of
Hohlenstein-Stadel, also known as the
Loewenmensch,
dated at 40 - 35 kya.
The Lion-Man or Loewenmensch carved
from mammoth ivory (Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man).
Rock art or parietal
art includes human created markings on natural
surfaces such as vertical stone, such as paintings,
petroglyphs, or even reliefs, and later geoglyphs on land
surfaces (link).
Rock art first appeared as a world-wide cultural
phenomenon in the Africa, Australia, Europe, and Asia of
the Upper Paleolithic (~50 - 12 kya) among anatomically-modern
(since
>300 kya), Homo
sapiens sapiens. Upper
Paleolithic peoples artistically
displayed their mythological worldviews and
cosmologies on cliff shelters, overhangs, and
cave walls back home in Africa since before the last
Pleistocene glacial maximum (~18,000 ya).
The upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon people, recent immigrants
from Africa, followed suit in the cave walls of western
Europe during the last glacial maximum:
Cave paintings by Cro-Magnon artists in Font-de-Gaume,
Artist: Charles R. Knight (1920)
(link).
One of the earliest
Paleolithic "lord / lady [god / goddess] of beasts"
"master / mistress of the animals, ruler and guardian of
the forests" ancient deity representations (Aslan, 2017. God,
A Human History, Random House, NY) may have been the
antlered composite (possibly androgynous) figure (~15 kya)
of
Les Trois-Freres, in the inner part part of the
cave dubbed 'The Sanctuary,' from whom the animals may be
proceeding, perhaps in a kind of procession of creation:
Engaged in a dance, the
"master of the beasts" may exhibit a stag's antlers, an owl's
eyes, a bear's fore paws, human legs, patella, feet, a wolf's or horse's tail, and possibly an erect
phallus (cf. Aslan, 2017).
Also among the animal figures
is another composite deity-like, shaman-like, or spirit-like
figure, the Bison-Man (seen center left below):
And in detail:
And pulled out for possible juxtaposition of meaning &
reproduced in color:
And this
figure (perhaps a representation of a human hunter in
disguise, or a spirit being) may be compared with the more
well-known "sorcerer" deity / spirit figure.
(https://infourok.ru/prezentaciya-po-istorii-drevnego-mira-vozniknovenie-iskusstva-i-religioznih-verovaniy-3258491.html).
In
another case (in addition to the goddess) where theogony may
be crossing from prehistory into history, the master /
mistress or god / goddess of beasts motif reappears in
particular iconography in the late prehistorical / early and
later historical periods, with a human-like figure between and
grasping two wild confronted animals (link).
The Gebel el-Arak Knife (ca. 5500
- 5200 years ago) from Egyptian prehistory is a flint-flaked
knife with an ivory handle containing Mesopotamian-appearing
"master of the beasts" figure. Although purchased in an
antiquities market, this possibly sacrificial knife is thought
to have originated from the ancient sacred city which later
came to be known under the Greeks as Abydos:
"Master of the beasts" engraving on
the Gebel el-Arak Knife. Other similar
knives of the Naqada II culture have been found.
On a potential sacrificial knife, we see the impetus to put
our values of reciprocity into the most extreme form:
Religious sacrifice, including human sacrifice, which in
evolutionary terms I have called Escalating Asymmetrical
Reciprocity (EAR), by which humans sought to
appease and gain the attentions, the favor, and the power of
personifications of the powers of Nature, which our
agency-detecting neural mechanism had turned into spirits
and deities, as Scott Atran describes it in his
comprehensive volume, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary
Landscape of Religion (2002; Oxford University Press).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife).
A later Iron Age example of
possible Escalating Asymmetrical Reciprocity (EAR) in likely
human sacrifice in Oxfordshire, England (link).
In the
contemporary Naqada II culture (c. 5500 - 5200 kya) aged
panorama painting from Tomb 100 of what was later in the Greek
period called Hierakompolis, we have a transition scene with
Nile delta boats amongst rich game and hunting-gathering
activities in the region. In one section (lower left), there
is the "Master of the beasts" near an almost incantatory
circle "enclosure" of goats (an early indication of
domestication?), semi-domestication, animal slaughter /
dressing, and human conflict: A kind of snapshot 'tik tok'
"cosmic" world-view of Earth and its human inhabitants at the
dawn of history.
The "Master of the Beasts"
iconography: Master hunter & animal domestication details (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Tomb_100_Hierakompolis%2C_Naqada_II_culture_%28c._3500-3200_BCE%29.jpg; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebel_el-Arak_Knife#/media/File:Hierakonpolis_Tomb_100_Master_of_animals.jpg; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abydos,_Egypt).
Additional later "Master / Mistress of the beasts" divine
imagery occurs from late prehistory well into more recent
historical times. Another famous example of this divine
mythology is found on the gold, silver, and lapis lazuli with
the original wood gone and reconstructed "Lyre of Ur"
(actually 3 lyres and 1 harp) found in a royal women's
cemetery from the Early Dynastic III Period (2550-2450 BCE; ~4500 ya). Ten
women, one of them positioned as if playing, were buried
there. The most famous of these ancient musical instruments
was dubbed the Queen's Lyre (link),
with a gold bull's head with lapis lazuli beard, thought to
represent the Mesopotamian sun god Utu/Shamash (link).
Details of the Bull's head lyre, the
"peace" panel with the standard of Ur from the same site, lyre
on Mesopotamian cylinder seal (see https://www.pinterest.com/pin/64739313367596295/;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyres_of_Ur;
http://www.lyre-of-ur.com/pictures.htm).
 |
Decor and divinity iconography on
the Bull's head lyre: Note that almost all of the
figures are mythological composites from the "Master of
the beasts" to the beasts, and on down the panel.
Of the 4 panels, we see interesting empirical hierarchy:
1. Master of the beasts, which also have human faces or
rather a composite, brings to mind the composite
cherubim of later Near Eastern lore.
2. Composite lion-human deities serving meat (having a
knife) and possibly wine (having a cup or ladle for
serving).
3. Composite deer-human (?) and bear-human playing a
bull-adorned lyre, like on the very piece here, with a
baby deer-human making an offering to the bull's
head(?).
4. Scorpion-human and goat-human composites also
rendering service of some kind to the royal deity
retinue.
|
(https://www.reddit.com/r/ancient_art/comments/2sf74x/decorations_on_the_soundbox_of_the_golden_lyre_of/).
Other
samples predating Ur sweeping from ancient prehistoric to late
antiquity representations of the "Master / Mistress of the
beasts" with "confronted beasts" are found below. One of the
most fascinating syncretic contacts between the Paleolithic
Mother Goddess and the Neolithic emerging "Master of beasts"
cultus is the seated Mother Goddess from Çatal Höyük giving
birth, supported on either side by female lions or leopards,
as the Mistress of beasts (6000 BCE; 8 kya). Such
representations (succeeding more primordial animist traditions
of the numinous) more
unified mythogonies perhaps allow us to espy some of
the very early first inklings of the trend toward unified
cosmologies, integrated mythological world-views from closer
to the dawn of human time.
There is an even older such set of possible 'Master of beasts'
in the so-called narrative reliefs found at Sayburc, in the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Asia Minor, not far from the famous
Goebekli Tepe site, due to the work of Professor Eylem
Ozdogan. 2022. The Sayburc reliefs: a narrative scene from the
Neolithic. Antiquity 96 (390), 1599. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.125.
This region of Anatolia is rich in artifacts from the
12-10,000 y interval.
Sayburc Reliefs: What many failed
to notice was that these figures resemble powerful figures
confronting animals, rather like the 'master of beasts'
motif.
Perhaps dancing figure holding an object, charming a
massive bison?
Sayburc Reliefs, 9th millennium BCE ~11,000 ya
|
Central figure with lion's head (?) grasping his
member and confronting two leopards
Sayburc Reliefs, 9th millennium BCE ~11,000 ya |
Mistress of Beasts
giving birth, Çatal Höyük,
6000 BCE = 8 kya (Museum of Anatolian
Civilizations) |
Stamp seal with 'twined
serpents/creatures, or rotated,
a tree of life motif from the Halaf culture,
6100-5100 BCE = ~8-7 kya, northern Mesopotamia
(Louvre Museum)
|
Master of Animals, Susa I, 4200-3800 BCE = 6200-5800
ya
(Persia)
|
Stamp Seal with Master of Animals motif, Tell
Tello, ancient Girsu,
end of Ubaid period, Persia; c4000 BCE = c6 kya
(Louvre Museum) |
Ancient Levantine God, Gebel el-Arak Knife
c 3450 BCE = 5400 kya |
Narmer Palette, side with entwined serpopard, Egypt,
c5000 kya |
Master of Beasts, Sumerian Bulls, Ur, 2600 BCE =
4600 ya |
Another motif with a
sacred tree in the place of a Master of beasts,
Ur Royal Cemetery, Early Dynastic III, Royal
cemetery
2600 BCE = 4600 ya (British
Museum)
|
Master of Beasts, Bronze Age I chlorite object,
Jiroft, Kerman, c2500 BCE = c4500 ya
(National Museum of Iran)
Gilgamesh seal of Master of Beasts, Indus valley civilization,
2500-1500 BCE = 4500-3500 ya
|
Shiva, Pashupati seal, 2350-2000 BCE = 4350-4000 ya |
Caduceus: Serpent god Ningishzida on the libation
vase of Gudea, Mesopotamia, c2100 BCE = ~4100 ya |
Ningishzida, with snakes emanating from his
shoulders, on a relief of Gudea c2000 BCE |
Sun disc on tree with two
bull-men, Old Babylonian, ~2000-1600 BCE = 4000-3600
ya
(link).
|
Bearded deity of
the underworld with small figures (perhaps dead
souls),
Old Babylonian, ~2000-1600 BCE = 4000-3600 ya (link)
|
Θεά των Όφεων, Minoan snake goddess, ~1600 BCE =
~3600 ya |
Lions Gate, Mycenae 13th c BCE = ~3300 years ago |
Greek Minoan pendant (British Museum) with an ornate
gold Master of Beasts,
1700-1500 BCE = 2700-2500 ya |
 
Cylinder seal, Greek
Minoan Master of Animals, c 1400 BCE = c 3400 ya. |
Mistress of Animals (a pyxis lid
of African elephant ivory), found in trade center
of Ugaritic city of Minet el-Beida, 14th-13th c
BCE = c 3300 - 3200 ya (link).
Artistically a Greek Mycenaean image of Potnia,
mistress of animals, and a forerunner of Asherah,
a West Semitic sea goddess adored in
Syro-Palestine, consort of high god 'El, later
considered to be consort of Ba'al the god of
storm, rain and harvest who battled the god of
desolation, Mot, and died then rose again every
year, often depicted with an upraised right arm
and hand (see next Baal bronzes); who supplanted
'El. Asherah later yet became the consort of
Yahweh, southern Edomite desert deity of ancient
Israel (link),
to which was also associated the upraised right
arm and right hand numerous times in the Tanakh
(Hebrew scriptures). Ba'al statuette:
|
   
Asherah in Ugaritic texts (link);
'El, Canaanite creator high god (El Elyon, El
Shaddai, El Olam, &c.) who had 70 sons-deities
by Asherah (cf. 70 nations of later religious
tradition in Judaism), bronze with gold leaf,
Megiddo (1400-1300 BCE = 2400-2300 ya; link;
myth
net) during the Mesopotamian early dynastic
period (2900-2350 BCE = 4900-4350 ya); Asherah,
Syro-Palestine Mistress of Animals (from before the
10th century down to the 7th century BCE; link;
cf. link);
Bronze
Baals with upraised right hands (Tel Megiddo, ~15th
c BCE; Ugarit, Ras Shamra, 14th-12th c BCE).
|
Master of Beasts harness ring, Iran, Luristan bronze
collection (LA County Museum, link)
10th-9th centuries BCE = 3000-2900 ya |
Master of Beasts with winged lions, horse bit cheek
piece, Iran, Luristan bronze collection, (Cleveland Museum of Art), ~700 BCE = ~2700 ya |
Winged hybrid Master of
Beasts (cf. Les Trois Freres) with 2 panthers,
Iran, Luristan bronze collection, c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 -
c2650 ya
|
Mistress of Beasts giving
birth, Luristani Fibula, Iran, Luristan
bronze collection
c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
|
Master of Beasts with
winged felines, cheek piece on a horse bit,
Iran, Luristan bronze collection, c1000-c650 BCE =
c3000 - c2650 ya |
Master of Beasts with winged felines, ring for
chariot pole?, Iran, Luristan bronze collection,
(Honolulu Academy of Arts),
8th-7th c BCE = 2700 - 2600 ya |
Master of Animals, Finial, Iran, Luristan bronze
collection (LA County Museum of Art)
c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya |
Master of Animals, openwork pinhead, Iran, Luristan
bronze collection
(LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 -
c2650 ya |
Master of Beasts, openwork jewelry pins, Iran,
Luristan bronze collection,
(LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 -
c2650 ya |
Master of Beasts, whetstone socket, tools &
equipment,
(LA County Museum of Art), c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 -
c2650 ya |
Master of beasts with reptiles and vultures,
Luristan, Iran
(LA County Museum
of Art), c1000-c650
BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya
|
Double master of beasts, standard finial, Luristan,
Iran
(LA County Museum of Art),
c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya |
Double Master of Beasts
(reflective), Iran, Luristan bronze collection
c1000-c650 BCE = c3000 - c2650 ya |
Triple Master of Beasts, standard finial, Lorestāni
bronze, (LA County Museum of Art),
c1000-c650 BCE = c3000-c2650 ya |
Asherah through the
centuries in the Levant (link) |
Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine
(link) |
Blessing inscription from
Yahweh of Shomeron and by Asherah (~850-760 BCE =
2850-2760 ya); Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine (link).
|
Blessing inscription from
Yahweh of Teman and by Asherah (~850-760 BCE =
2850-2760 ya); Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Palestine (link;
cf. Hab. 3:3). |
Blessing inscription of
Uryahu by Yahweh for the sake of Asherah,
Khirbet el-Qom (~750-700 BCE = ~2750-2700 ya; link).
|
In Hebrew religion, the
covenant ark, chariot, or throne of Yahweh was
over-covered by confronting cherubim or winged
creatures (link);
myth imagery from the Levantine culture &
ultimately the "Master of Beasts" motif, especially
the Phoenicians and Egyptians:
 
Tutankhamun cherubim throne (c1332-23 BCE);
confronted Egyptian winged beings, Samaria,
Palestine (10th-9th c BCE); cf. Greek
griffons.
 
Cherubim throne, Ahiram sarcophagus, Phoenician
Byblos (c850 BCE); sphinx-cherub chariot, Phoenicia
(c 8th c BCE)
 
Imaginative reconstruction
of the 'ark of the covenant.' Was an Asherah hidden
in it? (link).
|
Artemis, Parian pottery plate, 675-600 BCE; AM
Mykonos, Paros Artemis 675-600 BCE = 2675-2600 yaa |
Gorgon Kameiros terracotta, Kameiros, Rhodes 2600
ya |
Pithos, Potnia theron Pithos, 625-600 BCE =
2625-2600 ya |
Pithos, Potnia theron Pithos 625-600 BCE = 2625-2600
ya |
Cylinder Seal, Achaemenid, modern impression, 5th
c BCE = 24 centuries ago |
NAMA Artémis Orthia, pre-classical Spartan before
480 BCE = before 2480 ya |
Egyptian cippus, Ptolemaic period; 305-30 BCE =
2305-2030 ya (Ancient Collection MfA,
Boston: 0751; link)
|
Zeus / Yahweh, Persian province of Yehud Medinata,
4th c BCE = ~2300 ya
|
Gundestrupkedlen
Gundestrup cauldron - silver, Denmark, antlered
figure 150-1 BCE
|
%20Mu%CC%88nze_aus_Sardes_mit_Hermesstab_140-144%20CE.jpg)
Coin (Sardis, Asia Minor)
Münze aus Sardes mit Hermesstab, 140-144 CE |
Slotten, R. L. 1965. The
Master of Animals: A study in the symbolism of ultimacy in
primitive religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion
XXXIII (4), 293. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Animals; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luristan_bronze; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potnia_Theron; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_Greece#Classical_Greece)).
In
conclusion, the significance of this brief foray into
prehistoric human mythology is illuminating because it allows
us in part to glimpse how early humans constructed their
world-views as hypostatic, personified views of the cosmos,
and thus their cosmologies, and sought to assign final meaning
to them via their fashioning of deities, gods, and
spirits. Of particular interest is the reification of a
father-mother figure in the ancient Paleolithic Master /
Mistress of Animals motif, which has influenced Neolithic and
Chalcolithic religiosities, and finally the later-arriving
Abrahamic religions, which their developing dual / singular
gods, the adoration of which has deeply influenced cosmology
and cosmology-making down to the present. We return to this
theme because it is significant in the Enlightenment
revolution and the debates about cosmology since the
Scientific Revolution. We will return to a summary of
divinities and cosmic ontologies in the West, and the
implications for how these play into the development of
scientific cosmologies.
II.
Megaliths: Prehistoric Cosmologies in Stone (upper
Paleolithic-Neolithic: ~14,000 ya - 1150 CE)
We
venture back into the ancient past to consider the models or
cosmologies of the Universe anciently set in stone. Stonehenge
& other standing stone circles and megalithic sites
(dozens around the world of more or less disputed
archaeastronomical use, link)
indicate times (~12,000 BCE - ~1000 CE) when apparent
observation of the heavens was combined with more elaborate
calendric and religious ritual. Before Stonehenge, there were
very early putative cosmological sites like Externsteine from where Late
Paleolithic stone tools have been found dating from
~10,700-9,600 BCE, including microlith arrowheads and blades
associated with the Ahrensberg culture (Truede & Zelle,
2012; link).
Externsteine
megaliths (link).
Argimusco (link), a
natural formation of rocks in Sicily, which may have played
megalithic cosmological significance for Late Paleolithic
people (~10,500 BCE and since) by resembling (to human eyes
and imagination, modern and ancient) certain mythological
figures and traditional constellations, such as Serpens,
Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Leo, Corvus, Cygnus, Virgo, and
Aquila. Aquila, the Eagle, is one. These may rank as some of
the earliest zodiacs - a type of unification of
mytho-cosmology.
The
paleolithic standing megalithic circles and megalith
juxtapositions may be considered as Earth surface
representations of the cosmos for our early human forebears.
Here are is La Rocchia dell'Aquila.
On
the Salisbury plains in Wiltshire, southern England,
Stonehenge (link)
is the world's most famous Neolithic megalithic circle of
standing stones, taller than typical and constructed with
lintels. It was built between 3100 BCE to 1600 BCE (~5100 to
~3600 ya) probably in stages. It has long been recognized
that it is aligned to the summer and winter solstices, and
scholars have speculated that it was used a some sort of
calendrical site, although the details remained obscure. The
standing stones are traditionally called "sarsen stones"
which is from the word for Saracen (Muslim), but in
traditional English culture meaning anything non-Christian
or pagan.
Stonehenge:
Stonehenge in the sun,
and at summer solstice along with some modern adherents of
Hengian ways
(https://betterbe.co/life/unbelievable-drone-photos/7/;
;http://www.backpackeurope.com/images/England/Stonehenge.jpg;
http://archeoastronomo.blogspot.com/2015/06/il-significato-del-solstizio-destate.html).
In 2022,
Timothy Darvill published, Keeping time at Stonehenge. Antiquity
96 (386), 319-335. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.5
(cf. link),
where he argued that the 30 standing sarsen stone marked a
30-day month, with the semicircular Trilithon Horseshoe of
lintel-ed standing stones accounted for the intercalary days
needed to make a 365 1/4 solar year, to keep track of
festivals and important seasonal events. The first stage of
construction he argues fitted a lunar calendar, but that the
offset of 15 degrees in the second stand of construction
corrected this to a solar calendar. He argues that cultural
diffusion through trade, travel, and networking with the
Mediterranean world replaced the lunar calendars common on the
4th millennium BCE with the solar calendar, first developed in
Egypt and then diffusing into Mesopotamia by the late 3rd
century BCE.
Darvill (2022), Figure 8.
Since the questions are far from answered, it was not
surprising that Darvill's paper would be disputed by other
scholars, who would argue the opposite: No, Stonehenge is not
a solar calendar but a sacred burial ground with astronomical
features (cf. link).
Magli, G. & Belmonte, J. A. 2023. Archaeoastronomy and the
alleged ‘Stonehenge calendar.’ Antiquity 97
(393), 745-751. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.33,
argue that Davill has made astronomical errors, analogies, and
numerology. They also doubt that the cultural diffusion
connection with the Ancient Near East can be established.
Davill replies that nothing they write really undermines what
he found (link).
Comment. What's wrong with both being plausible as uses
of Stonehenge?
Other standing stone
circles and archaeoastronomy sites of Neolithic age are found
widely in the hinterlands of northern Europe. There are a
number of them in Ireland.
Stone circles (Beaghmore,
Co. Tyrone, N. Ireland)
(http://chrisc16.dyndns.org/web_ireland_2000/101000_ireland_pages/beaghmore_rear_circle.html).
Newgrange,
ca. 5200 ya, is a 250 foot in diameter Neolithic structure in
Ireland (left),
designed
so that a ray of sunshine penetrates it at the winter solstice
(right).
Summer Solstice on the
plateau of Giza amidst the pyramids, including the Great
Pyramid of Khufu, 2613-2577 BCE
(Ramsey et al. 2010, link;
http://archeoastronomo.blogspot.com/2015/06/il-significato-del-solstizio-destate.html).
In
the Old World, portal dolmens, standing stone circles, and
such provided very likely a sidereal dimension, a uniting
of the ancient skies with the human calendar-making
and cultural geography of Earth below. As such, they such
archaeoastronomy artifacts illustrate our human
cosmology-making.
A.
New World excursus: Cosmologies of the American
Southwest, Chaco Canyon (900-1150 CE) & the ancient
Anasazi, ancestral Puebloan peoples (link). In the New World, Neolithic
stones indicated interest on the part of the first nations
migrating to the Americas in constructing sacred cosmologies
in stone. Although younger and thus later in time, the
archaeoastronomies / paleo-cosmologies of indigenous North
America illustrate how ancient world-views may be captured in
stone and petroglyph, and thus be in the same categorical vein
of the older stone circles and megaliths of the Old World.
Marked the
solar calendrical observations of the people there (http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/chaco_meridian.html).
(https://www.photoawards.com/winner/zoom.php?eid=8-79505-14).
Chaco Canyon at night
aligned facing the North Star, Polaris
Chaco Canyon: The Spring (Vernal) Equinox, the Summer
Solstice, the Autumnal Equinox, and the Winter Solstice marked
mid-day by the appearance of sunlight through the rock cracks
falling in "sun daggers" on the rocks in relation to the
complex of carved spirals there, and an inverted image of the
petroglypic animals, figures, and spirals (; Archaeoastronomia;
; ).
There is suggestive
evidence that the people of Chaco Canyon may have recorded the
total solar eclipse 11 July 1097. 
The stylized humanoid figure "above"
the solar eclipse petroglyph is curiously juxtaposed.
These petroglyphs are
reminiscent of active mass coronal ejection (MCE) events. That
time (1097 CE) saw a very active period of the Sun's 11 year
cycle (https://phys.org/news/2017-08-chaco-canyon-petroglyph-ancient-total_1.html; https://www.exploratorium.edu/ancientobs/chaco/HTML/TG-petroglyphs.html).
Before we
leave Chaco Canyon, we should note that like the Chinese, the
Puebloan Anasazi also seem to have recognized two other major
astronomical events of their time: (a) On the 5th of July
1054, the supernova (remnant now expanding known as M1 or the
Crab Nebula) in Taurus was only 3 degrees away removed from
the waning crescent moon (link),
with an apparent magnitude of
−7; (b) the appearance of Comet Halley in 1066.
M1, the Crab Nebula, supernova remnant of SN 1054, has a
spinning neutron star in the center, a pulsar which flashes our
direction every 33 milliseconds (Images: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/307300374577326054/; https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/halleys-comet-pictured-in-chaco-canyon.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_Nebula).
Night sky with Milky
Way over some of the Chaco Canyon ruins (https://fizzytravel.com/stunning-places-in-us-for-stargazing/).
III. The Origin
and Evolution of our Constellations: Prehistory to History
(~35,000 ya - IAU, 20th c CE)
The
constellations are human-perceived (angular) projected
groupings of stars or asterisms visible to the unaided eye
to which human imagination added different mythological
figures and events in many tales from around the world in
almost every culture, which also served as a practical map
for the science of naming, measuring, and navigating by the
stars (IAU
constellations summary). The heritage of the
constellations is a combination of imagination, myth, story,
art, and the early science of astronomy and astrometry,
i.e., the naming and angular measuring of the distant stars,
thus creating a diurnal and sidereal time and calendar
system.
The Milky Way, an old tree, and star
trails, northern Sicily (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220708.html).
Some of the very earliest astronomical observations were
carved mostly portable objects, including bone, with engraved
or painted rows of dots as lunar observations in the long
Paleolithic (~3.3 Mya - 11,650 ya, link).
One of these is the bone-carved representation of the waxing
and waning Moon in a serpentine form found by Abri Blanchard
in Dordogne (France) and dated to about 30 kya.
One of the very earliest constellation representations may
have come from a worked baboon fibula (~35,000-32,000 BCE;
37-34 kya) from the KwaZulu Border Cave (NE South Africa), a site
with a stratigraphic record of human habitation over ~200,000
years. On one side of the carved bone is an array of 86
knotches equaling the average number of days to be subtracted
from a year to equal the average number of day of human
gestation. On the other side of the carved bone is a posing
human figure, which Prof. Rappenglueck attributes as a
representation of Orion the Hunter, the number of knotches
again also equaling the number of days a year when the bright
star Betegeuse in Orion is visible from KwaZulu. Astronomical
observations and human fertility are linked. The
sophistication of this earliest astronomical observation from
the eastern African rift valley cradle of humankind is
breathtaking.
Another early one speculatively suggested by Bernie Taylor
encapsulates, he argues, allusions to a number of
constellations may be found within the rock gallery with an
enigmatic set of red ochre discs in the El Castillo Cave,
Cantibria (Spain; ~40.8 kya; ~37.6 kya; ~34 kya), and other
designs including hand imprints and even some dots resembling
arrangements of stars, asterisms. The Taylor hypothesis
remains highly imaginative and speculative, although that can
be said about all human attempts to see tales and mythic drama
in the apparent groupings or constellations of the 'fixed
stars':
.png)
Location of the El Castillo Cave in
the northern Iberian peninsula (Spain).
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Speculative deciphering of some of
the earliest painted images (2017).
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The panel of the hands (one dot
dating to 40,800 ya, and one hand stencil dating to
37,600 ya) has a set of about 30 hands, and patterns
of dots, one set of which resembles the later Greek
constellation Corona Borealis (Northern Crown),
shown here with Bayer Greek alphabetic magnitude
designation (link).
 
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Gallery of disks (U series dated to
>34,000 ya, Pike et al. 2012 [Pike, A. W.
G., Hoffmann, D. L., Garcia-Diez, M., Pettitt, P.
B., Alcolea, J., De Balbin, R., Gonzalez-Sainz, C.,
de las Heras, C., Lasheras, J. A., Montes, R.,
Zilhao, J. 2012. U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art
in 11 Caves in Spain. Science 336
(6087), 1409. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1219957].
Taylor finds multiple images within the rock
formations in the Gallery of Disks, exhibiting
perhaps the same type of creative human imagination
which gave us the constellations in the first place
:).
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Interpretation of a depiction of a
cluster of three bears, a proposed hand gesture,
compared with the Greek constellation Ursa Major
(the large bear).
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Interpretation of an aquatic
creature, a proposed hand gesture, compared with the
Greek constellation Pisces (the fish).
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(Before Orion link).
To return to the ancient mother goddess cult of the 'Venuses,'
we find that one of the earliest lunar calendars is associated
with the famous 'Venus of Laussel' figurine dated to ~25 kya.
She holds a crescent perhaps bison horn with 13 carved
knotches, the number of lunar cycles, menstrual cycles in a
year, as well as the number of days between ovulation and
menstruation, again a linkage of astronomical observations and
human fertility.
Among the rich panoply
of upper Paleolithic cave art, there are the paintings in
Lascaux (present day France) which have been dated to the
range of 17,000-15,000 BCE (19,000-17,000 ya; link),
there is evidence of representations of some of our
constellations, which are still remembered today, showing that
the representational memory of these mythological figures as
imagined and seen by early humans in the stars has persisted
for millennia, perhaps longer than just about any unaltered
part of any specific oral tradition. The Lascaux Cave not only
contains splendid paintings of Ice Age fauna, it also contains
early artistic-knowledge-based cosmologies or representations
of the Universe, as seen in the Paleolithic world, including
possible Paleolithic versions of asterisms or constellations.
And possibly
recognizable are asterisms and constellations, such as the
open star cluster the Pleiades and also the Hyades in what
we know as Taurus the Bull, facing Orion the Hunter, as
suggested by Rappenglueck (1996). The Pleiades in the
"Salle des Taureaux" Grotte de Lascaux (France). Does a
rock picture in the cave of Lascaux show the open star
cluster of the Pleiades at the Magdalenien Era, ca. 15,300
B.C.? In C. Jaschek & F. Atrio Barandela (eds.). Actas
del IV Congreso de la SEAC / Proceedings of the IVth
SEAC Meeting 'Astronomy and Culture.' Salamanca,
New York; pp. 217-225.
(link;
IAU origin
of constellations; link;
Orion-Taurus sketch;
Taurus
in Lascaux Caves; Lascaux
constellations, Society for Interdisciplinary Studies,
cf. prehistorian blog;
no
bull—Taurus is in the Lascaux caves).
It is especially haunting that one of the earliest images
should be of humankind as hunter facing the wild imbalance of
Ice Age mammals, with danger and death accompanying, embodied
in what since the Greeks, we have called Orion and Taurus.
That is, before humankind could in any sense be considered
"master of the beasts"! This slain hunter is in stark contrast
with the Bhimketka portraying a pastoral goatherd / shepherd
scene, showed the difference in climate and dangers between
the two Paleolithic sites.
The earlier, more northerly Cosmic Hunt(er) myth versus the
later and more southerly Pastoral Shepherd motive can be seen
in the juxtaposition above. See also Rappenglueck, M. 2013.
Palaeolithic Stargazers and today's astro maniacs -
Methodological concepts of cultural astronomy focused on case
studies of earlier prehistory. In Ivan Sprajc and Peter Pehani
(eds), Proceedings of the SEAC 2012 conference: Ancient
Cosmologies and Modern Prophets. Ljubljana, Slovenia:
Slovene Anthropological Society. www.academia.edu;
cf. Researchgate.net.
Recent research has also shown that stereographic photography
reveals how ancient humans took advantage of the 3D shape of
cave walls and ceilings to re-create animal scenes in their
rock art: Asiain, R., Ontanon, R., & Saura, P. 2023.
Animals hidden in plain sight: Stereoscopic recording of
Palaeolithic rock art at La Pasiega cave, Cantabria. Antiquity
1-16. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.122.
And these people may well have
been Neanderthals.
The dimensional
genius of Paleolithic rock art.
At this point, we leap forward over much that is unknown in
our account of the known constellations to the Ancient Near
East.
The Near Eastern
Sumerians (~4500-1900 BCE; 6500 - 3900 ya) were among the
earliest peoples engaged in ancient astronomy. Their very name
Shumer from shem or 'points to sky' or also a
'pointed stone marker' emerges from their sky-watching ways.
Ancient Sumer in the Near East (maps).
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Sumerians
in Mesopotamia measured the year from the time in Spring when
the Sun's path in the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator
(the vernal equinox). Using a base 6 numerical system, they
divided the year into 12 months, the day into 24 hours, and
the circle / sphere into 360 degrees, each degree subdivided
into 60 arc-minutes, each arcminute further subdivided into 60
arc-seconds. The Sumerians in their fertile river valley
civilization also made use of astronomical calendar
observations to guide their agriculture:
Sumerian cylinder
seal, showing the Sun, new Moon, and perhaps 7 stars of
the Pleiades at time of plowing and planting.
Their basic
imaginative identification and naming of the constellations
through the sky about 2500 BCE which the ecliptic passes (the
zodiac) has been transmitted down to us (via the
ancient Greeks thousand of years later).
Reconstruction of the Sumerian sky from
2500 BCE with superimposed Mesopotamian images of the
constellations from cylinder seals:
(A Mesopotamian zodiac;
Mesopotamian representations of the constellations superimposed
on a reconstruction of the sky from 2500 BCE).
Another
example is Sagittarius, the chimeric archer-human-winged
horse:
A third example is
the chimeric Capricornis, the goat-fish:
The Sumerians not
only knew about the basic patterns of fixed stars through
which they Sun travels in the course of the year, they
also knew about the 'wandering stars' or planets, and furthermore
seemed to have pictured the Sun at the center of the
system of the wandering planets, according to a
Sumerian seal.
The Sumerian zodiac nomenclature, and apparent
heliocentrism in a Sumerian seal, VA/243 (link).
Furthermore, the
Sumerians also apparently knew about the planets all the
way out to Saturn, and that Saturn has rings:
(Saturn's rings in Sumerian planetary
model, link).
Egypt. On the
plateau of Gizeh, the great pyramids have direct evidence
of being built in part for astronomical observations of
Sirius to indicate the timing of the annual Nile flooding.
There is also another speculative hypothesis, suggesting
that the placement of the pyramids matches the three stars
in Orion's belt, suggesting that the constellation of
Orion was important in their early cosmology-making.
(Ancient Egypt;
Link; link;
cf. link).
One of the
oldest known maps of the skies is the Nebra sky
disk (~30 cm) from Nebra, Germany (~1750 BCE or ~3750 years ago),
found in 1999 along with Bronze Age weapons, on the Mittelberg
hill, near Nebra, and is now stored in the Landsmuseum in
Saxony-Anhalt (link;
cf. link),
as a UNESCO world heritage document.
The sky
disc itself is considered to date from ~1750 BCE or ~3750
years ago, and from artifact dating to be buried about 1600
BCE or 3600 years ago after several stages of development.
There is evidence that northern European Bronze Age peoples
were in communication with each other, not only between what
is now Germany and the British Isles, but also with the Middle
East. The sky disc seems to include the Pleiades, the
Sun, and the Moon at first glance. However, it actually
contains a diagrammatic representation of significant
celestial objects, and the changes in seasons of the year,
along with a representation of a boat with historical
parallels to other water-faring peoples of the time. (See also
Nebra sky disk
map, the Unetice culture in https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180319.html).
However,
there's more there than one might think. There may be a sky
calendar there, the transitions of the seasons, and
reference to particular celestial objects including
significant 'fixed stars' including reference to a boat
among the stars, multicultural evidences of which may have
contributed to the notion of the Greek constellation Argo
Navis (as discussed below):
The 82 degree separated and crossing lines may point toward
the summer solstice (upper left and right) and the opposing
winter solstice (lower left and right; link), while the other
axis points to the vernal (lower left) and autumnal equinoxes
(lower right; link;
cf. link,
and also link).
The
Sun and its location was critical to the life of northern
European peoples of the Bronze Age,
and other possible interpretations may be made of the stars
in the disc:
(link
and link;
link).
It is
quite likely that the sky disc was used to mark the seasons
from the Mittelberg hill (see above right). This shows that
these northern peoples were using the stars as part of their
orientation in their world and in their world-views. (For
more see here).
One of the earliest known representations of
the recognizable constellations came from ancient China (4th
century BCE, ~2400 ya):
During
the same time frame and even earlier, the ancient Sumerians
in Mesopotamia were also among the earliest makers of star
maps and calendars. In the later subterranean tablet library
of Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE) in Nineveh, a
fragment of a circular Babylonian star calendar has been
found, with important stars and angular measurements of
degrees, signed by a scribe Nab-Zuqup-Kenu (link),
during the reigns of Sargon II (720-704 BCE) and Sennacherib
(703-680 BCE).
Star calendar (cf.
link).
Even
more important a find from the Assyrian library is a 7th
century BCE reproduction of a more ancient Sumerian
astrolabe (>5,000 ya), a 13 cm in diameter clay tablet
which which was called "the planisphere," (K-8538
in the British Museum), translated
to reveal it's ancient origin.
A
close examination of the 7th century BCE Ashurbanipal
library planisphere is that it displays a much earlier view
of the observable sky, as well as perhaps marking a
particular epochal cosmic event for the ancient peoples of
the Chalcolithic.
Here are a couple hypotheses features
worthy of note in attempts to understand this
ancient planisphere (Left A; Right B):
(link).
Hypothesis A: The
location of the celestial equator and the ecliptic
crossed paths within the Milky Way in 3300 BCE
(~5,300 ya). That rarely recurring event is
hypothesized to be memorialized in this planisphere.
Or, there is a more catastrophic hypothesis.
Bond &
Hempsell (2008). Abingdon, UK: Reaction Engines.
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Hypothesis B: A
startling event on the early morning of 29 June 3123
BCE, Julian Calendar, observed by Sumerian astronomers
(link). Bond &
Hempsell (2008) identified and examined 8 sectors of
the tablet: North, 5 prominent constellations,
postulated cloud cover / cloud banks at the time, the
path of arrival or trajectory of the incoming Aten
asteroid which crashed far away in Koefels, and a
persisting post-impact plume. (Drawing by L. W. King,
1912, British Museum).
Reconstruction of
what may have been observed ~5,200 years ago:
( link).
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Another
likely ancient star map documenting asterisms associated
some of our known constellations as well as a possible novel
celestial event like a nova or supernova has been found on a
~0.5 m stone disk at a proto-protohistoric hill fort rampart
called Castelliere di Rupinpiccolo, one of several such
Bronze Age-Iron Age proto-historic hill forts found in the
Adriatic, Aegean, and Anatolia. Archaeologist Frederico
Bernardini et al. (incl. astronomer Paolo Molaro).
2022. Prehistoric stone disks from entrances and cemeteries
of North-Eastern Adriatic Hillforts. Documenta
Praehistorica 49, 300-317. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.49.7,
explored 4 such stone disks, one of them dated to the Middle
Bronze, ~3,000 ya, found at two proto-historic hill fort
sites in the Adriatic, Castelliere di
Rupinpiccolo (near Trieste, Italy) and
Gradina on Veliki Brijun (on the Croatian coast). Some of
these stone disks have semi-circular cuplike depressions,
which are not randomly placed, most notably Rupinpiccolo
disk 1, which has 29 such depressions carved into it.
Archaeologist
Bernardini and astronomer Molaro went on to do an in-depth
statistic analysis of Rupinpiccolo disk stone 1 depressions
with known stars: Molaro, P. & Bernardini, F. 2023.
Possible stellar asterisms carved on a protohistoric stone.
Astron. Nach. [Astron. Notes] 344,
e220108. https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.20220108.
Of the 29 engraved depressions on the Rupinpiccolo disk
stone 1,
- 28 of them
display a Pearson correlation coefficient with stellar
positions >0.99 with a probability of a false
positive correlation of p < 0.001 in at least
three juxtaposed widely known constellational asterisms,
at departures in angular location of ~1 deg (~7 mm on
the disk):
- 9 engraved
depressions match stars from the Tail of Scorpio
- 5 from
Orion including from the Belt with Rigel and
Betelgeuse
- 9 from the
Pleiades, 'showing some match from cluster members'
- 5 possibly
from Cassiopeia
- One engraved
depression is unidentified, north of Betelgeuse. The
authors speculate that this might have marked what might
"have been the progenitor of a failed supernova" and say
that it "challenges the whole picture" as also some
others argue. Instead, they could have argued that an
ephemeral astronomical phenomena at that location in the
sky might have been the reason the map was made in the
first place.
- The
juxtapositional angle of orientation of Orion and
Scorpius in the sky matches the predicted angle of Orion
and Scorpius at their heliacal rising (first appearances
of stars at dawn in a year—events important to the
ancients of different cultures in their yearly
traditions) about ~1,800 BCE (~3,800 ya), at a time when
because of the precession of the equinoxes, Orion was
about 12 deg lower in the sky and Scorpius was about 13
deg higher in the sky.
The
Greeks (a cultural alliance in the Aegean) imported most of
constellations from earlier cultural traditions in
Mesopotamia and Egypt, and apparently an ancient oral set of
traditions in Eurasia. A review of the literature on the
origin of our solar path or zodiacal constellations
transmitted by the Greeks is touched on in Roslyn M. Frank
and Jesús Arregi Bengoa (1998, ©2001, 2011).
Hunting the European sky bears: On the origins of hte
non-zodiacal constellations. In C. Ruggles, with
F. Prendergast & T. Ray (eds.). Astronomy,
Cosmology and Landscape. Proceedings of the
SEAC 98 Meeting, Dublin, Ireland, September 1998. W.
Sussex, UK: Ocarina Books, for the Société
Européenne pour l’Astronomie dans la Culture (https://www.academia.edu/81572943/Hunting_the_European_Sky_Bears_On_the_origins_of_the_non_zodiacal_constellations),
where they focused on the origins of the non-zodiacal
constellations. This covers information which examines the
multicultural influence and link between the northern sky
lore of European indigeneity and the Greek transmission of
our constellations.
The authors consider the
'uniformist' model which holds that the classical zodiacal
constellations inherited from Mesopotamia (4th-1st
millennium BCE; cf. Rogers,
J. H. 1998a. Origins of the ancient constellations:
I. The Mesopotamian traditions. Journal of the
British Astronomical Association 108
(1), 9-28), were then
synthesized by Greek Minoans in Crete (mariners and
astronomer-priests) and transmitted between 540 and 370
BCE (E. W. Maunders. 1908, 1922. The Astronomy of the
Bible [4th ed.]. London, UK: The Epworth Press;
1913. The origin of the constellations. The
Observatory 36, 329-334) perhaps located in
the Mediterranean island of Stampalia or Astropalia at
lat. 36 1/2° N and long. 26 1/3° E (Ovenden, M. W. 1966.
The origin of the constellations. The Philosophical
Journal 3 (1), 1-18), and compare it with
the 'gradualist' model, which holds that after the
Mesopotamian heritage, there was a gradual creation of the
classical constellations with contribuitons from disparate
and unrelated ancient traditions (Rogers, J. H. 1998a.
Origins of the ancient constellations: I. The Mesopotamian
traditions. Journal of the British Astronomical
Association 108 (1), 9-28; Ibid. 1998b.
Origins of the ancient constellations: II. The
Mediterranean traditions. Journal of the British
Astronomical Association 108 (2), 79-98; cf.
Gingerich, O. 1984. Astronomical scrapbook. The origin of
the zodiac. Sky and Telescope 67 (March),
218-220; Gingerich, O. & Welther, B. L. 1984. Some
puzzles of Ptolemy’s star catalogue. Sky and Telescope
67 (May): 421-423).
The authors take a hybrid
approach and hypothesize that data they collected from
indigenous European / Eurasia oral traditions and
published under a series of papers, "Hunting the European
sky bears" (Ibid. citations and more) influenced the
projection of the non-zodiacal constellations.
(link,
cf. link).
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'Hunting the European
sky bears' bibliography on bear ceremonialism &
indigenous European sky lore
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- Gastou, F. R. 1987. Sur les Traces des Montreurs
d'Ours des Pyrénées et d'Ailleurs. Toulouse,
France: Loubatiers.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1994. Hunting
the European sky bears: when the celestial bear
comes down to earth. Paper presented at the
conference on “The Inspiration of Astronomical
Phenomena (A Conference on the Infuence upon World
Culture from Observed Astronomical Events),” Vatican
Observatory, Gastel Gandolfo, Italy, June 27 - July
2, 1994.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1995. Zeruko bi
hartzen aztarnak Europa zahar eta berrian:
Etnoastronomia Europako Ahozko Kulturan. Udako Eusko
Unibertsitatea, Iruńa-Pamplona, Spain, 20 July.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1996a. Hunting
the European sky bears: when bears ruled the earth
and guarded the gate of heaven. In Vesselina
Koleva and Dimiter Kolev (eds), Astronomical
Traditions in Past Cultures, 116-142. Sofa:
Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences, and National Astronomical Observatory
Rozhen.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1996b. Epilogue:
The Urnieta project and methodological
considerations. In Luix Mari Zaldua, Sarobeak
Urnietan–Seles en Urnieta–Stone Octagons in Urnieta,
90-100. Urnieta [Spain]: Kulturnieta.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1997. Hunting
the European sky bears: the Grateful Eagle, Little
Bear, Amirani and Prometheus. In Carlos
Jaschek and F. Atrio Barandela (eds), Actas del
IV Congreso de la SEAC «Astronomía en la Cultura»,
55-68. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1999a. An essay
in European ethnomathematics: the Basque
septuagesimal system. Part I. In Arnold
Lebeuf, Mariusz S. Ziółkowski and Arkadiusz
Sołtysiak (eds), Actes de la Včme Conference
Annuelle de la SEAC. Gdansk 1997.
119-142. Warszawa–Gdańsk: Département
d’Anthropologie Historique, Institut d’Archéologie
de l’Université de Varsovie– Musée Maritime Central.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 1999b. An essay
in European ethnomathematics: the social and
cultural bases of the vara de Burgos and its
relationship to the Basque septuagesimal system. Zentralblatt
für Didaktik der Mathematik 31 (2),
59-65. Available at: http://www.fz-
karlsruhe.de/fz/publications/zdm/zdm992a.html#frank.
- Frank, Roslyn M. 2000. Hunting
the European sky bears: Hercules meets Hartzkume. In
César Esteban and Juan A. Belmonte (eds.), Oxford
VI and SEAC99: Astronomy and Cultural Diversity,
295-302. La Laguna, Tenerife: Organismo Autónomo de
Museos del Cabildo de Tenerife.
- Frank, Roslyn M. (n.d.a). An
essay in European ethnomathematics and orality:
celestial traditions of John Little Bear in Europe
and Euskal Herria (the Basque Country). Proceedings
of the Working Group 21: Mathematics and Culture.
ICME-8. Seville, Spain, July 14-21, 1996. Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Frank, Roslyn M. (n.d.b). Hunting
the European sky bears: a proto-European vision
quest to the End of the Earth. In John Fountain
(ed.), Cultural Aspects of Astronomy: An
Intersection of Disciplines. Selected Papers from
the Fifth Oxford Conference on Archaeoastronomy.
Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. In
press.
- Frank, Roslyn M. (n.d.c). Hunting
the European sky bears: a diachronic analysis of
Santa Claus and his helpers. In Ray White (ed.), The
Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena in Culture:
Edition Malta. Qormi, Malta: Dormax.
- Frank, R. M. 2001. Hunting the
European Sky Bears: Candlemas Bear Day and World
Renewal Ceremonies. In C. Ruggles, F.
Prendergast, & T. Ray (Eds.), Astronomy,
Cosmology and Landscape (pp. 133-157). Bognor
Regis, England: Ocarina Press.
- Germonpré, M. & Hämäläinen, R. 2007. Fossil bear
bones in the Belgian Upper Paleolithic: The
possibility of a proto Bear Ceremonialism. Arctic
Anthropology 44 (2), 1-30.
- Frank, R. M. 2008. Recovering
European ritual bear hunts: A comparative study of
Basque and Sardinian ursine carnival performances. Insula:
Quaderno di Cultura Sarda 3, 41-97. http://tinyurl.com/Hamalau14.
- Frank, R. M. 2010. Hunting the
European Sky Bears: German "Straw-bears" and their
relatives as transformers. In M. Rappenglück
& B. Rappenglück (Eds.), Symbole der
Wandlung - W andel der Symbole. Proceedings of the
Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Symbolforschung
/ Society for the Scientific Study of Symbols. May
21-23, 2004, Kassel, Germany. pp. 141-166.
Munich: Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche
Symbolforschung. http://tinyurl.com/German-strawbears.
- Frank, R. M. 2015. Bear
Ceremonialism in relation to three ritual healers:
The Basque salutariyua, the French marcou
and the Italian maramao. In E. Comba
& D. Ormezzano (Eds.), Uomini e Orsi:
Morfologia del Selvaggio. pp. 41-122. Torino:
Accedemia University Press. http://tinyurl.com/Hamalau14.
- Frank, R. M. 2016a. Paul
Shepard's "Bear Essay": On Environmental Ethnics,
Deep Ecology and Our Need for the Other-than-Human
Animals: Creative Commons License. http://www.tinyurl.com/paul-shepard-bear-essay.
- Frank, R. M. 2016b. Sky Bear
research: Implications for "Cultural Astronomy." In
J. P. Hernández, C. González, G. Magli, D. Nadali,
A. Polcaro, & L. Verderame (Eds.), 75. Proceedings
of SEAC 2015 Conference. Astronomy in Past and
Present Cultures. Rome, 9-13 November 2015,
Rome University "La Sapienza." pp. in Mediterranean
Archaeology & Archaeometry 16
(14): 343-350. https://tinyurl.com/sky-bear-research.
- Frank, R. M. 2016c. A status
report: A review of research on the origins and
diffusion of the belief in a Sky Bear. In F.
Silva, K. Malville, T. Lomsdalen, & F. Ventura
(Eds.), The Materiality of the Sky: Proceedings
of the 22nd Conference of the European Society for
Astronomy in Culture. pp. 79-87. University of
Wales, Lampeter: The Sophia Centre Press. https://tinyurl.com/sky-bear-status-report.
- Frank, R. M. 2017a. The Bear's
Son Tale: Interpreting its Animistic Cosmovision and
Slavic Connections. Paper presented at the
Languages, Cultures, Worldviews: Translation and
Comparative Perspectives, Marie-Curie Sklodowska
University. Lublin, Poland. https://www.academia.edu/36606555/Translating_the_Bears_Son_Tale_Interpreting_its_
Animistic_Cosmovision_and_Slavic_Connections.
- Frank, R. M. 2017b. An Essay in
Collective Memory and Cognition: Bears and Badgers,
Basque and Celtic: Creative Commons License (CC BY
4.0). http://tinyurl.com/essay-on-
collective-memory.
- Frank, R. M. 2017c. Introducing
Diachronic Cultural Linguistics: Translating the
“Bear’s Son Tale” in the Longue Durée. Presentation
at the Conference “Languages - Cultures –
Worldviews: Translation and Comparative
Perspectives”. November 16-18, 2017. Marie- Curie
Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland. https://tinyurl.com/Bear-s-Son-Tale.
- Frank, R. M. 2019a. An essay in
Cultural Astronomy: Tracing celestial projections of
bear ceremonialism based on evidence from the Upper
Palaeolithic to the present. Paper presented at the
Session on “Cultural Astronomy and Ontology” in
conjunction with the European Society for Astronomy
in Culture at the 25th Annual Meeting of the
European Archaeological Association, Bern,
Switzerland, September 4-6, 2019. https://tinyurl.com/celestial-projections.
- Frank, R. M. 2019b. Translating a
worldview in the longue durée: The tale of "The
Bear's Son". In A. Głaz (Ed.), Languages--Cultures--Worldviews:
Focus on Translation. pp. 53-80. London, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan. https://tinyurl.com/bearson.
- Frank, R. M. 2021a. Concerning
Germanic Straw Bears, St. Nicholas and the Last
Sheaf. Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY
4.0). https://tinyurl.com/lastsheaf.
- Frank, R. M. 2022a. Bear Doctors:
Tracing the History of Bears as Healers and How They
Became Christian Saints: Creative Commons
Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). https://tinyurl.com/bear-doctors.
- Frank, R. M. 2022b. Comparing
Native American and European Traditional Beliefs and
Performance: Ritual Practitioners and Bear
Impersonators: Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC BY 4.0). https://tinyurl.com/ritual-practitioners.
- Frank, R. M. 2022c. Exploring the
Indigenous Face of Europe: Rethinking Fairytales,
the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and Glass
Mountain before Cinderella: Creative Commons
License. https://tinyurl.com/indigenous-face.
- Frank, R. M. 2023a. “The Bear’s
Son Tale”: Traces of an ursine genealogy and bear
ceremonialism in a pan-European oral tradition. In
O. Grimm, D. Groß, A. Pesch, O. Sundqvist, & A.
Zedrosser (Eds.), Bear and Human – Facets of a
Multi-layered Relationship from Past to Recent
Times with an Emphasis on Northern Europe. pp.
1107- 1120. Turnhout: Brepols. http://tinyurl.com/bear-son-tale.
- Frank, R. M. 2023b. Recuperating
Europe's Indigenous Animist Past: Nightmares,
Shamans & Bears: Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY 4.0). https://tinyurl.com/indigenous-animist-past.
- Frank, R. M. 2024. Reshaping the
Western Concept of Human Identity: Christianity’s
Encounter with Europe’s Indigenous Past. An open
source / creative commons book. 84 pp. https://www.academia.edu/116876498/Reshaping_the_Western_Concept_of_Human_Identity_Christianitys_Encounter_with_Europes_Indigenous_Past.
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Specifically, the
traditional pan-European shamanic vision-quest folktales
of the 'Bear Son Tales' which were traditionally
transmitted by song, dance, and mime were projected on the
sky map of peoples between 4000-2000 BCE, the most
ecocentric of which are found in the ancient
pre-Indo-European language of Euskera (Basque; cf. Fig.
3.1 ca. 1st century CE). Given precession and shift of the
star map latitutes, this suggests that these non-zodiacal
constellations were first projected with revised 'zones of
invisibility' (Figs. 3.2, 3.3. 3.4. 3.5) from a more
northerly latitudinal 'window of opportunity' (Fig. 3.6)
for sky-observing and projection than that of the Minoan
navigators.
Frank & Bengoa (1998, 2001, 2011):
Frank & Bengoa (1998, 2001,
2011).
Although
reproduced in the 2nd century CE, the Farnese Atlas is
likely a copy of a 2nd century BCE sculpture of the mythical
Titan, Atlas, holding aloft the celestial sphere. This
celestial globe contains the basic constellations compiled
by the Greeks.
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Interestingly,
the view of the celestial sphere is just the reverse
of what you'd see looking up. It portrays a god's eye
view of the celestial sphere, as if one were looking
into the celestial sphere from the outside. This
unusual perspective built into the globe, may infer
that this globe was actually an astronomical
instrument, a planisphere. (Farnese
Atlas sculpture;
image
of the celestial globe).
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When Farnese globe image
is inverted, we see the constellations as they appear when
looking up into the sky.
The basic transmission of
the ancient constellations into the canonical Greek
constellations happened over this period with these key
figures in the history of our constellations.
Eudoxus of Cnidus (Εὔδοξος ὁ Κνίδιος),
c408 - c355 BCE
His works are lost, however, they may have been a star
globe (cf. the Farnase star globe above), although Frank
& Bengoa (1998; 2001; 2011) point out that this is
speculation.
Their main content was preserved in the transmission of
the constellations via a 4th century BCE poem by Aratos
of Soli.
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Aratos of Soli, Άρατος ο Σολεύς
c315/310 BCE - 240 BCE.
Wrote the poem Phaenomena (link)
which described the constellations along with alluding
to their mythological origins.
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Hipparchos, Ἵππαρχος, (c190 - c120
BCE), a Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician, has
been considered the founder of trigonometry (link).
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Claudius Ptolemaeus, Κλαύδιος
Πτολεμαῖος (c100 - c170 CE)
The Almagest: 44 Constellations (link).
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The geometric configuration by which Hipparchos
estimated the distances in the Sun-Earth-Moon system (link):
Constellations included in Ptolemy's Almagest
(link),
containing the line of constellations along the ecliptic (path
of the Sun through the year):
The
Dendera Zodiac, with it's internal referential allusions to a
rare planetary configuration, a lunar eclipse (September, 52
BCE) and a solar eclipse (March, 51 BCE) led French
astrophysicist to date the Dendera to ~50 BCE (link).
The Dendera Zodiac, ~1st century BCE (image adapted from Wilson, 1980); cf.
link.
Reconstruction of the putative original colors of the
Zodiac, with the constellations identified, as well as the
sky being upheld by 4 equidistant female figures and 4 pairs
of falcon-headed figures, surrounded by 36 figures of
asterisms, representing the 36 (40 minute) "hours" of the
Egyptian night, and also the 36 decans or 10 day "weeks"
plus 5 extra days of the Egyptian year (link).
The lunar eclipse of 25 September 52 BCE is represented by the
"eye of Horus" within a circle, while the solar eclipse of 07
March 51 BCE is represented by a circle encircling the goddess
Isis holding the baboon god Thoth's tail (link).
Thus the Dendera sky map actually memorializes two memorable
contemporary astronomical events.
(link).
Arabic
advances in Astronomy. Long after Hipparchos; Ἵππαρχος (c190 - c120 BCE),
the Dendera
Zodiac (1st century BCE), and also after the later times of
Claudius Ptolemy; Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος (c100 - c170) with his
Almagest (the accuracy and integrity of some of which
has been a matter of dispute by modern scholars), and also
long before the early modern period of the Scientific
Revolution, there was an
important intervening period of preservation as well as
advances in astronomy during the time of the Arab Islamic
Enlightenment, also known as the 'Islamic Golden Age'
(8th-13th centuries CE; link),
which we will discuss further elsewhere. During this time,
arising from the Qu'ranic and Hadithic promotion of
knowledge, learning, and education, there were significant
advances in state-sponsorship of scholarship, openness to
prior cultural knowledge transmission from earlier
civilizations, law, branches of philosophy, branches of
mathematics, and of course, for this section,
astronomy—including the naming of the stars. Open to the
Greek science of ἀστρονομία (link)
which is etymologically rooted in ἀστρον or 'stars' and νομία
coming from νόμος, 'law,' i.e., 'law of the stars' and also
a cognate of όνομα or 'naming of the stars.' And name them,
the Arab-Islamic astronomers did, giving them Arabic names,
many of which, even when corrupted by non-Arabic
transcribers were transmitted to us: List
of Arabic star names. Certain of these Arabic star
names have persisted are are included in modern astronomical
star atlases, while also being included in the astronomical
knowledge cited for Islamic religious purposes: https://astronomycenter.net/star.html.
In modern times, the International Astronomical Union (IAU;
cited below) has adopted conventions for naming
stars.
One of the improved astrolabes of the Arabic-Islamic
Enlightenment epoch (link;
for more examples of Arab-Islamic astrolabes, see link).
The Bahrain blog site
points out that about 1000 named stars were given Arabic
designations, stars that guided Arab travelers across the
desert and the sea.
The Arab
Islamic Golden Era / Enlightenment scholars also transmitted
Ptolemy's Almagest or the
Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις ('Mathematical
Syntaxis'), in Latin, Syntaxis Mathematica, and
later called Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις ('The Great
Treatise') or in Latin, Magna Syntaxis. Working
from the Greek for
μεγίστη ('greatest'), the Arab Islamic
scholars called the work, اَلْمَجِسْطِيّ,
transliterated al-majisṭī, i.e., 'the
greatest,' or what we know as the Almagest (link).
Pages from the Arabic Almagest
with astronomical tables (Bodleian Library, University
of Oxford; image).
See also the
exhibit, "Arabic in the Sky: Astronomy a Thousand Years Ago"
(link).
On the Arabic-Islamic advances in astronomy, see Lebling, R.
(2010). Arabic in the sky. Saudi Aramco World Magazine
(September-October): https://www.academia.edu/2324827/Arabic_in_the_Sky.
Some of the brightest stars in our skies with their Arabic names (see
link
above).
A few centuries
later, during the Scientific Revolution, Johannes Bayer
published his Uranometria (1603, 1661; 'Bayer's
drawings') star maps running through two editions in the
years of the so-called Age of Exploration, based on accounts
of travelers, added 12 more southern constellations in the
celestial Southern Hemisphere.
Uranometria, 1661 (link).
.jpg)
12 new southern constellations of Johannis
Bayer (https://skytonight.org/index.php/iau;
1603, 1661 frontispieces linked
& above right).
Dutch
cartographer Frederik de Wit's Planisphaerium
coeleste (1670) not only portrays the
constellations as viewed in 1670, after Bayer's epochal
combining of artistic brilliance with his scientific
magnitude classification of stars in Greek letters, but de
Wit's planisphere also summarizes the contending 'war of the
world-views' clash of cosmologies in the early
Enlightenment: The Copernican and Tychonic systems vs the
Ptolemaic system. This again shows that a time of real
intellectual ferment includes controversy over competing
cosmologies, a vital situation again achieved in the
mid-20th century, before the new Ptolemic system began to
shut down debate (as we discuss in the next chapter).
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References
on the origin & etiology of the Constellations
- IAU Constellations (88). The
Sky Tonight: The cultural archaeology of the
stars. https://skytonight.org/index.php/iau.
The 88 constellations with their 1922 established
boundaries by the International Astronomical Union
(IAU), as well
as historical constellation star maps, including
high resolution images of the most beautifully
artistic of them all, the Uranometria
(1603, 1661)
of Johannes Bayer (1572-1625) with artist-engraver
Alexander Mair (1559-1617). https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-309.
(archived facsimile).
- Archaeoastronomy overview: http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/astronomy.htm.
- Barentine, J. C. 2016. The
Lost Constellations: A History of Obsolete,
Extinct, or Forgotten Star Lore. Heidelberg
/ New York / Dordrecht / London: Springer Praxis
Books.
- de Lacaille, N.-L. 1763. Coelum
Australe Stelliferum. H.L. Guerin & L.F.
Delatour. LINKS....
- Kanas, N. 2019. Star Maps:
History, Artistry, and Cartography (3rd
edition). Chichester, UK: Springer, Praxis
Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13613-0.
- Motz, L. & Nathanson, C.
1988. The Constellations: An enthusiast's
guide to the Night Sky. New York, NY /
London, UK / &c.: Doubleday.
- Olcott, W. T. 1911. Star
Lore of All Ages: A Collection of Myths,
Legends, and Facts Concerning the Constellations
of the Northern Hemisphere. New York, NY /
London, UK: G. P. Putnam's Sons. The Knickerbocker
Press.
- Rappenglueck, M. A. 1996. The
Pleiades in the "Salle des Taureaux" Grotte de
Lascaux (France). Does a rock picture in the cave
of Lascaux show the open star cluster of the
Pleiades at the Magdalenien Era, ca. 15.300 B.C.?
In C. Jaschek & F. Atrio Barandela (eds.). Actas
del IV Congreso de la SEAC / Proceedings of the
IVth SEAC Meeting "Astronomy and Culture".
New York: Salamanca; pp. 217-225.
- Ridpath, I. 1988, 2018. Star
Tales (revised and expanded 2nd edition).
Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press. Supplementary
material online: Star Tales: Myths, legends, and
history of the constellations: http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/contents.html.
Astronomy writer and broadcaster: http://www.ianridpath.com/.
- Schilling, G., Tirion, W. (star
maps creator). 2019. Constellations: The Story
of Space Told through the 88 Known Patterns in
the Night Sky. New York, NY: Black Dog &
Leventhal Publishers.
- Seddon, C. 2020. Astronomy
from the Beginning: A History of Skywatching and
early Astronomers from Cave Paintings and Stone
Circles to the Renaissance and the First
Telescopes. London, UK: Glanville
Publications.
- Taylor, K. 2012. Celestial
Geometry: Understanding the Astronomical Meaning
of Ancient Sites. London, UK: Watkins
Publishing.
The de Wit 1670
planisphere which around the sidereal map, published
in the midst of the Copernican Revolution, the
various featured rival cosmologies and cosmic
schemata of then and of yesteryear, on the margins (image).
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Argo
Navis. The gift of the systematizing legacy of the
sky-observing Greeks in augmenting and transmitting the
ancient constellations to us, and of the
astronomer-uranographers or cartographers of the heavens
since who have together bequeathed to us a joint legacy of
science and art, artistic mythology in the service of
knowledge (scientia). A beautiful heritage they've
given to us in trust. Although de-recognized in the
International Astronomical Union's (IAU) constellations
(the only one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations mistreated in
this way), the ancient constellation Argo Navis
illustrates their magnificent bequeathal to posterity.
Sailing through the Milky Way, Argo
Navis, the ancient constellation recognized by the Greeks,
but rooted in earlier traditions (image from SkySafari 5
Pro from Beguerra Island, off the coast of Mozambique, as
per the Alpha Lyrae blog
of M. Hodgson).
Argo Navis beautifully pictured in
Johannis Bayer's Uranometria (1661;
link), following the tradition of sternward motion
by Aratos (; see below).
Long known by the Greeks, Argo Navis was
indeed not one of the constellations invented in their
systematizations (link).
In fact, a water-faring boat in the stars has been
imagined by various, geographically-dispersed peoples
for millennia (4000 BCE - 1500 BCE; 6000 ya - 3500
ya), long before the Greeks, in ancient Egypt, in
Sweden and in what would become Germany.
Celestial
boat from the Nebra sky disk (Germany), ~1750 - ~1500 BCE;
3750-3500 ya (link;
link).
If we go back further, we may even have a cultural link
between the sea-faring ancient Aegean Greeks of Minoa in
the Phaistos Disc (~1850 - ~1550 BCE; i.e., 2nd millennium
BCE) and the ancient Egyptians possibly connecting Argo
Navis and the ship of Khufu, for whom was built the Great
Pyramid. The story starts with a Minoan site on Crete
being buried and preserved by effects of the massive
eruption of the volcano Thera,
Θήρα (isle of Santorini,
Σαντορίνη) sometime before 1500 BCE
(~3500 ya), thus preserving an ancient disc of symbols
from the Minoan palace at Phaistos (Φαιστός, link),
called the Phaistos Disc (link).
The date eruption of Thera remained disputed as sometime
in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, until a paper was
published, Pearson et al. (2022. Geochemical
ice-core constraints on the timing and climatic impact of
Aniakchak II (1628 BCE) and Thera (Minoan) volcanic
eruptions. PNAS Nexus 1 (2), 1. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac048)
used geochemical traces in ice-core climate proxies to
anchor the Alaskan volcano Anackchuk II eruption to 1628
BCE, and thus calibratively constrain the possible dates
for the Thera eruption, corroborated with predicted ejecta
levels.
Left to Right: Aniakchak
II (Alaska) & Thera (Santorini): link.
Their calibrated dating results tend to support a
mid-1500s BCE dating for the Thera eruption.
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Pearson et al. (2022), Figure 1 (left) &
Figure 2 (above): link.
By pulling together the calibrated eruption
signatures in the Greenland and Antarctic
ice-cores with the radiocarbon (14C)
dating probability (with plateaus) and the
archaeological dating ranges, we are left with
some best candidate dates for a mid-latitude
eruption to leave an ice proxy record in both
Greenland and Antarctica. With an unknown
volcano (V1) tied to 1654 BCE and Aniakchak II
(V2) anchored to 1628 BCE, the three best
candidates for the Thera eruption date
follows, keeping in mind possible cultural
exchange with the Egyptian 'New Kingdom'
(~1560 to ~1500 BCE):
- V3: 1611
BCE
- V5-6:
1561/1558/1555 BCE (geochem. pattern
consistent with mid-latitude eruption
& correlates with tree rings in the
Mediterranean).
- V7: ~1538
BCE.
This makes the
1561-1555 BCE interval a very likely dating
for the eruption of Thera, and the
preservation of the Phaistos Disc.
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The Phaistos Disc was found
in a temple complex which had collapsed from an
earthquake, possibly connected with the Thera eruption.
Phaistos archaeological
site with sides A and B of the Disc (link).
For a long time, there have been several attempts to
interpret the symbols / pictograms on the Phaistos
Disc (sometime from ~1850 to ~1600 BCE). One evocative
theory by C. G. Watson (images link) suggests that the Disc
contains hidden geometric patterns and symbols in the
pictograms coding for various constellations in the
heavens, notably here, Argo Navis, Minoan mariners,
and possible references to ancient Egypt.
It
is interesting to note that, if these stellar
patterns are indeed discerned for the ancient Argo
constellation through connecting the 15
pomegranate{-star} pictograms (below), then the
ideogram of Argo Navis is depicted from an outside
view (and inverted upside down) rather than the
view from Earth, similar to the star map on the
replica Atlas of Parnese. Also, the inversion
makes celestial south 'up' rather than celestial
north.
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These
hypothesized patterns may also allude to the
stellar arrangements, including the stars and
their light paths through air shafts cut into the
Great Pyramid (Giza), when the light of Sirius is
at the correct alt-azimuth to enter down into its
pyramid chamber.
An inverted ancient Argo
arrangement may have mimicked the truss rope
arrangements of the MInoan and the Egyptian ships
during the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE; 5300-3200
ya), such as for example the great boat of Khufu,
pharoah of the Great Pyramid.
 
Minoan flotilla (above
left) & Khufu burial ship (above right)
|
Watson suggests that the Phaistos Disc
may memorialize marine cultural exchange between Minoa and
Egypt. For comparison we may consider Phoenician ships
which plied the Mediterranean during the same approximate
time frame also, c 14th century BCE (link).
That is
at least a highly speculative but evocative
hypothesis. We return to the traditional Greek Argo
Navis, with sails (Vela) to the celestial north,
rather than rope truss structure to the celestial
south.
The later classical Greek Argo Navis constellation is to
be found in this region of the Southern skies which
includes the thick Milky Way prominent on the left (with
Crux, the Southern Cross) and Canis Major with Orion on
the right, the bright star in the center right, Sirius in
Canis Major and the other bright star in the lower center,
Canopus in Argo. The same region has been broken up into
IAU's modern constellations, the region of Argo Navis
subdivided in green outline: Carina (Keel), Puppis (Poop
deck; Stern), Vela (Sail), and later Pyxis (the compass),
following the proposals of de Lacaille's Coelum
Astrale Stelliferum (1763). I remember my own thrill
when from the high desert I first saw in the sky and
recognized the keel star, Canopus (Carina), and stars
framing Argo's billowing sail (Vela):
Argo Navis, the ancient Greek
constellation ship of the Argonauts, along with Pyxis (de
Lacaille, 1756), the Compass (link).
Argo
Navis region (https://davidmalin.com/fujii/image/)
|
Argo
Navis region with IAU constellation boundaries (https://davidmalin.com/fujii/image/)
|
Aratos
of Soli, Άρατος ο Σολεύς c315/310 BCE - 240 BCE;
Phaenomena
(link).
"[v342] Beside the tail of the Great Dog the
ship Argo is hauled stern-foremost.
For not hers is the proper course of a ship in
motion, but she is borne backwards, reversed
even as real ships, when already the sailors
turn the stern to the land as they enter the
haven, and every one back-paddles the ship,
but she rushing sternward lays hold of the
shore. Even so is the Argo of Jason borne
along stern-foremost. Partly in mist is she
borne along, and starless from her prow even
to the mast, but the hull is wholly wreathed
in light. Loosed is her Rudder and is set
beneath the hind feet of the Dog, as he runs
in front."
|
Claudius Ptolemy, Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος
c100-c170 CE, oriignal title, Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις
or Mathematica Syntaxis, later from Arabic
Almagest (link),
p. 403, VIII 2. Location of the Milky Way,
paragraph H177.
"After that the milk {Milky Way} passes through
Argo. The western rim of the belt is defined by
the northernmost and most advanced of the stars
in the little shield in the poop [XL 5]. The
star in the middle of the little shield [XL 6],
the two stars close together under it [XL 8, 9],
the bright star at the beginning of the deck
near the steering-oar [XL 17] and the midmost of
the three stars in the keel [XL 38] are just
short of touching the same [western] edge. The
northernmost of the three stars in the
mast-holder [XL 22] defines the eastern rim,
while the bright star in the stern-ornament [XL
2] is 1o within the same [eastern]
edge, and the bright star under the rearmost
little shield in the deck [XL 31] is the same
amount, 1o outside the same
[eastern] edge. The southernmost of the two
brilliant stars in the middle of the mast [XL
27] touches the same edge, and the two bright
stars at the point where the keel is cut off [XL
35, 36] are about 2o
inside the advance rim. At that point the milk {Milky
Way} joins the belt through the legs
of Centaurus. The consistency in this area too.
throughout Argo, is somewhat rarefied, but the
sections of it around the little shield, the
mast-holder and the point where the keel is cut
off are more dense."
|
|
|
Let us sail in the Argo
Navis!
James G. Brennan
(A free verse poem; link)
Dear Argo Navis
Let us sail
Across the Universe
In your ship of stars,
Let us resurrect you
To make you whole again!
Let
us raise up Vela your sails!
Together with Carina's Keel
And stern of Puppis to
Glide us through the
Celestial sea.
Guided
by Pyxis your compass
As we gladly man your ship
With your celestial crew,
Gamma Velorum, Zeta
Naos and Alpha
To name but just a few
Of your shimmering stars.
Some with planets,
Some with many star systems
In your ship of wonder,
Let us set sail
Dear Argo Navis.
Canopus the pilot
Is your brightest star,
The pilot of a Spartan King
No less! who's
Monument stands tall
At the mouth of the Nile,
Inspiring the name
Of the village resting
At the foot of his legacy.
Volans the flying fish
Carrying Beta Volantis
Will join us on our journey
Across the galaxy beyond our
Milky Way to the far reaches
Of our vast expanding Universe.
Maybe we will never reach its edge,
Dear Argo Navis.
Do Take us with you
Dear Argo Navis,
It is only with you
We would feel so safe,
Sailing through dust clouds
Interstellar gas clouds,
Meteor showers and comets
Around our galaxy
Full of constellations.
Let us visit Sagittarius and
The lagoon nebular,
Skip across to Taurus
To see the crab nebula,
I hear it has a pulsar
At its centre so small
Yet more dense than the Sun!
In the solar system
I call home.
Let's visit Pleiades the seven sisters,
Then on to Andromeda
With her trillions of stars!
Before heading off to
The billions of galaxies
Way out beyond
To the edge of our Universe.
Let's skip a black hole we don't need
An event horizon!
Our journey eventful enough
Sailing into the unknown
With a mighty constellation
Such as you dear Argo Navis.
You the one To safely see
Jason and the Argonauts
In their quest
For the golden fleece,
This, in turn, saw you
Take your place within the heavens
Our dear friend, the Argo Navis.
|
 
(Image of Argo across from
Brennan poem generated by StarTrackerLite app {24
Dec. 2022}; ; ; Argo visualization with modern
constellation lines, cf. link
& link,
right above 2 Argo paintings; ; Pyxis region to
the unadded eye, upper left; Pyxis region with
constellations visualized, upper right, dual image
link;
https://skytonight.org/pyx;
Pyxis location
in Galaxy; cf. link).
|
Another
gift of the ancient Greek constellation of
Argo Navis is that Abbe Nicolas Louis de
Lacaille created another new constellation
from Argo, Pyxis [box] or Pyxis Nautica, the
Compass or Mariner's Compass in 1765 (one of
17 constellations which he added to our
current 88).
On a Christmas Eve morning in the wee hours,
while I was sky-watching in the high desert,
and looking south at Argo Navis prow and sail
above the southerly horizon, I saw Pyxis
Nautica and realized that Pyxis pointed
generally up over my head toward the northern
celestial pole to my rearward celestial view,
like a magnetic compass, with its own magnetic
declination. Obviously, Abbe Lacaille must
have noticed that too!
|
Poem: https://medium.com/share-the-love/let-us-sail-in-the-argo-navis-dcb25964aff3;
image from link
on recurring nova T Pyxidis.
In 1791, Constantin François de
Chassebśuf, Comte de Volney (his contraction of Voltaire
and Ferney, now the village of Voltaire-Ferney) in his
'philosophy of history' masterpiece, Les Ruines, ou
Méditations sur les Révolutions des Empires,
included his chart "A view of the Astrological Heaven of
the Ancient, to explain the Mysteries of the Persian,
Jewish, & Christian Religions" as part of a Radical
Enlightenment attempt to explain the origins of the given
religions:
By 1922, the International Astronomical Union (https://www.iau.org/)
finalized recognition of 88 Constellations: https://skytonight.org/index.php/iau.
(
link).
For a
modern view of the skies, see the Tycho Catalog Skymap
version
2.0, which includes star imaging data from the
Tycho and Hipparcos star catalogs. This one shows down
to magnitude 5. One can also see alternative
sky views from other times and places (newer site).
Tycho Catalog Skymap 2,
magnitude 5
(Note the north and south polar projection distortion:
The light of Polaris is projected and spread out along
the top, center left).
IV. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins, PIE
Creation Myth, Body as Microcosm (20,000 - 5,000 ya),
& ancient Near Eastern myths
Now in
pursuit of the history of 'mythos to cosmos' / cosmology we
must return briefly to the time between about 20,000 years
ago before the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the
Younger Dryas, and Meltwater Pulse 1B, to find the DNA,
linguistic, cultural-mythogenic, and archaeological
evidences for our cultural background which gave rise to our
cosmologies over the last 5,000 years and the cultural and
religious settings of modern cosmologies, &c., to bring
us to and prepare for the Ionian Dawn of the Greeks (6th-3rd
c BCE). This gaping interval from 20,000 ya to 6th c
BCE covers some major, specific
linguistic-mythic-religious-archaeological transitions
essential to understanding the setting in the West for our
story of cosmology, not covered under other sections in
this chapter I.
Part of what fills in this interval is the history of the
Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
language and cultural group which spread across much of
Eurasia and the Near East from as
early as the Early Neolithic (7,500-5,500 BCE ~
9,500-7,500 ya), the Middle Neolithic (5,500-4,500 BCE ~
7500-6500 ya) down through the Late Neolithic (6,400-3,500
BCE ~8,400-5,500 ya). There are a number of hypotheses as to
how and in which where PIE development took place (link).
There is a large and development scholarship and evidence
mounting on PIE origins, but a good introduction is found in
Anthony, D. W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language:
How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the
Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
(i) Mini-Excursus on a paleolithic European
'dragon-slaying' ritual from 17,000 ya & 'northern'
primordial cosmogonic conflict. We might here
take a brief, and possibly significant excursis, on a late
Paleolithic ritual of dragon slaying from central Europe,
introduced by the Crecganford channel of Professor Jon D.
White, "The 17,000 year old European dragon ritual, and its
ancient mythological origins, link," which
provides a background for what follows. In the 'northern
cosmology' we find creation from primordial chaos and a
conflict between opposites, &c.
In 2016, Julian d'Huy published a Premiere reconstruction
statistique d'un rituel paleolithique: Autour du motif du
dragon. Nouvelle Mythologie Comparee / New Comparative
Mythology, No. 3. Published online. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313569680,
we find material remnants of such a dragon-slaying ritual,
carved in bone, near one of two headless snake skeletons
(another in another paleolithic site) near clay sculptures
of bison.
Fig. 5 has a consensus evolutionary tree;
Figs. 7-8 show the dragon / serpent-slaying; Fig. 9 may show
a triple-joined now headless serpent bundle in the upper
left, followed by game animals and hunter like figures
(d'Huy, 2016), perhaps making their world safe for
hunting(?). See also the very important bibliography of
d'Huy (2016).
A question: Could this Paleolithic 'dragon-slaying'
ritual also be a
re-enactment of a 'northern cosmology' myth of the
primordial conquest of chaos, which is a recurring theme
in later Indo-European mythologies, and thus antecedent
to the original Proto-Indo-European (PIE) creation
myth?
In 1814, a hypothetical ancestral family of languages (not
ethno-cultures) called 'Indo-European' was proposed, and in
1905 its hypothetical ancestral language,
'Proto-Indo-European' (PIE) was proposed; PIE supposedly
being, by the summary lights of historical linguists, to be
about 5,500 years old, according at least to Etymology
Online (see entries under 'Indo-European'
and 'Proto-Indo-European').
But now interdisciplinary research, using not only
historical linguistics, but also comparative mythology,
human DNA phylogenetics / biogeography and mythemes /
mythmotifs shows that to show that the age is older and the
development more complex. [For an accessible specialist in
PIE, Indo-European mythology, and more, complete with
lectures, illustrations, and most importantly academic
references and databases, see Prof. Jon D. White of the Crecganford
podcast / video channel, introduced and cited
earlier].
Since the 'northern cosmology' (cf. Witzel, 2012) in its
later PIE rendition is found in some form from west-central
Eurasia, the Norse (Northern Europe), central & Southern
Europe, the Greeks, the Middle East, the Iranians, and
India, it is from within the Indo-European language group,
and more ancient hypothetical PIE language that the
Proto-Indo-European creation myth emerges which is the
origin of these widespread myths (see the Crecganford link).
Two word examples illustrate PIE influence on later
languages and their evolution for the moment.
The 'fatherhood' of the
Proto-Indo-European ancestral language is illustrated by the
Proto-Indo-European root word for 'father'
(maps below from link; derived from
https://indo-european.eu/).
One could add, of course, Latin 'pater'
(patr from where we get pattern, paternity, patron,
patriotic, &c.; link),
Italian 'padre,' Spanish 'padre,' French 'pere,'
Catalan 'pare,' Portuguese 'pai,'
Galician 'pai,' Danish 'far,' and modern Hindi
'pita,' &c., &c., (link). See also
Etymology Online for 'father' (https://www.etymonline.com/word/father?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_1154).
The Proto-Indo-European word for deity,
here a 'sky god' or 'sky father' also makes itself manifest
in descendant languages, not only as a male but also a
female deity, e.g., deva. Note: The
Proto-Indo-Europeans were of course neither mono- nor
henotheistic. They were polytheistic, but did include a 'sky
god' as well as 'goddesses' in their language group pantheon
like many indigenous and ancient human cultures both north
and south.
Of course, one could also add, Greek 'theos,'
Latin 'deus,' Portuguese 'deus,' Galician 'deus,'
Spanish 'dios,' Italian 'dio,' French 'dieu,'
Corsican 'diu,' Catalan 'deu, {dewu}'
Irish Gaelic 'dhia,' Scots Gaelic 'dhia,'
Welsh Gaelic 'dwu,' Kannada 'devaru,' and
maybe even Khazakh 'quday' [?], Finnish 'jumala'
[?] (link).
This of course all comes from a verb, a Proto-Indo-European
root verb 'dyeu-' = "to shine," in derivatives, "sky,
heaven, god" (quoted from Etymology Online https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dyeu-?ref=etymonline_crossreference,
where a multitude of derivative words may be found).
So what is the multidisciplinary dating for the
Proto-Indo-European putative language, in effect along with
its creation myth? In 2011, R. D. Gray, Q. D. Atkinson,
& S. J. Greenhill published, Language evolution and
human history: what a difference a date makes. Phil.
Trans. R. Soc. B 366 (1567), 1090. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0378.
Combining linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, and human
genetics, they applied the methods of computational
phylogenetic systematics (part of my own discipline) to
generate this date-scaled evolutionary phylogeny or family
tree, along with 4 different molecular clock statistical
tests using the BEAST (Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis
Sampling Trees) program (link):
As Gray et al. (2011) point out, the
phylogenetic tree puts the PIE origin about ~8700
ya, and a major diversification by ~2,000 years
later, which continued.
|
Four
estimates emerged, which we are color-coded
above as frequency peaks for heuristic display.
|
These
dates around ~8700 ya have been further supported and
both the Anatolian and steppe sources of the
Indo-Europeans have found support. See, Lazaridis, I.,
Patterson, N., Mittnik, A. et al. 2014. Ancient
human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for
present-day Europeans. Nature 513, 409.
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13673.
and also Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N. et
al. 2015. Massive migration from the steppe was a
source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature
522, 207. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14317.
From Proto-Indo-European to the
Indo-European languages, we have this overall
evolutionary family tree with citation:
And here we take a look back at the earliest PIE
origins post-Younger Dryas:
And what was that PIE Creation Myth? Comparative
mythology strongly suggests that under the large umbrella of
the 'northern cosmology' background (tens of thousands of
years) the Proto-Indo-European creation myth (~8,000-6,000
ya) from which the creation myths in our Indo-European
mythologies and surviving religions descend with
modification, including Vedic religion (later, Hinduism),
Greek myth, Norse myth, Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite,
Egyptian, and the much later Abrahamic faiths, including the
late-captured 10 creation myth versions textualized in our
Hebrew bible (as we shall see below). The Proto-Indo-European creation
myth has been reconstructed thus in concise form by D. W.
Anthony, 2010. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How
Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the
Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press; as described with many more academic references by
Jon White in the Crecganford channel ("The family tree of
religion - Finding the Creation Myth of the proto Indo
Europeans;" link).
The PIE Creation Myth
reconstruction with its battle of primordial opposites
resulting in the origin of sky, earth, & ocean gods;
also featuring mothering cattle,
and ritual sacrifice to guard against primordial chaos:
In the
beginning of the cosmos two beings were created,
Manus and Yemo, meaning man and twin, and also a
giant cow on which they suckled. Manus wanted to
stop wandering through the cosmos, and to have a
home, and so sacrificed Yemo, and from his body
created the Sky god, the Ocean god, and the Earth.
He traveled down to the Earth, and became a
priest, teaching that through ritual sacrifice he
would keep the world in order {from chaos}.
|
Anthony, 2010; link; see also link
on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) creation myth.
In Southwest Asia, what we refer to as the Ancient Near
East, the PIE creation myth was transmitted down a lineage
of descent as illustrated:
_1.png)
(link).
The
Enuma Elish has a geneology of gods
descending from the primordial parents of Father
Sky Apsu and Chaos Mother Tiamat
(which is reflected in the allusions to the
primordial chaos of waters, Tehom, and
other monsters of chaos in the much later
editions of creation myths in the Hebrew bible),
as well as sibling rivalry and fratricide among
gods and humans (see Derek Lambert's Mythvision
podcast channel discussion of "The origin
of Cain and Abel is insane;" link;
as well as antecedent gods such as 'El, Ba'al,
and Yhwh in the "Religion and literature of
ancient Palestine," link;
as well as also see the main homepage on
scholarly and archaeological advances in
Palestine: https://www.religionofancientpalestine.com/).
|
Proto-Indo-European
creation myth from the Russian Steppe and outward
West Asiatic peoples
traveled south from the Steppes and ultimately a
group speaking what became Sumerian settled in
Mesopotamia, bringing their own version of the PIE
creation myth
The old Babylonians
settled and they had their own version of the PIE
myth:
The Enuma Elish
"When on high...."
|
Later representation of the Babylonian
creation myth with the Monster of Chaos facing off against
the Sun God (link).
A. Excursus
on ancient Near Eastern Temples as Microcosms of
Heaven & Earth with Microcosmic Concentricity
(21st century BCE - 1st century CE).
Even in an age of basic geocentric / anthropocentric
conception, these ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean
world temples achieved an early conceptual breakthrough in
that they focused the concentric cosmos not on humankind on
Earth but on a divine space / spaciousness / emptiness in
Heaven. This was inadvertently a step toward the
Epicurean-Copernican-Brunesian Revolutions of a truly
Universe-centric world-view to come. In that, despite the
myth-as-literalism of later fundamentalists and political
establishments in the later Abrahamic religions, they
constituted a step forward in that Mythos-to-Cosmos process
we are tracing in the history of cosmology and cosmogony.
Exposing this extended story continues the Enlightenment
legacy project of stepping behind the later and modern myths
to trace our history.
Ancient Mesopotamian
tri-partite cosmos or world-view
Oldest known world
map, excepting the older temples described below: The
Babylonian Imago Mundi
(6th century BCE; Wikipedia).
Tri-partite cosmos or world-view
(image from Wilson, 1980)
Mesopotamian
Babylon / Ur. The Babylonian world system was adapted
from an earlier Sumerian cosmology (image from Wilson, 1980). There is some evidence that
the earlier Mesopotamian world-views sought to include
naturalistic explanations of the Universe, before succumbing
to the appeal to capricious deities and their strife in the
origin of the world, which is normally associated with
Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cosmologies (Sagan, 1985).
The
tri-partite cosmos of the Mesopotamian cosmology and creation
myths (link).
The much
later Hebrew world system (known in the West from the Bible)
developed from the older Mesopotamian and Mediterranean
world-views, including the local indigenous Canaanite
cosmologies in Syro-Palestine:
Tri-partite cosmos: From Harper's
Bible Dictionary (digitalcolorbydoctrbill)
(cf. http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/commoncosmos.htm).
Tri-partite cosmos or world-view: A
somewhat more naturalistic representation in the late
recension book of Job
(http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/gathman/ui415/cosmology.htm).
A brief comparison &
contrast between the older Mesopotamian and the younger
Israelite / Judahite cosmologies
|
Ancient Near Eastern
(ANE), Mesopotamian / Babylonian mykthology cosmology
|
Ancient Hebrew
cosmology
(post-Exilic; 539 BCE to beginning of 1st century CE),
a Judahite creation myth response to the more ancient
ANE mythology
|
- Earth set on
foundations
- Dome of heaven with
sun, moon, planets, stars
- Waters above the dome
- Waters under the
earth
- World of the dead
underneath
- Highest heaven—
Babylonian version of the empyrean realm of light
|
- Earth set on
foundations
- Dome of heaven
(firmament) with sun, moon, stars
- Waters above the dome
- Waters under the
earth
- World of the dead
underneath—Sheol
- Heaven of heavens,
i.e., realm of God and His glory
|
| Divine-mythological
non-prior and non-transcendent, creation polythetic and
invested with 'moral intent' |
Divine priority and
transcendence, creation unitary, unworthy of worship
& intrinsically devoid of 'final moral intent' at
least in the later more naturalistic book of Ecclesiastes (hevel
concept; Greer,
1995 unpublished).
Although still mythologizing, the Hebrew system
indicated a partial demythologizing of the Mesopotamian
world, reflecting earlier mythos.
|
The ancient Near
Eastern temples across the centuries and across cultures
prior to the Common Era were actually tripartite microcosms
of the ancient cosmos / world-views: the outer courts
representing Earth and the subterranean world, the inner
courts representing the skies, and the inner sanctum
representing the heavens beyond the skies, the heaven of
heavens (Walton, 2010. The Lost World of Genesis One:
Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press). Aside from archaeology,
because of the biblical tradition we have some familiarity
in our day about ancient temples from the 2nd Temple period
of Judaism. We start with other older ancient temples which
exhibit such concentric microcosm reflection of the cosmos
as the temple dwelling of the gods, represented in microcosm
by the temple architecture.
The paradigmatic Near Eastern microcosm Temple of Amon-Re
complex at Karnak in Thebes was built up during the "New
Kingdom" (1550-1070 BCE), with site being first developed
during the "Middle Kingdom" (2055-1650 BCE) apparently in a
previous sacred site the Egyptians knew as "The Most Select
of Places" (Ipet-isut).
(link).
|
 |
"Tent
pole" columns, Festival Temple of Thutmoses III
(c 1479-25 BCE) at Karnak, Luxor, Egypt (link).
|
Temple as [micro]Cosmos,
i.e., microcosmic concentricity
"Conceptually, temples in Egypt were connected to
the idea of zep tepi, or 'the first time,'
the beginnings of the creation of the world. The
temple was a reflection of this time, when the mound
of creation emerged from the primeval waters. The
pylons, or gateways in the temple represent the
horizon, and as one moves further into the temple,
the floor rises until it reaches the sanctuary of
the god, giving the impression of a rising mound,
like that during creation. The temple roof
represented the sky and was often decorated with
stars and birds. The columns were designed with
lotus, papyrus, and palm plants in order to reflect
the marsh-like environment of creation. The outer
areas of Karnak, which was located near the Nile
River, would flood during the annual inundation—an
intentional effect by the ancient designers no
doubt, in order to enhance the temple's symbolism."
(Ref.
Wilkinson, R. 2000. The Complete Temples of
Ancient Egypt. New York, NY: Thames &
Hudson; p. 77. Link;
image link below).
|
.
The Hypostyle
Hall (c 1250 BCE) referenced in Elizabeth Cummins, "Temple of
Amun-Re and the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak," in Smarthistory,
November 27, 2015,
accessed February 16, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/temple-of-amun-re-and-the-hypostyle-hall-karnak/.
Floor plans of various Ancient
Near Eastern temples (Al-Jameel, 2008. link;
Fig. 2).
'Ain Dara (1300-740 BCE). This ancient site
contains a late Bronze Age to Iron Age Neo-Hittite temple in
northern Syro-Palestine: Monson, J. M. 1999. The temple of
Solomon: Heart of Jerusalem. In Hess, R. S. &
Wenham, G. J. (eds.). Zion, city of our God. C. The Ain
Dara Temple: A New Parallel from Syria. Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing; pp. 12-19. And Monson, 2011. first
published in 2000. In Shanks, H. (ed.). Biblical
Archaeology Review (BAR); cf. Stone, E. C.
& Zimansky, P. E. 1999. The Iron age Settlement at
ʻAin Dara, Syria: Survey and Soundings. BAR
International: J. & E. Hedges; 146 pp. Monson then
republished a paper, in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110714084050/.
It has attracted increased interest because the
'Ain Dara temple is built on an ancient plan, familiar to us
from the later Judahite legendary tales of a biblical
'solomonic temple' (I Kings 1, 6-7; II Chronicles 3), which
was likewise described as being dedicated in a '7-day week'
suzerainty covenant dedication interval. This was reflected
much later in the 7-day cultic creation-dedicatory myth form
within the later rescended Genesis 1 cultic retelling of the
creation myth, that is, spatially and temporally both
exhibiting microcosmic concentricity, respectively.
View of the 'Ain Dara
basalt-on-limestone temple with the base mythical
winged-lion creatures or cherubim, before it's
criminal destruction by the Turkish Army in the
criminal western proxy war against Syria
(2011-present).
|
Another view of the magnificent
pre-2018 'Ain Dara temple.
|
Again, an obligatory pair of winged
lion mythical creatures or cherubim, in basalt.
|
Bas reliefs of cherubim at the
base, upon the top of which are the feet and legs of
outward facing mythical creatures, most likely also
cherubim—all in magnificent basalt.
|
 .jpg)
This largely intact (at the time)
basalt mythological winged lion with eagle's claws,
i.e., a cherubim, helps us reconstruct how the
outward walls above bas relief consisted of outward
facing cherubim.
Of great significance in our history of
cosmology-making are the giant engraved footprints
(each about 1 meter long, 3'3") entering the 'Ain
Dara temple from the courtyard portico (see God:
An Anatomy....). These seem to be the
footprints of the deity, god or goddess, entering
the divine microcosmic concentricity of the temple
space. I've put them in negative inverse image to
capture the cosmic significance of this
proto-Copernican steps forward in these ancient
temples, centering their temples on a divine
cosmos space, guarded by myth—an important step
indeed of the Mythos to Cosmos journey.
|
|
(link).
Above: Note the microcosm
concentricity, and the portico pillars at the
courtyard. Right: Note the mythological creatures,
including winged cherubim.
|
|
 This
figure resembles the 'master of beasts' motif.
|
|
Monson (2011) figures 3-8, 12, 14, 15. The
temple at Hazor (above lower right) is included by the
author for comparison (link).
Tell Ta'yinat (
c1000-738 BCE). This Bronze IV site is an
important center of Kinalua in the Neo-Hittite
city-kingdom of Palistin (
c1000-738 BCE) in Syro-Palestine, which had an Iron Age
II temple, built with the same microcosmic concentricity
of the ancient Near Eastern cosmological
temple-conceptions of the Universe. See Harrison
et al. 2009. Neo-Hittites in the 'Land of
Palistin.' Renewed Investigations at Tell Ta'yinat on
the Plain of Antioch. Near Eastern Archaeology
72 (4), 174-189, 2009;
and Before and After
the Storm: Crisis Years in Anatolia and Syria
between the Fall of the Hittite Empire and the
Beginning of a New Era (ca. 1220-1000 BC). 2012.
A Symposium in Memory of Itamar Singer. University of
Pavia; pp. 7-8.
.jpg)
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Left: The layout of the Tell
Ta'yinat Iron II temple. Above: A pair of the
obligatory winged mythological creatures, or
cherubim.
|
(link).
_f5.3.png)
From Batiuk et al. in Yener (ed.). 2005 (link).
See Osborne et al. 2019. Urban built
environments in Early 1st Millennium BCE
Syro-Anatolia: Results of the Tayinat Archaeological
Project, 2004-2016. Bulletin of the American
Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 382
(1), 261. https://dro.dur.ac.uk/29754/2/29754.pdf.
See also Batiuk et al. 2005. The Ta'yinat
Survey, 1999-2002, in The Amuq Valley Regional
Projects, Volume 1: Surveys in the
Plain of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey,
1995-2002, Oriental Institute Publications 131,
171. Oriental Institute, which may be found in
Yener, K. A. (ed). 2005. The Amuq Valley
Regional Projects Volume 1: Surveys in the Plain
Of Antioch and Orontes Delta, Turkey, 1995-2002.
Chicago, IL: Oriental Institute Publications. https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/OIP_131.pdf.
Tel Motza (10th - 6th c BCE). Also in the
southern reaches of Syro-Palestine, a younger Iron Age
temple has been unearthed at Tel Motza about 7 km NW of
the Jerusalem 'old city' (https://www.telmoza.org/). The tell was
apparently an important site far earlier in the
pre-pottery Neolithic of the 8th-7th millennia BCE. The
name Motza is mentioned in later biblical myth (Joshua
18, 25). There is evidence of settlement of the site
during Iron Age II (10th-6th centuries BCE). The temple
complex itself was constructed in the late Iron IIA
(late 10th-early 9th c BCE) and involves a temple
(exposed to about 20 m x 13 m) and a temple courtyard,
with evidences of cultic use in different phases down to
the late 7th - early 6th centuries BCE. The Tel Motza
temple is similar to other temples in ancient
Syro-Palestine such as in Ain Dara and Tell Ta'yinat,
discussed above. It has an E to W orientation. It is
highly significant that this is an actual Iron Age
temple from near the location where the legendary
'solomonic temple' was supposed to have been, thus
illustrative of how later Judahite myth-making in
post-Exilic times created an ideal in a legendary
Davidic-Solomonic past, departing from historical
realities.
The ancient Greek mythology had a god Chaos who was
conquered in primordial ordering of the Cosmos / World.
"Creation" (1875) by George Frederic Watts
(1817-1904; link).
The Greek
Parthenon (built between 447-438 BCE upon on an older
temple site for Athena and destroyed by the Persians in
480 BCE) also exhibits the same microcosmic concentricity.
The Parthenon in 1978 (link);
scale and details of the floor plan (link).
Floor plan of Temple of Horus,
Edfu (link).
The reconstruction of the Judahite so-called '2nd temple' in
Jerusalem (c 586 BCE - 70 CE) also illustrates the more
ancient patterns of temples as microcosm of the cosmos,
i.e., microcosmic concentricity. As indicated the temple
dedications in the ancient Near East also reportedly took
place in 7 day time periods, the creation week in the latest
recension of the Genesis 1 creation myth reflects a cultic
tour through the temple patterned in Torah.
Reconstructed floor plan of the so-called '2nd temple'
(Herodian) in Jerusalem (link).
Temple plan of Ezekiel hoped for in exile (based on words of
a Hebrew prophet in the Babylonian exile, 593-571 BCE,
probably written down later by scribes as stated in the
Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 15a; link;
referenced);
a
temple of religious vision still sacred in the faith of
modern religious Zionists, Jewish and Christian.
The original PIE creation myth and its
descendants entails the primordial conquest of Chaos:
Pictured here in this biblical engraving as "The destruction
of Leviathan" (link).
- "One
stretching out the heavens" an oral fragment from the
Babylonian captivity and probably of Babylonian origin,
captured late in various literary forms & settings
(5th-4th centuries BCE). Note: This author, in an
exuberant youthful, thrilling, apologetic stage of
faith, before personal knowledge of historical
exegesis and scholarship, inspired by the thoughts of
Robert Jastrow then in a Reader's Digest
article, distilling his book, God and the
Astronomers (1978. 2nd ed. New York, NY: W. W.
Norton), hypothesized that the ancient Tanakh
had somehow foreseen modern Big Bang cosmology.
Jastrow had ended his volume with these words: "For
the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power
of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has
scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to
conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the
final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who
have been sitting there for centuries." This
apologetic encounter was one of the major triggers of
this author's interest in cosmology.
- Job 9:8
(7th-4th c BCE): Cited as a part of the 'wisdom of the
ancients' likely Babylonians.
- Psalm
104:1-2 (~10th?-5th c BCE putative origins,
final edition in Hellenistic period: 312-63 BCE): Part
of the 150 psalm anthology embedded in a
suzerainty-form creation myth, alluding to primordial
conflicts with gods of chaos; cf. later dispute
between polytheism and henotheism. See Alter, R. 2007.
The Book of Psalms. New York, NY: W. W. Norton;
pp. xiv-xv.
- Deutero
(ii)-Isaiah (ch. 40-55; 6th c BCE, anon. author
during Exile) covenant identifier of Yhwh in oracular
formula (40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:12-13;
51:12-13; cf. Kline, 1963); fragment not found
in Proto(i)-Isaiah (ch. 1-39; 8th c BCE), nor in
post-exilic
- Trito(iii)-Isaiah
(ch. 56-66; ~4th c BCE). It is fascinating that this
fragment only appears in Exilic time within the Isaiah
compilation. The precise relative dating of the
fragment's appearance and disappearance in Isaiah may
constrain a late Exilic date for Psalm 104.
- Jeremiah
10:12 (ch. 1-25, 627-586 BCE; followed by later
chapters put together by post-Exilic Deuteronomists,
with final edition in 2nd c BCE), i.e., a covenant
identifier of God (Anderson, 1993).
- Zechariah
12:1 (1st Zech. 1-8 in 520-518 BCE, 6th c BCE;
2nd Zech. 9-14 in 5th c BCE) - covenant identifier of
God (Ibids.)
- Alluded to
elsewhere: Job 26; 36; Gen. 1; Isa. 40:12;
&c. (written 7th-4th c BCE; Kugler &
Hartin, 2009).
- Job 26
(7th-4th c BCE) 'El's warrior-king conquest of the
Rephaim (mythological titans, underworld; cf.
'northern cosmology' > Proto-Indo-European myth >
Sumerian > Babylonian > Hebraic, &c.), Rahab
(primordial sea monster), and 'the primeval serpent'
conquest over chaos. Alluded to numerous times in Hebrew
scripture, cf. Tiamat-Tehom parallel, etc. (cf.
Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, etc.; cf. Heidel,
1942; D Baldwin, 2006; Kikawada & Quinn, 1985;
Clausen & Wheeler, 2006; &c.).
- Job 28
(7th-4th c BCE): Canaanite high god El's primordial
quest for wisdom, in making the world, God finally finds
wisdom! (Kugel, 1999).
- Job 38-40
(7th-4th c BCE): Yhwh as suzerain summons / questions
vassal (Job) about how he established his domain as
heaven & earth (cf. Kline, 1963; Anderson, 1993),
making free use of the mythological monsters and
conflicts.
- Psalm 104
(~10th?-5th c BCE putative origins, final edition in
Hellenistic period: 312-63 BCE). Yhwh's primordial
conquest of Earth as ancient NE suzerain chieftain-king
on behalf of vassal king, mankind.
- Psalm 74
(~10th?-5th c
BCE putative origins, final edition in Hellenistic
period: 312-63 BCE): Yhwh as warrior-king in
the primordial creation-conquest of the
Leviathan (mythological titans, underworld),
Rahab (multiheaded primordial sea monster), a
conquest over chaos.
- Genesis
2-3 (written 500-400 BCE). J source portraying
Yhwh as a Mesopotamian 'great king' planting a vassal
kingdom for mankind (cf. Kline, 1963; Anderson, 1993).
- Genesis 1
(written 500-400 BCE). E source: Order out of chaos in
covenant form, thematic order: (i) forming &
separating / filling & (ii) adorning the formless
& empty (cf. Kline, 1963) Vanquishing 2 ancient
Near Eastern deities per each creation day. Hebrew
temple layout, also, forming & separating / filling
& adorning. 6 days even-morn; 7th does not; cf.
7-day dedications of temples.
Genesis 1,
the so-called "creation week" is actually a temple microcosm
dedication ritual lasting 7 days, which is a
topically-organized, rather than a chronologically
organized, tour of the Near Eastern cosmos-view and the Near
Eastern patterned Hebrew temple (described in Torah) as a
memorial to the creation by high sky god 'El, a Canaanite
deity in Palestine, which was supplanted by Yahweh in later
Hebrew religion, an imported southern Edomite desert deity,
south of Palestine, adopted over time into the Canaanite
pantheon under 'El, until post-exile, and adapted until eventually
supplanting and becoming the one god of Hebrew religion
(henotheism to monotheism transition) in the Persian
period.
7-day
Temple-Microcosmos dedication: Days 1-3 forming &
separating; Days 4-6 filling & adorning.
Prologue ('Day 0'):
Chaos formless & mixed
darkness
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Day 1
Day 4
|
Day 2
Day 5
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Day 3
Day 6
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Epilogue (7th day):
Cosmos formed & set apart
illuminated
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Schematic
conceptual organization (table above) corresponds to the
pictorial illustrations
(below) of the entrance into the Hebrew temple & of the passage
through the topical, cultic-dedicatory 'creation
week.' Stanhope
(2020; see reference in the box below) has
summarized data on the multiples of 7 in the
numerology of these myths. The topical(-mythic)
rather than chronological-literal organization of
the cultic 'creation week' has been recognized for
centuries among Judeo-Christian scholars (cf. Walton, 2010; &c.).
Arises from the Northern Cosmology myths associated
with Afro-Transcaucasian-Eurasian-Amerind more
northerly migrations in the late
Pleistocene-Holocene transition.
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Hebrew temple entrance from
outer court (bottom) beyond which is wilderness
'chaos' up through the Holy, and into the Holiest
(top) corresponds to creation week days 1-3 (top
right) and days 4-6 (bottom left). (Link).
 |
 |
Some of the latest research strongly suggests that our
current version of the latest of the creation myths in the
Hebrew bible, those in Genesis 1 and 2 may actually
proceed from the Greeks, namely Plato's Timaeus
(written about 360 BCE: https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html).
As a part of a school of biblical scholars called the
Copenhagen International Seminar (22 volumes; link),
Russell Gmirkin has published a number of books arguing
for literary dependence in the Hebrew bible on Greek and
Hellenistic texts: Gmirkin, R. with Mein, A., & Camp,
C. V. (series eds.). 2006. Berossus and Genesis,
Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date
of the Pentateuch (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old
Testament Studies, 433). Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T
Clark; 2019. Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew
Bible (Copenhagen International Seminar), Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge, which
compares the law codes of the Pentateuch with the Greek
sources; and his forthcoming, 2024. Plato's Timaeus
and the Biblical Creation Accounts (Copenhagen
International Seminar). Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge.
Gmirkin argues controversially that the Pentateuch would
have been written about 270 BCE, using Greek sources in
the Great Library of Alexandria.
Comparison table
between events in Plato's Timaeus and Genesis 1
and 2.
(Image from the Mythvision documentary,
"Shocking Greek origins to Genesis," link,
reviewing Gmirkin's work and the advances made in Greek
& Hebrew bible comparative studies).
Whatever the dates of final redaction of these Hebrew
scriptures, they build upon a long, multi-layered set of
traditions and mythology going back to the
proto-Indo-Europeans. Ultimately, they are part of the
great Northern Mythology / story, and cosmology.
Judeo-Christian fundamentalists have forgotten, without
ever apparently knowing, the original
cultic-dedicatory-topical mythos meaning of those
mythic traditions which became the Genesis 1 and 2-3 creationary myths,
and have heralded instead a literal creation week ~5,700
years ago or less than 6,000 years. In fact there are at
least 10 creation myths captured late in the Tanakh
(Hebrew bible), and many more allusions to ancient myth.
Post-Enlightenment, this counter-Enlightenment trend has
been set in a literalist framework in conservative
religious circles which has adversely affected the
advances of scientific cosmology in cosmology-astronomy
(as we shall see in later pages), geology, paleontology,
and the biosciences. Furthermore, the fundamentalist
literalism has also often included a persistence of
numerology and numerological typology which has
unfortunately contributed to malign dualistic mysticism
and apocalypticism over the centuries, and sadly has too
often been wedded to a covenantal ingroup-outgroup
amorality (CIAO). The relevance to the actual advance of
scientific cosmology is negligible, having generated
heated controversies but very little light (other than
some historical understanding of how cosmology has
developed in the West over the last few centuries within
one specific tradition stream), and therefore, we note
it as the relic of modern misinterpretation which it is.
Fundamentalism can overlay what is
essentially the old Babylonian myth of (the Sun) god
triumphing over primordial Chaos
& superimposes it on a modern photograph /
understanding of a galaxy, a star system (link).
Fundamentalism too often mixes mythos with cosmos,
and can end up understanding neither.
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Select
References on Ancient Near Eastern Temple
Concentric Microcosms and their dedications, and
creation in the Hebrew Bible
- Ahlstrom, G. 1975. "Heaven
on Earth" at Hazor and Arad. Religious
Syncretism in Antiquity, ed. B. A.
Pearson. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, pp.
67-83.
- Blenkinsopp, J. 2011. Creation,
Un-Creation, Re-Creation: A Discursive
Commentary on Genesis 1-11. Edinburgh,
Scotland, UK: T&T Clarke International.
- Clifford, R. 1994. Creation
Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the
Bible, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph
Series 26. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical
Association.
- Horowitz. W. 1998. Mesopotamian
Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns.
- Hurowitz, V. 1992. I Have
Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in
the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest
Semitic Writings. Journal for the Study of
the Old Testament Supplement Series 115.
Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press; pp. 260-61, 275-76.
- Kingsbury, E. C. 1963. A
Seven Day Ritual in the Old Babylonian Cult at
Larsa. Hebrew Union College Annual 34,
1-34.
- Kugler, R. & Hartin, P.
J. 2009. An Introduction to the Bible.
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
- Levenson, J. 1984. The Temple
and the World. Journal of Religion 64,
275-298.
- ____. 1998. Creation and
the Persistence of Evil. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
- Stanhope, B. 2020. (Mis)interpreting
Genesis: How the Creation Museum
Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern
Context of the Bible. Louisville, KY:
Scarab Press. See especially chapters 8-9 on
Eden as "the cosmic mountain of god" and "the
meaning of the seven days of creation,"
respectively.
- Vogels, W. 1997. The Cultic
and Civil Calendars of the Fourth Day of
Creation (Gen 1,14b). Scandinavian Journal
of the Old Testament 11, 163-80.
- Walton, J. H. 2010. The
Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology
and the Origins Debate. (The Lost World
Series). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
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After that excursus
on the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian-Levantine gods and their
temple-microcosms in Near Eastern mythogeny, and the
cultural after-effects on the development of cosmology, we
return back to the Ancient Greeks in the early times before
when they first made a real transition from mythology to
cosmology, from Mythos to Cosmos, in their pioneering
attempts to understand the cosmos and its origins in
naturalist terms. Naturally all of the deities of
humankind are analogical in nature, falling within the
purview of human inventiveness, and should never be confused
with the ineffableness of Being, from which we see the
Universe, not to be confused with our cosmos-models (see
'Canis Major' / Spinozista analogical table below).
Following
on the legacy of the monistic Ionian-Milesian Greek
Enlightenment philosophers, such as Epicurus, transmitted down
to us via Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, and
further by Giordano Bruno, one of the founding early modern
natural philosophers who reinvisioned cosmology within in
their path in our Western culture was Benedict de Spinoza
(1632-1677) who in his extended Note to I Ethica Prop.
XVII, wrote concerning difference between our conceptions and
the reality of that unified Deus sive Natura (God or
the Universe): "...For intellect and will, which should
constitute the essence of Deity, would perforce be as far
apart as the poles from the human intellect and will,
in fact, would have nothing in common with them but the
name; there would be about as much correspondence between
the two as there is between the Dog [Canis Major], the
heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks." But first we must cross
from myth to cosmos. For that we turn explicitly to the
ancient Greeks.
.png)
Canis Major photo from
Australia (50 mm lens; link).
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Canis Major visualization
(with globular cluster M41; modified from link).
|
In his Note on I Ethica
Prop. XVII, Spinoza wrote concerning the difference
between our conceptions and intellect / will and the
reality of that unified Deus sive Natura (God or
the Universe): "...For intellect and will, which
should constitute the essence of Deity, would perforce
be as far apart as the poles from the human intellect
and will, in fact, would have nothing in common with
them but the name; there would be about as much
correspondence between the two as there is between the
Dog [Canis Major], the heavenly constellation, and a
dog, an animal that barks."
We think that Spinoza said "the least of it," writing
cautiously, rather than expansively, in the spirit of
his chosen motto, "Caute" or caution, a caution
necessary in his unfree times!
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(link).
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(https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5583/dog-facing-right; https://starregistration.net/media/wysiwyg/Constellations/Canis_major.png).
V. From the mists of Mythos
to the Greek 'Ionian Dawn': The first Enlightenment (Greek)
(8th-3rd centuries BCE)
And now we return formally and backtrack some in time to the
Greeks, who alone of all the ancient peoples in the West
pioneered the transition from Mythos to Cosmos, scientific
cosmology-making. We will propose a hypothesis for why the
ancient Greeks were the first to move toward Cosmos and
scientific cosmology-making. But first, some setting of the
background, the historical milieu, or what German scholars of
yesteryear called the Sitz im Leben (situation of
life) in the ancient Greco-Aegaean world.
A. Chaos to Cosmos in the Greco-Aegaean, Eastern
Mediterranean. This episode in the development of human
thought encompassed the first major systematic attempt to
demythologize or rather naturalize the world, mythology, and
cosmology into Nature or the Universe on the basis of natural
causation. It encompassed doubtless the greatest revolution in
the evolution of human thought and worldviews. It is worth noting that the
transition from prehistory to history is when oral culture
becomes written culture, records, and chronicles, and
descriptions of the world of any people. A seminal work on the
nature of oral and written cultures is Walter J. Ong's (1982)
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
(2nd ed.). London, UK / New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group: https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/Ong_Walter_J_Orality_and_Literacy_2nd_ed.pdf.
The Greco-Aegean world
(https://vault.hanover.edu/~pittenger/Roman-History/Assets/Images/Maps/Aegean2-terrain-regions.jpg);
translations to and from Ancient Greek (https://openl.io/translate/ancient-greek/).
.
The cultural milieu stage for the Greek Transistion is the
Greek colonization of the Mediterranean world (8th-6th
centuries BCE):
Greek colonies in red; Phoenician in yellow (link).
The ancient Greek (Homeric) world-vew very much resembles
the scattered islands and maritime home in the Aegean of the
Greek peoples of these centuries before the common era. From
this simple beginning emerged the first scientific
revolution in human history between the 6th through the 3rd
centuries BCE.
Early Greek cosmologies as
visualized by the heroic age epic poets, Homer and
Hesiod: The Oikoumene Gi or Οἰκουμένη Γῆ, i.e., the
inhabited Earth, was a floating disc of the
Mediterranean world surrounded by the waters of Okeanus,
(Koestler, 1959;
cf. Wilson, 1980; see
striking astronomical pictures from yesteryear https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/astronomy/page/5/),
Ὠκεανός, also Ὠγενός, Ὤγενος, or Ὠγήν, a mythological
Titan, son of Uranus and Gaia (link).
According to the father of Greek history /
historiography, Herodotos, Ἡρόδοτος (c484
- c425 BCE), the geography of the 'inhabited
Earth' or Οἰκουμένη Γῆ was also known
(as pictured in maps cited below).
Specifically also the geography of the Οἰκουμένη Γῆ, or, the
'inhabited Earth' according to Herodotos (5th c BCE).
Early Greek cosmology as embodied in the heroic age epic
poets, Homer and Hesiod, of the
inhabited Earth surrounded by Okeanus (Koestler,
1959; cf. Wilson, 1980; see striking
astronomical pictures from yesteryear https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/astronomy/page/5/); the
geography (link;
link)
derived from the writings of 'the father of history' Herodotos
(5th century BCE).
- Herodotus of
Helicarnasus or of Thurium (c484 - c425 BCE). Called
'the father of history,' a Greek historian,
geographer, and early ethnographer.
Herodotos of Thourioi or Helicarnasus
Ἡρόδοτος ὁ Θούρῐοι, or
Ἡρόδοτος ὁ Ἁλῐκαρνᾱσσός
originally from
Helicarnasus,
c484 - c425 BCE
.jpg)
Called 'the father of history' (link).
2nd century CE copy of a 4th century BCE bust
He traveled the
ancient world collecting stories and interviewing
people, writing in his introduction:
"Here are presented the
results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus
of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the
traces of human events from being erased by
time, and to preserve the fame of the important
and remarkable achievements produced by both
Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered
is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities
between Greeks and non-Greeks.
"
—From the Intro to
The Histories
(2008 R. Wakefield
trans. link).
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Excavated main street of ancient
Thurii.
Originally
from Helicarnasus, Herodotos emigrated to Thourioi
(and later was known as Herodotos of Thourioi as
stated by Aristotle).
- Coined the word
history or ἱστορία, an investigation by
narrative of events, although he also told of
events from the realm of myth, expressing his
belief in the intervention of the gods in
events.
- Wrote The
Histories or Ἱστορίαι
(link)
in IX volumes, which are almost theatrical
performances, about events from the rise of
the Persian Empire through the Greco-Persian
wars, the events and their causes
- Volumes I-II (link)
- Volumes III-IV (link)
- Volumes V-VII (link)
- Volumes VIII-IX (link)
Herodotos'
birth place: Helicarnasus.
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(link; link; link).
Since we are reconstructing a history of cosmology, it
is also necessary methodologically to include mention of
the founder of historiography or of scientific
historical inquiry, looking to natural causes, human
motivations, events verifiable by eye witnesses, without
recourse to interventions by the gods.
-
Thucydides of Halimous, a demos or
subdivision of Athens (c460 - c400 BCE). An
Athenian general and considered to be the father
of scientific historical inquiry, and the field of
historiography (link).
Back to back bust of Herodotus and
Thucydides (among the Farnesse Marbles collection)
with their contrasting methodological approaches to
history.
α—Metaphysics /
Ontology:
Working from what was probably a Sophist and
skeptical ontology, Thucydides summarized his
historical method, which prioritized primary, eye
witness sources:
- "To hear this
history rehearsed, for that there be inserted
in it no fables, shall be perhaps not
delightful. But he that desires to look into
the truth of things done, and which (according
to the condition of humanity) may be done
again, or at least their like, shall find
enough herein to make him think it profitable.
And it is compiled rather for an everlasting
possession than to be rehearsed for a prize"
(Thucydides 1.22).
For the Battle of Amphibolis (winter of
424-423 BCE), to which Thucydides and his forces
arrived too late to save the city from Spartan
capture, for which he was held responsible and
exiled:
- "I lived
through the whole of it, being of an age to
comprehend events, and giving my attention to
them in order to know the exact truth about
them. It was also my fate to be an exile from
my country for twenty years after my command
at Amphipolis; and being present with both
parties, and more especially with the
Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had
leisure to observe affairs somewhat
particularly" (Thucydides 5.26.5).
Ruins of
Amphibolis, E. Cousinéry (1831).
|
Thucydides of Halimous
Θουκυδίδης ὁ Ἁλιμοῦς
c460 - c400 BCE
A Roman 2nd century CE copy of a
4th century BCE bust
Thucydides
both a general in the Athenian military and also a
historian, author of the History of the
Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) between the
Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and the Delian
League led by Athens, including chronology and
Speeches in 8 books, translated in 2 volumes
(Fowlett's 1881 transl.):
Thucydides focused on the war, the
tragedy of the depths to which war takes humans,
noting, πόλεμος βίαιος διδάσκαλος, "war is a
violent teacher" (Thucydides 3.82-83).
Within his historical work,
Thucydides valued the preservation of oral
sources from oblivion, the most famous example
of which is his relating of the funeral epigraph
of Pericles or the Περικλέους Επιτάφιος (link),
the Athenian leader who promoted radical
democracy:
- "The whole
earth is the sepulchre of famous men; they
are honoured not only by columns and
inscriptions in their own land, but in
foreign nations on memorials graven not on
stone but in the hearts and minds of men"
(Thucydides 2.43).
Perikles hält die Leichenrede (Pericle's Funeral
Oration) by Philipp Foltz (1852).
|
(link;
link).
Twilight of the Greek Heroic Age & the
origins of Greek surviving mythology. But first
we turn back to the 8th century BCE and the epic
poetry from the twilight of the so-called Greek Heroic
Age, where the ground was already evolving from μῦθος
(mythos) toward κόσμος (Kósmos)—anticipating
the most significant transition in the history of
human cosmology-making to take place—the 'Ionian Dawn'
of the Greek Enlightenment (6th-3th centuries BCE),
the turn toward the world-view perspective of natural
causation to explain the world, the most unique idea
in the history of human ideas.
The Homeric-Hesiodic heroic transition starts with
roots in the ancient
Afro-Transcaucasian-Eurasian-Amerind 'Northern'
Cosmology, and further assimilates from there. We are here indebted in part to the
pithy, précis-like conciseness of Stefan
Stenudd's 2007 history, Cosmos of the
Ancients: The Greek Philosophers on Myth and
Cosmology. North Charleston, SC: BookSurge),
which builds, among other works, on Paul Veyne's
(1983) Les Grecs ont-ils cru ŕ leur mythes?
Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil; (1988 transl.),
Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? An Essay
on the Constitutive Imagination. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press; (Archive link).
To show how far this natural philosophy Revolution
went, we also cite historical summary of Margaret
O'Leary (2008). Anaxagoras and the Origin of
Panspermia Theory. Bloomington, IN:
iUniverse, and the many historical sources,
including the classical sources, she references.
The first Greek Enlightenment ignited in the 6th
century BCE. By the 5th century, some of the Greek
Enlightenment philosophers even naturalized the
origin of life (and biological evolution) by
arguing that life itself is a natural production
of the Universe, ubiquitous from the Cosmos with
Earth not even central, i.e., the theory of
panspermia. The earliest surviving source on the
ancient Greek philosophers was the Epicurean
Diogenes Laertios or Διογένης Λαέρτιος (3rd
century CE) Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
(translated; link).
At this point, we shall organize the Greek
contributions of ancient Greece (1500-300 BCE; link)
historically, chronologically, and methodologically as
follows.
- Mycenaean Greek (c1400-1200
BC),
- Dark Ages (c1200-800 BCE),
- Epic or Archaic period
(c800-500 BCE),
- the Classical period
(c. 500-300 BCE)
- Developments:
- The Greek
literary tradition began in the Mycenaean period of
Greek literature (c1600-1100 BCE; ~3600-3100 ya)
with oral transmission and the Mycenaean pictorial
script of Linear B, used for accounting and
record-keeping;
- Era of
Mediterranean wars and upheaval (1200-1000 BCE)
deleterious to Greek writing and culture, inaugurating
a 'dark age';
- 'Dark age'
(~1000 BCE until the 8th c BCE, when the Phoenician
alphabet was adopted;
- Greek
'heroic age' of epic and dramatic poets (8th-7th
centuries BCE) when that tradition included and in many ways
was founded in the epic poetic and dramatic
tradition of Homeros (8th century BCE) in the Illiad
and the Odyssey which may have simply
arisen from the textualization of an oral
tradition, as well as Hesiodos (8th c - ~700 BCE)
in the Theogony and Works and Days
and their discussion of the origins of the Greek
gods and myths, and the start of the tradition to
move from mythos toward cosmos.
Ancient Greek Heroic
Age (Homeric & Hesiodic): Chaos to Cosmos
Legendary
epic poet, Homer (8th century BCE), author of the
masterpiece epic poems, the Ἰλιάς or
Illiad (8th century BCE) and the Ὀδύσσεια or
Odyssey (8th century
BCE) based on the heroic times of the Trojan War (c1260-1180 BCE).
In the heroic Greek world of Homer's epic poems, the
traditional gods regularly interfere in the world, in
human affairs, causing events and eventualities in the
affairs of men and their fortunes. |
Homeros, Ὅμηρος,
epic poet (8th century BCE)
grants us a view of the traditional Greek mythological
view of the Cosmos. |
Hesiodos (~750-650 BCE).
Ἡσίοδος Hēsiodos,
'he who emits the voice' (link).
In his long
didactic
Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι (Works and Days), he opined
on the nature of the world and human life within it.
In one of the great transitions from
mythogony to cosmology and historical cosmology
(historicized account of the world), Hesiod posited a
transition from myth to history with his 'ages of man'
(lines 109-201, cf. link):
- Golden Age:
Fell within the reign of Cronus, Humans created by
the gods on Olympus lived and walked among the
gods, were good and noble, and had to do no work
because Nature provided her bounty. Men were wise
and beneficent beings on earth, δαίμονες from δαήμονες.
- Silver Age:
This age and since is within the reign of Zeus,
son of Chronos. Men lived 100 years under the
dominion of their mothers, and spent time in
strife with each other. But upon death, they
became "blessed spirits" in Tartaros.
- Bronze Age:
Men hardened by war, their central passion, and
thus undone by their violent ways. Their armor and
tools were forged of bronze. Their spirits were
left with no name, and dwelt in the "dark house of
Hades." This age ended with the flood of
Deucalion.
- Heroic Age:
The age of heroes was the exception in getting
better than the previous age. These heroes fought
at Thebes and Troy, and upon death went to
Elysium.
- Iron Age:
Hesiodos writes here. Humans live in toil and
misery, children dishonoring their parents,
brother wars with brother, and the social contract
between host and guest is forgotten. Might makes
right, and the bad lie to be thought good. Shame
or anger against wrong doing is lost. Babies will
be born with gray hair, and the gods will have
completely forsaken humans.
|
The
Greek pioneers in mythology, history, and science may be
thought of as starting with the early poet and
philosopher Hesiodos, who wrote Θεογονία,
Theogonia or Theogony
(origin of the World and the gods):
"Chaos was first of all, but
next appeared broad-bosomed Earth [Gaia]."
The Cosmos (κόσμος)
emerged in order (link):
(a) χάος
or Chaos
(b) Γαῖα
or
Gaia (Earth) (c) Τάρταρος or Tartaros (the Underworld),
and (d) Ἔρως or Eros (Love).
"The very first to exist is Chaos,
then Gaia, whose expansive lap
is the ever-safe foundation of the immortal gods
who live on the snowy peak of Olympos;
and then dark Tartaros, deep in the earth with its
expansive paths;
and then Eros, the most beautiful of the gods...."
Theogony
translated
in Leonard & McClure. 2004. Myth and Knowing:
An Introduction to World Mythology. McGraw-Hill;
p. 63.
Hesiodos' Theogony is a milestone in
transitioning from myth to metaphysics to
cosmology to history (cf. link),
however, it is important to note that it fits well
into the II. Northern Mythos-Cosmology of
the early Homo
sapiens 'out
of Africa' migrations.
|
The
Mycenean-Macedonian-Greek Theogony and Pantheon.
Of Homer and Hesiod, Herototus, the 5th century BCE
'father of history,' said in almost naturalistic terms:
"It was these [poets] who constructed a divine genealogy
for the Greeks and who gave the gods their titles,
allocated their powers and privileges to them, and
indicated their forms" (Stenudd, 2007; p. 26).
A Family tree of the Greek gods:
(link;
link).
The apotheosis (or translation up into heaven among the
gods) of Homer illustrates how mythology developed during
and after the Greek Heroic Age. In fact, many of the
constellations which the Greeks transferred from ancient
antiquity to post-classical Greco-Roman 'modernity' indeed
incorporated apotheosis or translation into the stars /
asterisms with the very mythical figures memorialized
there. Classicist Richard Miller showed in his history of
the creative effect of the Greco-Roman apotheosis or
'translation fable' evolving mythology on early Christian
belief in the resurrection (Miller, 2015. Resurrection
and Reception in Early Christianity. New York, NY /
London, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) gives
many references to the classical sources on the
transfiguration and apotheosis of not only Greco-Roman
mythical figures but also cultural heroes / heroines of
yore and of state into catasterisms, some associated with
our (Greek) canonical constellations—a uniting of cosmos
above with world beneath.
Apotheosis of Homer, in the 3rd century BCE Archelaos
sculpture relief with Zeus at the top, various
figures described in detail, and Homer being seated and
laurel-crowned at the lower left (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_the_poet_Homer,_replica_from_the_Archaelogical_museum_of_Naples,_Neues_Museum,_Berlin_(8169127839).jpg).
Other
poets in the epic / dramatic tradition include the following
who did reveal an early questioning approach to the gods and
the myths:
- Pindar of
Thebes (c518 - c438 BCE). Lyric poet.
Lyrical
poet 'at the dawn of the classical period,' Pindar
illustrates the views of a poet on the mythology and
values of Archaic Greece (Ruins of Thebes, 1882
artwork, link).
Pindar saw humans as living in respect of the
allowance of the gods:
"In truth it
is seemly for man to say of the gods nothing
ignoble;
for so he giveth less cause for blame" (Sandys,
J. 1946. The Odes of Pindar. Cambridge,
MA; p. 7).
In describing the passing glory of mortal humans
under the permittance of the gods in heaven (from
the Victory Odes):
What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days"
(Pythian VIII, lines 95-97; C.M.
Bowra, 1947 transl.
Pindari Carmina Cum Fragmentis, Editio Altera.
Oxford University Press).
Despite his
evident mortalism, Pindar held that humans have a
part of them of divine origin which survives death
to face rewards:
"And while
the body of all men is subject to over-mastering
death, an image of life remaineth alive, for it
alone cometh from the gods. But it sleepeth,
while the limbs are active, yet, to them that
sleep, in many a dream giveth presage of a
decision of things delightful or doleful"
(Sandys, 1946. Ibid. p. 591).
Thebes as
painted in 1842 (C. Rottman).
|
Pindaros of Thebes
Πίνδαρος ὁ Θήβα
(c518 - c438 BCE)
Considered to be a Roman copy
of a 5th century BCE bust of Pindar.
Pindar apparently
understood the power and even danger of story and
myth in shaping human thought:
"Story is
vast in range: New ways to find
and test upon the touchstone,
Here danger lies"
(Bowra, 1947 transl., p. 9).
The Roman poet, Horace, paid homage to Pindar's
poetry:
"A river bursts its banks and rushes down a
Mountain with uncontrollable momentum,
Rain-saturated, churning, chanting thunder—
There you have Pindar's style."
(Michie, J. transl. 1976. The
Odes of Horace. Penguin Classics)
|
(link; link).
- Euripides of Salamis;
Eὐριπίδης ὁ Σαλαμίς (c480
- c406 BCE).
Tragedian / playwright.
.jpg)
Euripides of Salamis
Eὐριπίδης ὁ Σαλαμίς
(c480 - c406 BCE)
An
author of a >30 plays, mostly tragedies, among
which are:
- Medea (431 BCE)
- Bellerophon (430
BCE)
- Hippolytus (428 BCE)
- Electra (420 BCE)
- The Trojan Women
(~415 BCE)
- The
Bacchae (405 BCE)
β—Physics /
Natural philosophy:
Through the words of characters in his plays,
Euripides hints at elements of an ontology and
cosmology naturalistic, at least elliptically in
his artistic vision:
- One character states:
"The goddess Demeter—she is Earth, call her
by whichever name you wish" (Bacchae,
1996 trans. R. Seaford, Warminster, p. 83).
- In the same play, the
myth of Dionysos being sewn into the thigh
of Zeus becomes a more naturalistic change
through time, utilizing the mythic metaphor:
"Having broken of a part of the Air of
heaven that encircles Earth, he gave this as
a hostage, removing Dionysos from quarrels
with Hera" (Bacchae, p. 83).
|
Ruins
of the ancient city of Salamis:
Coin of ancient Salamis:
Although we don't
have an explicit Ontology, there is a reference to
and implication of a non-theistic
α—Metaphysics / Ontology:
&
δ—Ethics /
Moral philosophy:
- Where is raised the
question of theodicy, a moral question about
how a benevolent god could allow injustice in
the world, in appropriately, the tragedy Bellerophon:
"Does someone
say that there are gods in heaven?
There are not, there are not, if a man will
not in folly rely on the old argument.
Consider it yourselves; do not build your
opinion
on my words. I say that a tyranny
kills many men and deprives them of their
possessions,
and breaking oaths destroys cities;
and doing this they are more happy
than those who live each day in pious peace.
And I know of small cities that honor the gods
which obey greater and more impious ones,
overcome by the greater number of spears"
(Barnes, J. 1979. The Presocratic
Philosophers 2, 152. London).
|
(link;
link).
- Critias of
Athens (c460 - 403 BCE). Poet, philosopher, &
political oligarch.
Map
of ancient city of Athens:
Extended map of ancient Athens:
Athenian silver coin:
γ—Epistemology:
Skepticism.
- "Nothing
is certain, except that having been born
we die, and that in life one cannot
avoid disaster" (trans. K. Freeman. 1946. The
Presocratic Philosophers. Oxford; p.
160).
|
Critias of Athens
Κριτίας ὁ Ἀθῆναι
(c460 - 403 BCE)
.png)
The owl of Athena,
the goddess of Athens
Critias was a poet, philosopher, and one of 'the
Thirty Tyrants' oligarchy, that is, οἱ τριάκοντα τύραννοι, an oligarchy
which ruled Athens for a time (link).
α—Metaphysics
/ Ontology: An
illustration of the later maxim of that "The
common people believe religion to be true; the
wise consider religion false; and the rulers
consider religion useful":
& an
almost Machievellian
δ—Ethics / Moral philosophy in a legendary realpolitik
anthropological narrative implying atheism:
- "There was a time when the
life of men was unordered, bestial and the
slave of force, when there was no reward for
the virtuous and punishment for the wicked.
Then, I think, men devised retributory laws,
in order that Justice might be dictator and
have Arrogance as its slave, and if anyone
sinned, he was punished. Then, when the laws
forbade them to commit open crimes of
violence, and they began to do in secret, a
wise and clever man invented fear (of the
gods) for mortals, even if they do anything or
say or think it in secret. Hence he introduced
the Divine, saying that there is a God
flourishing with eternal life, hearing and
seeing with his mind, and thinking of
everything and caring about these things, and
having divine nature, who will hear everything
said among mortals, and will be able to see
all that is done. And even if you plan
anything evil in secret, you will not escape
the gods in this; for they have surpassing
intelligence. In saying these words, he
introduced the pleasantist of teachings,
covering up the truth with a false theory; and
he said that the gods dwelt there where he
could most frighten men by saying it, whence
he knew that fears exist for mortals, and
rewards for the hard life: In the upper
periphery; where they saw lightnings and heard
the dread rumblings of thunder, and the
starry-faced body of Heaven, the beautiful
embroidery of Time, the skilled craftsman,
whence came for the bright mass of the Sun,
and the wet shower upon the Earth. With such
fears did he surround mankind, through which
he well established the deity with his
argument, and in a fitting place, and quenched
lawlessness among men ... thus, I think, for
the first time did someone persuade mortals to
believe in a race of deities" (trans. K.
Freeman. 1946. The Presocratic
Philosophers. Oxford; p. 157f).
|
(link; link).
B.
The Greek transition. From mythogeny to cosmology. Of
all the ancient peoples who in their various cultures
engaged in astrology, mathematical and calendrical
calculation, engineering, and early science, the Greeks were
the first (aside from perhaps the Indian subcontinent
materialist Cārvāka
movement) to begin the transition from myth-generating or
mythogony to seeking natural cause and effect explanations
(cosmology) for accounting for the Universe in which we find
ourselves. This transition is of great interest in our
history of cosmology in the western world. Like other ancient
peoples, the Greeks transmitted their mythologies, revered
their gods and built temples and shrines to them, and
manufactured / forged their cosmologies and world-views in
these mythologies, amidst their daily lives in the Aegean
and Mediterranean world.
In
this the milieu background was laid for how in the 6th
century BCE, it was possible for a cadre of seekers /
searchers and doubters, who came to be called philosophers,
to begin searching for natural causation of the world and
its nature. We turn to their story, by following Stenudd
(2007) in organizing them according to world-views on
metaphysics / ontology and their ventures into natural
philosophy or physics, as to their positions on the gods and
the myths.
Stenudd
(2007; pp. 49-52) ventures his own hypothesis about the
Mythos to Cosmos transition by postulating that the ancient
Greeks may have long interpreted the θεοί or theoi
or gods more as artistic and dramatic metaphors for natural
or cosmological principles of the world (Cosmos),
and that the gods came later came to be revered and
worshipped in cultic fashion. Hence an ancient,
sophisticated theogony or generation of the gods would
simply be the order of the evolution of the parts of the
World / Cosmos, and their order of appearance the order of
the appearance of these natural forces or principles in the
Universe.
As an
alternative or coexistent with this general hypothesis, we
here propose the following more specific hypothesis,
addressing the a specific question:
Q.
Why were the Greeks among ancient peoples able to make
the transition from mythic to naturalistic?
Hypothesis: Knowledge of metaphor and
self-deprecating humor directed toward their ethnic
mythology opened the door for the Greeks to cross over from
Mythos into Cosmos, or a cosmology, an attempt to
causally-model the Universe.
- Premise 1:
From the earliest Greek literary heroic, epic, and
dramatic tradition, the Greeks were able to see the
foibles and follies of their gods and thus began to be
amused and start laughing at their gods! (For a
delightfully accessible and richly-illustrated young
reader's classic on Greek mythology with its deeply
humorous content, see Ingri & Edgar Pari d'Aulaire.
1962, 1990, with a new afterward in 2017. D'Aulaire's
Book of Greek Myths. New York, NY: Delacorte
Press).
- Premise 2:
Furthermore the Greek literary and dramatic tradition,
the poets / playwrights used the humorous plot twist
device of ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός ('from a mechanism, a god,'
more well-known but less accurately rendered in the
Latin phrase, deus ex machina or 'a god from a
mechanism') to solve a plot problem by a just-so magic
trick of a god or muse suddenly intervening to solve a
problem so the plot usually in a Greek tragedy could
move forward, a sort of comic relief, although the
dramatic device could also be used in Greek comedies (link).
- Deduction:
The ancient Greeks, particularly among the group who
came to be known as philosophers (practitioners of
philosophy, the love of wisdom, φιλοσοφία), were the
first to see through 'from a mechanism, a god' to
recognize that such a magic trick is unnecessary once
mechanisms in Nature are understood, i.e., >2,500
years ago, someone saw past a 'god-of-the-gaps'
myth-device to search for actual mechanisms in Nature.
This hypothesis
might be testable by comparison with the ancient
naturalistic, skeptic-empirical Cārvāka or Lokāyata school
of philosophy (~6th century BCE) on the Indian subcontinent
(link).
Classification
of the Greek Philosophers
I.
Theistic
|
II.
Unclear
|
III.
Atheistic
|
- α—Polytheistic:
- Herodotus of Halicarnassus;
Ἡρόδοτος ὁ Ἁλῐκαρνᾱσσός (c484 - c425 BCE) link;
link.
- β—Monotheistic:
- Thales of Miletus; Θαλῆς ὁ
Μῑ́λητος (c626/623 - c548/545 BCE) link;
link.
- Anaxagoras driven to
Lampsacus; Ἀναξαγόρας ὁ Λάμψακος (c500 - c428
BCE) link;
link.
- Heraclitus of Ephesus;
Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἔφεσος (flourished c500 BCE) link;
link.
- Antisthenes of Athens;
Ἀντισθένης ὁ Ἀθῆναι (c446 - c366 BCE) link;
link.
- Xenophanes of Colophon;
Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος (c570 - c478 BCE) link;
link.
- Plato of Athens; Πλάτων ὁ
Ἀθῆναι (c428-423 - 348 BCE) link;
link.
- Aristotle of Stageira;
Ἀριστοτέλης ὁ Στάγειρα (384 - 322 BCE) link;
link.
- Zeno of Elea; Ζήνων ὁ
Ἐλεᾱ́της (c490 - c430 BCE) link;
link.
|
- α—Agnostic:
- Protagoras of Abdera;
Πρωταγόρας ὁ Άβδηρα (c490 - c420 BCE) link;
link.
- β—Allegorical
/ Metaphorical:
- Pherecydes of Syros;
Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύρος (6th century BCE) link;
link.
- Pythagoras of Samos;
Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμος (c570 - c495 BCE) link;
link.
- Theogenes of Thasos; Θεογένης
ὁ Θάσιος (before 1st century CE) link;
link.
- Empedocles of Akragas or
Agrigento; Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ακράγαντας (c494 - c434
BCE)
link;
link.
- Parmenides of Elea;
Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης (late 6th - early 5th
century BCE) link;
link.
- γ—Historical / Legendary:
- Hecataeus of Miletus; Ἑκαταῖος
ὁ Μιλήσιος (c550 - c476 BCE) link;
link.
- Euhemerus of Messina; Εὐήμερος
ὁ Ζάγκλη (late 4th century BCE) link; link.
|
- α—{Agnostic-leaning}:
- Anaximander of Miletus;
Ἀναξίμανδρος ὁ Μιλήσιος
(c610 - c546 BCE) link;
link.
- Anaximenes of Miletus;
Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Μιλήσιος (c586/585 - c526/525 BCE) link;
link.
- Gorgias of Lentini; Γοργίας ὁ
Λεοντῖνοι (c483 - c375 BCE) link;
link.
- β—{Allegorical
/ Metaphorical}:
- Melissus of Samos; Μέλισσος ὁ
Σάμιος (5th century BCE) link;
link.
- γ—{No
real role for the gods; some Atomists}:
- Leucippus .... (flourished
5th century BCE) link;
link.
- Democritos of Abdera; Δημόκριτος ὁ Άβδηρα
(c460 - c370 BCE) link;
link.
- Prodicus of Ceos; Πρόδικος ὁ
Κεῖος (c465 - c395 BCE) link;
link.
- Diagoras of Melos; Διαγόρας ὁ
Μήλιος (5th century BCE) link;
link.
- Epicurus of Samos; Ἐπίκουρος
ὁ Σάμιος (341 - 270 BCE) link;
link.
- Philolaus? of Croton;
Φιλόλαος ὁ Κρότων(?) (c470 - c385 BCE) link;
link.
|
Adapted from Stenudd
(2007).
"The School of Athens" with key Greek
philosophers (Rafael, 1509-1511)
(link;
Who's who in 'the School of Athens' painting (link;
cf. link
and Vatican museum virtual
tour).
Has the morality test of the Euthyphro Dialogue of Socrates
been slipped into Rafael's 'the school of Athens' painting? Is
that the young Euthyphro trying to flee from Socrates (center
right) after having failed 5 times to find a non-contradictory
definition of piety which he confuses with morality? (image link).
See under 'Euthyphro Dialogue' on the main homepage: https://enlightenmentlegacy.net/.
In tracing the history through the Greek philosophers,
including the first natural philosophers or scientists, we
will explore as available and as applicable their thought and
contributions, loosely under modified and expanded
Aristotelian categories of philosophy:
- α—Metaphysics
/ Ontology (Greek
τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά 'what's after the physics,' or Latin, metaphysica);
the study of ultimate reality, 'of being qua
being',
- β—Physics / Natural
philosophy (Greek φυσική, Latin physica)
the study of 'time and change', i.e.,
the natural world,
- γ—Epistemology (Greek
ἐπιστημολογία 'study of
the nature of knowledge);
how we know,
- δ—Ethics / Moral
philosophy (Greek ἦθος 'character' / disposition' ἠθικός, Latin ethica ~ moralis
'character and manners / behavior'),
- ε—Aesthetics / Artistic
philosophy (Greek αἰσθητικός, 'perception, sensitive
to sensory perception); sense of artistic perception and
beauty.
Under these
categories, there is not always information surviving for any
given Greek philosopher.
The
first Greek natural philosopher was Thales of Miletos.
The early
Greek Ionians
Θαλῆς ὁ Μιλήσιος
Thales
of Miletos
(c624-546
BCE)
(link;
link)
Father of Western philosophy (B. Russell, one of the 7
sages)
β—Physics
/ Natural philosophy:
- Sought to
explain natural phenomena by natural process without
mythology; the elemental substance was
water, the arche—disc-like Earth floats on
water like a boat (shared the Homeric world-view of
Earth).
- Held that
matter is a unity of substance.
- Applied
geometry to make measurements as a mathematician to
calculate the height of pyramids and the distance of
ships at sea;
- Geometry:
"Μέγιστον τόπος ἄπαντα γὰρ χωρεῖ, i.e., The greatest
is space, for it holds all things";
- Discovered
Thales' Theorem: "If AC is a diameter and
B is a point on the diameter's circle, the angle
ABC is always a right angle" (link).
- First known
use of deductive reasoning, define principles, and
the putting forward of hypotheses;
- Predicted the
solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BCE, according to
Herodotos.
"Greek philosophy seems to begin with an absurd
notion, with the proposition that water is the
primal origin and the womb of all things. Is it
really necessary for us to take serious notice of
this proposition? It is, and for three reasons.
First, because it tells us something about the
primal origin of all things; second, because it does
so in language devoid of image or fable, and
finally, because contained in it, if only
embryonically, is the thought, 'all things are
one.'" (Nietzsche, unpublished notes, 1873. Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks).
|
α—Metaphysics
/ Ontology:
- "Of all things that
are, the most ancient is God, for he is
uncreated" (Diogenes, Lives; I, 37).
- "The most
beautiful is the Universe, for it is God's
workmanship" (Diogenes, Ibid.; I,
37).
- "What is
the divine? That which has no origin and no
end" (Diogenes, DK 11A1, 36).
For Thales, perhaps 'God is
a ... creative essence, present in every piece of
the world, an essence without which things would
cease to exist' (Stenudd, 2007; p. 55).
Theorem:
In another form:
|
(www.forthnet.gr/presocratics/
thaln.htm; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus;
Stenudd,
2007; pp. 54-55).
- Introduced
a 'naturalistic' cosmology to understand the
mechanics of the Earth as free floating in space
(Karl Popper saw this as one of the most
revolutionary ideas beginning science), also
sought to model meteorology, the phenomena of
weather.
To replace the
Homeric
- Geography
/ Cartography: Reconstruction of Anaximander's
probable map of the Earth:
"The earth is flat and rides on air;
in the same way the sun and the moon and the other
heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air
because of their flatness." (cit. in
Hippolytus, Refutation
of all Heresies, i. 7; Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 294
b13-21).
- Even though the
figures below speak of Anaximander's 'universe'
he actually believed in an infinity of worlds.
- His model of our solar system is
geocentric, with numbers representing the
wheel diameter units & distances in
those units from Earth:
- The Earth is free floating within
the conceptualized celestial sphere, with N
and S celestial poles; he introduced the
sundial:
- Free-floating
Earth: "The Earth is aloft, not dominated
by anything; it remains in place because of
the similar distance from all points"
(cf. analogous to a
predecessor of Mach's Principle?)
|
Ἀναξίμανδρος ὁ Μιλήσιος
Anaximander of Miletos
(c610-c546 BCE)
(link;
link).
α—Metaphysics / Ontology:
Apeiron (ἄπειρον) or 'the boundless' is the
substance of the world: "...it is neither water nor any
of the so-called elements, but some different, boundless
nature, from all the heavens arise" (Diogenes, Lives;
I, 131). A more accurate translation of ἄπειρον may be "what cannot be
passed over or traversed from end to end" (C. H. Kahn,
1960. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology.
New York; p. 232).
β—Physics / Natural philosophy:
By
contrast with Thales, Apeiron
(ἄπειρον) gives birth to all....
- Cosmogony:
The cosmos separated out of the apeiron
(boundless): From Theophrastus: "Anaximander of
Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and
associate of Thales, said that the material cause
and first element of things was the Infinite, he
being the first to introduce this name of the
material cause. He says it is neither water nor any
other of the so-called elements, but a substance
different from them which is infinite" [apeiron,
or ἄπειρον] "from which arise all the heavens and
the worlds within them." Phys, Op. fr.
2 (Dox. p. 476; R. P. 16)."
- Cosmology:
Earth is free floating, and the heavens are
concentric spheres of fire, enclosed in air: Sun,
Moon, and stars are 'breathing holes' in the
spheres. (See left).
- In fact, infinite
worlds come and go like everything else in the
Universe, from the Boundless / the Infinite (ἄπειρον):
Whence things have their
origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one
another
— The condemnation for the crime —
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
(A
surviving fragment of Anaximander's writing
in Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
24, 13).
- Frederich
Nietzsche, (1873). Philosophy in the Tragic
Age of the Greeks, §4: Anaximander seemed to hold
"... all coming-to-be as
though it were an illegitimate emancipation from
eternal Being, a wrong for which destruction is
the only penance."
- Modern physicist Max
Born, suggested that, considering W. Heisenberg's
accomplishment of seeing elementary particles as
different quantum states of a 'primordial substance'
which might as well be called
Apeiron (Simonyi, K. 2012.
5.5.10 Back to the Apeiron? A Cultural
History of Physics. CRC Press; p. 546, link).
Written works now
lost:
- On Physics
/ Nature (Περὶ φύσεως)
- Rotation
of the Earth (Γῆς περίοδος)
- On Fixed
Stars (Περὶ τῶν ἀπλανῶν)
- The
[Celestial] Sphere (Σφαῖρα).
Roman 3rd
c CE mosaic of Anaximander with a sundial from
Johannisstrasse, Trier (Germany).
- Naturalist
origin of humankind (semi-proto-evolutionary):
Animals including the ancestors of man came
from the ocean, fish, fishlike, and feeding
like sharks, until breaking their 'rough bark'
(skin) they were able to emerge on land and
self-perpetuate.
It is possible
that Anaximander's seeing the rotation of the
stars, rising & setting, may have given him
the idea of the free floating Earth in the void or
boundless.
|
(http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Ellen/EarlyGkAstronomy.html;
http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/Ancient_Philosophers/Anaximander.htm; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximander;
https://iep.utm.edu/anaximander/#SH6h;
Stenudd, 2007; pp. 56-58).
Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Μιλήσιος
Anaximenes of Miletos
(c586 - c526 BCE)
(link).
Like the
other natural philosophers of Ionia & Miletos, he
sought unifying causality in the cosmos,
rather than isolating and / or personifying natural
phenomena.
Similar to his monism, among the Pythagoreans,
Aristotle indicated that they held that there exists
"boundless breath... outside the heavens, which was
inhaled by the world" (Physics Δ, 6. 213 b22).
|
Anaximenes was a student of Anaximander in
the Milesian school
- Material
monist also, with air being the original primary
substance, ex arche (
ἐξ ἀρχῆς)
- Some
surviving words of his: "Just as our soul (psyche;
ψυχή), being air (aer; ἀήρ), holds us
together, so do breath of life (pneuma;
πνεῦμα) and air (aer; ἀήρ) encompass the
whole Universe": First to equate air and breath
of life (pneuma).
- Held
that substance changes forms (states) through
rarefaction (hot, dry air) and condensation
(cold, wet air) learning from the water cycle
- May have been among the first to
distinguish between planets and 'fixed stars'
- Used
analogies when speaking of the world of man
on Earth and that of the Cosmos out there implied
that the same natural laws observed on
Earth apply out in the Universe, a
powerful insight shown to be true by Sir
Isaac Newton >2000 years later.
- Through
reason and natural observations he also
sought natural causal explanations of
earthquakes, lightning, rainbows.
|
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximenes_of_Miletus;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneuma;
Stenudd, 2007; pp. 59-60).
The Pythagorean
Revolution and Regression (5th century BCE)
The
so-called Pythagorean Theorem of the Triangle
since the 1st c BCE has been commonly attributed to
Pythagoras (although many classical historians
dispute this): "In a right-angled triangle the
square of the hypotenuse [c2] is equal
[to the sum of] the squares of the two other sides
[a2 + b2]."
- In
Aristotle's Protrepticus, Pythagoras
is asked why humankind exists: "To observe the
heavens!"
Earth as a
sphere:
The sphericity of the Earth: Key
philosophers who arrived at this conclusion
-
Pythagoras (6th c BCE)
-
Parmenides (5th c BCE)
-
Aristotle (330 BCE)
-
Cratus of Mallus (~150 BCE)
Became widely understood and accepted
in late antiquity by the educated, but not
necessarily by the general populace.
-
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (240 BCE) determined
the circumference of spherical Earth:
 
Sphere of Earth:
Curve of Earth's shadow on the Moon during a lunar
eclipse; Ship at sea somewhat low on the spherical
horizon of Earth.
Like some other Aegaean
philosophers, Pythagoras included women in his
school:
- Established
a monastic-like school with many religious
and ascetic observances (including dietary
and other restrictions), studying his
mystical and philosophical ideas,
including sacred mathematics, music, and
medicine, eating all meals together like
the Spartans, avoiding and excluding all
others, having "all possessions in common
among friends" (koina ta philon),
learning teachings called symbols (symbola)
about which they took a vow of silence to
protect from telling non-members, and
following the enigmatic aphorisms / oral
sayings (akousmata) of the master.
"Pythagoreans celebrate the
sunrise" by Fyodor Bronnikov (1869).
|
Πυθαγόρας
/ Πυθαγόρης ὁ Σάμιος Pythagoras /
Pythagores of Samos
(c570 - c495 BCE)
Mystic-philosopher who among others linked nature with
rational numbers: Mathematical relations and equations
hold the secret of the cosmos (Koestler, 1959). Pythagoras combined
advances in cosmological understanding with often
obscurantist mysticism—both are his legacy
- One of the
early ones to propose the sphericity of Earth
- Pythagorean
theorem of the triangle (see left)
- Proposed
Earth's motion along with the Sun & planets
around a "central fire" or "hearth of the world"
- Metempsychosis
[transmigration of souls] According to Diogenes
(II, 333): "He was the first, they say, to declare
that the soul, bound now in this creature, now in
that, thus goes on a round ordained of necessity."
- Musica universalis
/ 'music of the spheres': Pythagorean mystical
belief that the motions of the Sun, Moon, and
planets is a form of music, which centuries later
influenced Renaissance and subsequent mysticism (cf.
Sibly's Astrology, 1806 figure).
- Tetractys
(τετρακτύς) of the dekad worship, a
mystical triangular
number (T4) summing to 10, important in
Pythagoreanism, which they worshiped as the source
of all souls and the cosmos, to which they took a
sacred oath, & summing up their mysticism:
- Monad
(unity) ~ element Air ~ 1st row: geometric 1
point; 1st 4 numbers = musica universalis
& kosmos
- Dyad
(limit/unlimited; peras/apeiron;
power) ~ element Fire ~ 2nd row:
geometric 2 points, line (1d)
- Triad
(harmony) ~ element Water ~ 3rd row:
geometric 3 points, triangle-plane (2d)
- Tetrad
(kosmos) sums to higher dekad (10)
~ element Earth ~ 4th row:
geometric 4 points, tetrahedron (3d)
- Influenced
by the Orphic mystery cult, Pythagorean mysticism
in turn influenced others over the centuries
since.
- Early
Christians admired Pythagoras & their cults
paralleled his in several ways, including in their
traditions about their founder Jesus, the
traditions about the use of aphorisms and
parables, asceticism, communal insularity, and
later including possible influences on the 3rd
& 4th century CE rise of trinitarianism
- Hellenized
Jewish mysticism / esotericism anachronistically
claimed Mosaic influence on Pythagoras
- Later
kabbalist esoterics anachronistically claimed
Pythagoreans as kabbalists, linked their own
reverence for the tetragrammaton
(τετραγράμματον) name of god (יהוה, yhwh)
to the tetractys, & there may have
been some possible influence on their 10-11 noded
kabbalist 'tree of life'
- Medieval
esoterics like the Knights Templar and alchemists,
late Renaissance mystics including 'royal arch'
proto-freemasons, and subsequent freemasons and
other early modern esoterics were also influenced,
- Including
a number of the early pioneers in modern
cosmology, so much so that Copernicus in his
epochal De Revolutionibus
praised Pythagoras, but refused to even
acknowledge Aristarchus and his priority in
heliocentrism. Even the great Sir Isaac
Newton who created the first "physics of the
skies" also was distracted by Pythagoras, biblical
numerology / mysticism, hermeticism and alchemy.
|
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras;
www.zepa.net/~kolya/fhs/zeldovic/
pythagoras.html;
www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/
Posters2/Pythagoras.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis;
Stenudd, 2007; pp. 61-63).
Cautionary
Tale: One step forward & 3 steps back. With
Pythagoreanism, as beautiful as the stated purpose of
looking upward to the heavens, and as beguiling as the
numerology and mysticism have been, their reverence for
numbers did gave a boost to scientific cosmology, while at
the same time retarding the rate of the advance of
scientific cosmology with their obscurantist mythicism (as
opposed to mysticism), their infatuation with numerology,
and their ensuing occultic distractions, which turned
attention away from the Universe. The retarding temptation
toward mysticism in the some of the pioneers of cosmology
was often made stronger to the extend they were influenced
by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Pythagoreanism illustrates
a cautionary tale, where an advance toward scientific
cosmology, can be accompanied by 3 steps backwards into the
beguilments of mysticism. It's an imporant lesson for modern
cosmology too.
Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης
Parmenides of Elea
(c515 BCE - c475 BCE)
Founder of the Eleatic school (Link)
1st c CE inscription found on the plinthe
of a statue in 1969: ΠΑ[Ρ]ΜΕΝΕΙΔΗΣ ΠΥΡΗΤΟΣ ΟΥΛΙΑΔΗΣ
ΦΥΣΙΚΟΣ = Parmenides, son of Pires, a native of Elea
[?], a physikos [i.e., a natural
philosopher]
A major founder of metaphysics or
ontology, as well as furthering cosmology
"It is necessary that you shall learn all things,
as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth
as opinions of mortals in which there is no true
belief." [Doubt]
|
Velia on the
western Italian coast in the region of Magna Graecia,
also known in ancient times as Υέλη
later changed to Ελέα, where the Eleatic school of
philosophy was formed.
- Wrote a
long poem now known as On Nature, in
dactylic hexameter, only some of which survives.
It contains three sections:
- (a)
Introductory proem about the narrator's
allegorical journey to receive enlightenment from
a goddess on the nature of the world, with such
wonders as a chariot with glowing axles and
horses, the House of Night, Gates of the paths of
Night and Day, and maidens, "the daughters of the
Sun."
- (b) "The
Way of Truth" (aletheia, ἀλήθεια) holds
that the ontological unity of Nature (a
proto-monism), while the diversity of Nature is
more illusory or based on opinion. Excerpts have
been preserved by Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius
of Cilicia
- (c) "The
Way of Appearance/Opinion" (doxa, δόξα)
common belief or received opinion, doxa in
contrast to episteme, ἐπιστήμη, knowledge
or science.
- Parmenides'
monism lead to Pyrrhonism, and also may have
influenced Plotinus and Neoplatonism.
|
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velia;
Stenudd, 2007; pp. 79-82; Υέλη, Ελέα).
Argument between the Epicurean Atomists and the Eleatic monists:
Democritus vs. Heraclitus.
(https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Democritus_Empirical_Rationalist)
Earth
set adrift in space. Philolaus' Pythagorean cosmos (Φιλόλαος, c 470-c 385
BCE).
Philolaus'
Pythagorean cosmos complete with 'central fire,' Earth,
reputed to have an anti-earth (antichton;
actually resulted from Aristotle's notion of sun, moon, five planets and fixed stars (5th
century BCE; from Wilson, 1980; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Students/Ellen/EarlyGkAstronomy.html; http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/Philolaus.html;
http://www.math.brown.edu/tbanchof/STG/ma8/papers/mcecil/softball.html).
Built on these ad hoc assumptions: (a) There is a
"central fire" which we never see because of the
Counter-Earth, (b) There is a Counter-Earth which serves to
obscure from us the "central fire."
Archytas of Tarentino & an infinite
Universe
Αρχύτας ὁ
Ταραντίνος
Archytas of Tarentino
(428-350
BCE)
(from Miahanas.de)
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (link)
|
Achytas was a
mathematician and a Pythagorean philosopher, a student
of Philolaus of Croton, tutor of Eudoxos (transmitter of
the constellations), and a civil leader
- Held the
Cosmos to be infinite, without limit, using a
thought experiment: "Imagine that the Universe is finite, and
I stand at one border: What hinders me from
stretching out my hand beyond this border?"
- Solved the
Delian 'doubling the cube' problem with a geometric
solution
- Performed
experiments on flight with kites and devices such as
a wooden pigeon which flew about 200 m on "the
secret blowing of air enclosed inside"
- Worked
on harmonics in music (link).
 |
(http://vjecsner.net/presumed%20impossibilities.htm).
The Atomists
The ruins of Abdera in Thrace, made
famous by the Atomists.
 |
Λεύκιππος
Leukippos
(5th century BCE)
- No one now knows from where he
came.
- Considered the founder of the
school of Atomism (as states Theophrastus the
prime student of Aristotle), Leukippos was the
teacher of the famous atomist Democritos.
- Atomistic cosmology: Nothing
exists
- Atoms (smallest units of
matter)
- and the Void, which he
identified as Nonbeing, but which he inferred by
the fact that Atoms move through it
- Started a school at Abdera (photo
to the left), where Democritos was trained
- Reputed to have written a major
work now lost called The Great World System
- Also wrote On Mind,
from which we have his surviving quote, "Nothing
happens at random, but everything from reason
and by necessity."
Cf. Curd, P. & Graham, D. W.
(eds). 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic
Philosophy. Oxford University Press: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195146875.001.0001;
pp. 333-352.
|
- Held to be the founder of the
city of Megapontum on what the Romans later called
the Magna Graecium coast of Italy, a theater of
which pictured (photo
to the right), and the city honored him with a
silver coin en nomos Leukippos in 330 BCE (link).
|
|
(Link).
For the sake of
temporal flow we turn to one of the towering founding
philosophers of classical and western civilization, who
influenced the founding of science as well as the
philosophical-classical theological traditions of the three
Abrahamic religions of Judaism (Maimonides et al),
Christianity (Aquinas et al), and Islam (several).
After a summary, we will turn to what he is less well known
for and against which he was opposed even by his religious and
philosophical admirers: His most important contribution to
cosmology, the concept of the Universe as eternal,
self-generating, without beginning and without end.
In this proposal he ignited a centuries long controversy over
whether the Universe has a beginning or not, which is a
foreshadowing of the controversy between the Big Bang and the
Steady State cosmologies of the mid-20th century, and may be
considered in the respective categories of the Paleolithic
"northern cosmology" and the "southern cosmology." His name
was Aristotle (link).
Ἀριστοτέλης
ὁ Στάγειρα or Στάγειρος
Aristotle of Stageira or
Stageiros
384-322 BCE
- Born in Stagira
in northern Greece, trained at Plato's
Academy, tutored the young Alexander (the
Great), son of Philip II of the greater
Macedonia
- Founded the
Peripatetic school of philosophy at the Lyceum
(Athens)
- Also founded a
library at the Lyceum and a school at Mieza,
Greece (photo below)
- Wrote hundreds of
works (about a third of which survived)
- Helped
systematize knowledge as Metaphysics
(ontology, 'of being qua being'), Physics
('time and change' entailing the notion of
'natural philosophy' or the sciences), Epistemology
(how we know), Ethics (morals), and we
may add Aesthetics (sense of artistic
perception and beauty). Cf. Aristotelian
categories: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-categories/.
- Contributed to a
multitude of fields (in alphabetical order):
aesthetics, biology, drama, economics, ethics, geology,
government, linguistics, logic, metaphysics,
meteorology, music, physics, poetry, politics,
psychology, rhetoric, and zoology.
- Influenced
civilization and dialogue far beyond his own
school of philosophy for centuries until the
Enlightenment (mid-17th to 18th century) and
modernity.
|
Roman marble copy of a bronze
sculpture of Aristotle by Greek sculptor, Lysippos
(c 330 BCE).
|
Aristotle's school at Mieza: His
critical rebellion against Plato and Platonism
 |
Set the
stage for centuries of thinking about the
ontological status of causation until the Galilean
Revolution in the 17th century on efficient
causation in the Sciences and modernity, as
pointed out in the famous essay "Man against
Darkness" by Stace (1948).
See Wikipedia link.
|
The Aristotelian battle to
propose an eternal Universe
Now we turn back to Aristotle's
major, unsung contribution to cosmology. Aristotle also
was the first to challenge Euclid's 5th postulate about
the existence of parallel lines, thus anticipating the
non-Euclidean geometries of Lobachevski and Riemann, which
have been important in 20th century physics, as well as
challenging the notion that the cosmos came into being,
instead making a case for an eternal Universe:
Temple, R. 2003. The prehistory of
the steady state theory. Astrophysics and Space
Science 285, 471. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025465232097.
In the following table, we summarize the Aristotelian
debate over the eternality of the Universe.
. . . . The Eternal Universe . . . .
Aristotle & fellow Aristotelian pioneers
|
A World Beginning . . . .
Anti-Aristotelian reaction
|
- First Book, De
Caelo, 'On the Heavens': "That the
world [kosmos] was generated all
[prior thought] are agreed... having been
generated, however, some say it is eternal,
others say that it is destructible like any
other natural formation" (Aristotle, 1970,
279b13).
- In typical
Aristotelian (& modern scientific)
fashion, he opens, "Let us start with a
review of the theories of other thinkers,
including his teacher Plato . . ."
(Aristotle, 1970, 279b6, which he does, and
dismantles them, arguing, "to assert that
the Universe was generated and yet is
eternal is to assert the impossible; for we
cannot reasonably attribute to anything any
characteristics but those which observation
detects in many or all instances. But in
this case the facts point the other way:
generated things are seen always to be
destroyed" (Aristotle, 1979,
279b18-21).
- In 'On
Philosophy,' he argued for 'the Eternity of
the World [kosmos]' which is 'the
Eternity of the Universe' (Aristotle, 1952)
and his heretical views became known around
the Greco-Hellenistic world.
- Successor to
Aristotle, Theophrastus (Θεόφραστος, c371-c287
BCE) in his own treatise on the Eternity of
the Universe wrote against 'the sophists'
who held the 'world beginning' view and
their danger of persuading the public: "It
is necessary to counter so much special
pleading, in case anyone who lacks
experience should submit to its authority'
whose arguments he call 'deception'
(Theophrastus, 1992, pp. 342-357).
- Panaetius of
Rhodes (c185-c110 BCE) & Boethus of
Sidon (c75-c10 BCE) argued that 'there is
nothing outside the Universe except possibly
a void.... And if it were to be destroyed
without a cause, clearly the origin of the
destruction will arise from what does not
exist' which is clearly an absurd
contradiction (Philo, 2001, 15-16, pp.
239-241).
- Another
treatise, 'On the Eternity of the Universe'
(mistakenly attributed to a 5th c BCE
Pythagorean Ocellus Lucanus, when actually
written in the 2nd or 1st c BCE by a later
Aristotelian or Pythagorean): "It appears to
me that the Universe is indestructible and
unbegotten, since it always was, and always
will be . . . there is not anything external
to the Universe, since all other things are
comprehended in the Universe, and is the
whole and the all. . . . the
Universe is without a beginning and without
an end . . ." (Ocellus Lucanus, 1831, pp.
1-2; emphasis added by Temple, 2003). This
treatise may be written by the Aristotelian
head of the Peripatetic school in Athens
named
- Critolaus of
Phaselis (2nd c BCE) who like Theophrastus
about the misleading of the public by 'those
who strengthen falsehood against truth' and
that 'the Universe must surely be uncreated
and therefore is indestructible' (Philo,
2001, 14-15, pp. 233-238).
- Roman Skeptic
author Cicero (106-43 BCE) wrote in Lucullus
commenting: "When your wise Stoic has said
all these things to you syllable by
syllable, Aristotle will come with the
golden flow of his speech, to say that the
Stoic is talking nonsense; he will say that
the world never came into being, because
there never was a new design from which so
noble a work could have its beginning, and
that it is so well designed in every part
that no force can effect such great
movements and so great a change, no old age
can come upon the world by lapse of time, so
that this beauteous world should ever fall
to pieces and perish' (Aristotle, 1952,
Fragment 20 of On Philosophy, pp.
92-93).
- Proclus, late
Greek philosopher (5th c CE) observes about
Aristotle's theory that "eternity is stable,
infinite power" (Proclus, 1820, Vol. I, pp.
246-249). Although not knowing about an
expanding Universe, if Aristotle had he
would have recognized that his Eternality of
the Universe would also require continuous
creation of Atoms.
- Thinking of the
whole, in 'On the Heavens,' he wrote,
"Anything which always exists is absolutely
imperishable. It is also ungenerated, since
if it was generated it will have the for
some time of not being" (Aristotle, 1970,
281b26-27). Although the whole is eternal
and ungenerated, yet the parts are generated
and temporal, whether Atoms or humans,
&c. Aristotle would have grasped this.
- Aristotle
states in the first sentence of his Book II
of 'On the Heavens,' ". . . the heaven as a
whole neither came into being nor admits of
destruction, as some assert, but is one and
eternal, with no end or beginning of its
total duration, containing and embracing in
itself the infinity of time . . ."
(Aristotle, 1970, 283b26-30).
- Aristotelian
philosopher, also in the 6th c CE,
Simplicius replied 'Against Philoponus on
the Eternality of the World' by mocking his
long and weak arguments, saying that
Philoponus "regarded it as a matter of great
importance if he could entice large numbers
of laymen to disparage the heavens and the
whole world [Universe] as things that are
just as perishable as themselves. . . . this
gentleman not only dared to write against
Aristotle's arguments in his first book, 'On
the Heavens' concerning the eternity of the
heavens and the world - without
understanding what the text says, as I have
attempted to demonstrate . . . He also
opposed the arguments at the beginning of
Aristotle's 'Physics,' Book 8, which show
that motion and time are eternal; his
objections are beside the point, as one can
clearly grasp from my replies to him"
(Simplicius, 1991; pp. 107-108).
- Even in HBBC
inflationary scenarios, the Eternality of
the Universe is there.
- An interesting
question is whether personality types play a
role.
- The debate over the Eternity
of the Universe didn't start in the 1940s,
or in Medieval times, but with Aristotle
2,300 years ago.
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- The later
writer, Philo of Alexandria (c20 BCE - c50
CE) a pious adherent of Judaism who doubted
not that God had created the world, wrote in
his own treatise, "Aristotle was surely
speaking piously and devoutly when he
insisted that the world is ungenerated and
imperishable, and convicted of grave
ungodliness those who maintained the
opposite . . . he used to say in mockery (we
are told) that in the past he had feared
lest his house be destroyed by violent winds
or storms beyond the ordinary, or by time or
by lack of proper maintenance, but that now
a greater danger hung over him, from those
who by argument destroyed the whole world"
(Aristotle, 1952, Fragment 18 of On
Philosophy, pp. 88-89).
- The Stoic
school of philosophy (3rd c BCE - 3rd c CE)
advocated the view that the world was
periodically created and destroyed, but two
Stoics dissented: Panaetius of Rhodes and Boethus of Sidon.
- Christian
bishop Lactantius (3rd c CE) opposed the
Eternality thesis in his Institutes,
Book II: "If the world can perish as a whole
because it perishes in parts, it clearly has
at some time come into being; and as
fragility proclaims a beginning, so it
proclaims an end. If that is true, Aristotle
could not save the world itself from having
a beginning" (Aristotle, 1952, Fragment 20
of On Philosophy, p. 93).
- In the 6th c
CE, Christian philosopher Johannes
Philoponus wrote a treatise, 'Against
Aristotle on the Eternality of the World'
(Philoponus, 1987). In his long and tortuous
dissertation, Philoponus was determined to
save a creation of the Universe against the
outrage of Aristotle's Eternality of the
Universe by appeals to many specious
arguments, including the supposed
circularity of the celestial motions,
&c.
- The real reason
for the Christian attack on the Eternality
of the Universe is Christian religious dogma
in the Darkening Age (4th-17th c CE), which
cannot abide an eternal Universe:
- The nature of
the debate then, in between, and now
suggests that commitments other than to data
was influencing then as now with the New
Ptolemaic system (see chapters III & IV
especially, but the entire history of
cosmology too). Cosmology is about human
values and beliefs too.
- What became the
'kalam cosmological argument' (link)
started with Aristotelian reasoning &
was in reaction against Aristotle's proposal
of an eternal Universe.
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References in table above are found in
Temple's (2003) paper (https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025465232097),
which is also a chapter in C. Wickramasinghe, G.
Burbidge, & J. Narlikar. (eds.). 2003. Fred
Hoyle's Universe. Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Continuing
with the Atomists as natural philosophers who proposed that
everything in the Universe is composed of fundamental
entities, which cannot be cut (τωμως) any further, hence
called atoms (ατωμως),
the shape of which caused the observed properties of matter
(image).
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Δημόκριτος ὁ Άβδηρα
Democritos of Abdera
(c460-c370 BCE)
Democritus
was among the early founders of the school of
Atomism , who held that the world is made of
individsible atoms, including Leucippus c 440 BCE;
Epicuros 341-271 BCE, and one of the surviving sources
to our day, the Roman poet, Lucretius, 1st century
BCE).
I. In mathematics and geometry, he wrote a series of
works,
On Numbers, On Geometrics, On Tangencies,
On Mapping, and On Irrationals,
indicating that he did not deny or suppress the
existence of irrational numbers like Pythagoras'
disciples did. He saw that any cone or pyramid has 1/3
of the volume of any cylinder or prism, respectively,
with dimensions of the same width and height.
II. About humans, plants, animals, and minerals, he
wrote a series of works, which included a naturalistic
anthropology, On the Nature of Man, also Causes
Concerned with Seeds and Plants and Fruits, On
Mind, On Flesh, On the
Senses, On Flavors, On Colors,
and a collection Causes Concerned with Animals.
III. About
Astronomy, Democritus held that the Earth is a sphere,
there is "a plurality of worlds" in the cosmos (an insight
reflected later by Giordano Bruno in the 16th
century CE), the Milky Way is
composed of distant stars (apparently the first to
realize that), that the Universe can be accurately observed,
following laws of cause and effect, although our
interpretations may or may not be correct: An
early instantiation of the skeptical-empirical method
of science.
IV. About Cosmology / Cosmogony and atomic Physics, he
held that the cosmos came from chaos into being
composed of miniscule ατωμως or uncuttable atoms, aggregating to
form larger structures. His atomic theory described
the Universe as composed of the infinite void
(nonbeing) + nondestructible fundamental particles in
motion (atoms, being): "By convention there is sweet, by convention
there is bitterness, by convention hot and cold, by
convention color; but in reality there are only atoms
and the void."
- All is made
of physically (but not geometrically) indivisible
and indestructible atoms.
- Between atoms
is empty space, the void.
- Atoms have
always been and will always be in eternal motion.
- In the
infinite void, there are an infinite number of and
kinds of atoms, differing in shape and size.
- All the
observed properties of matter arise from the nature
of the atoms, their shape, size, and consistency
(e.g, atoms of fire, air, earth, water, and the
ethereal realm of the heavens above).
- The early
atomists held that the 'atoms in motion in the void'
conception demystifies the Cosmos, life, & death
and leads to liberation from 'the terror of the
gods' (Lucretius, 1st century BCE).
From Aristotle
through the Middle Ages, atomism was opposed &
suppressed as atheistic. Yet, the basic insight of
atomism is so powerfully correct that it has stood the
empirical test for nearly 2500 years.
Democritus lived a long and cheerful life (the laughing
philosopher), and while some hated him, he was held in
high esteem by many contemporaries.
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This laughing philosopher came from the ancient city
of Abdera on the Island of Thrace (link).
"The laughing
philosopher" (sourced
quotes)
Democritos of Abdera (link;
link)
(c
460-c 370 BCE)
We
know some about his life from Diogenes Laertius' Lives
and Opinions of Emiment Philosophers (3rd
century CE). None of his works have survived the
classic civilizational collapse of the Middle
Ages, however, we know that he
was a pioneer in mathematics, geometry, empirical
science including the experimental method, in
ontology / metaphysics, in epistemology (how do we
know?), in botany, in anthropology, and in ethics
for how to live a contented life.
Diogenes Laertois summarized, "That
atoms and the Void were the beginning of the
Universe; and that everything else existed only
in opinion. That the worlds were infinite,
created, and perishable. But that nothing was
created out of nothing, and that nothing was
destroyed so as to become nothing. That the
atoms were infinite both in magnitude and
number, and were borne about through the
Universe in endless revolutions. And that thus
they produced all the combinations that exist;
fire, water, air, and earth; for that all these
things are only combinations of certain atoms;
which combinations are incapable of being
affected by external circumstances, and are
unchangeable by reason of their solidity."
The Universe of Democritus (c.
430 B.C.)
(From Dante and the Early Astronomers; M. A.
Orr [Mrs. John Evershed], 1913.)
(http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe20.htm).
The philosophical
implications of Atomism are much more far-reaching
than one might initially think.
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(https://www.universetoday.com/60058/democritus-atom/;
http://www.newgenevacenter.org/biography/democritus2.htm;
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_stat_1905/Brownian%20motion%20anim.gif).
The Epicurean world-view (building on primitive Atomism)
produced a comprehensive world-view, cosmology, and system of
morality:
Ἐπίκουρος ὁ
Σάμιος
Epicuros of Samos
(341-270 BCE)
The Ionian philosopher who systematized the
insights and implications of the primitive atomistic,
naturalistic worldview was Epicurus (4th-3rd centuries BCE).
Rebelling
against Platonism, he established his own school of
philosophy, "the Garden" (κῆπος) where he welcomed women
and slaves to be part of his philosophical entourage.
He
authored over 300 works, all of them gone, except for
3 letters. Memories of his teachings were preserved by
others, and recorded in poetic form by Roman poet
Titus Lucretius Carus (c99 - c55 BCE).
Developing
the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus'
cosmology: From the
ἄτομος
or uncuttable atoms in motion in the void, we
have Nature which never produces something out
of nothing & nothing is ever destroyed, but
only undergoes transformations, comings to be
and ceasings, in flux.
α—Metaphysics
/ Ontology: Atomistic and nontheistic
but substance monism.
- The
Underlying Inference in the emergence
of atomism, and the greatest inferential
insight by humankind, following upon the
ancient 'non-coexistence of opposites' idea:
Nothing comes from nothing, and
nothing ever ceases to be by vanishing
into nothing.
- A
Guiding Principle emerges from the
Underlying Inference and gives us
the following enumerated and
astounding predictive inferences in
the Epicurean cosmology:
The
Guiding Principle: Nature has
inherent lawfulness, a seamless causality,
is self-generating and spontaneous, is not
only causally-explicable, but
intrinsically intelligible and coherent
(Nature explains herself). Nature is the
totality of the actions of a one infinite
self-moving substance (monism).
β—Physics /
Natural philosophy: Atomism as developed
below.
γ—Epistemology:
An empirical
rule (Κανών)
/ method for seeking knowledge of the world
toward the following moral goals
δ—Ethics / Moral
philosophy: Advocated "living in
obscurity" (λάθε
βιώσας).
- (a) ἀπονία, absence of bodily
and mental pain and distress.
-
(b) ἀταραξία,
imperturbability, equanimity, and
tranquility of mind, peace, and
freedom from fear.
-
(c) εὐδαιμονία,
happiness, well-being,
flourishing, blessedness.
ε—Aesthetics
/ Artistic philosophy: Epicurean moral
philosophy yields its aesthetic and artistic
philosophy.
|
(https://archive.briankoberlein.com/2016/08/11/the-infinity-paradox/index.html).
I. Nature
or the Universe must be eternal: Nothing comes
from nothing, so all somethings (effects) must come from
previous somethings (causes) ad infinitum &
in turn into other somethings into the future ad
infinitum. There is no before or after the
Universe.
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(https://miro.medium.com/max/960/0*gwCfb0Le3mp2fZGc.).
II. Nature or the
Universe is infinite in extension: There is no
outside of the Universe, nothing beyond, or external
thereto. The human mind also is an ephemeral product
of the laws of causation of Nature or the Universe.
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Three galaxies in
Draco (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/draco3_heutz_f.jpg).
III.
Eternal, Infinite Nature or the Universe also has no
center & no boundaries, is centerless &
boundless, going off into infinity in all directions.
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(https://external-preview.redd.it/p9v4AVcH7csQlbfmVN8pd75irNalZhOBhjGSqpdf-1Y.jpg?auto=webp&s=4b6b7a66575c16777deb344105b8b832e4a9ea46).
IV.
Nature or the Universe is everywhere and always
emergent from one and the same fundamental substance,
so the causal laws of Nature operate the same always and
everywhere. Humankind is also an atomic derivation of
that substance.
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V. In Nature or
the Universe, we are not alone. All other beings,
great or small, whatever is and whatever our imagination
can possibly conceive as deities or other beings living
or imagined, are denizens of Nature or the Universe, in
numberless worlds in infinite space-time, all subject to
the universal laws of causation, whether out there, or
in our minds, are also self-produced by Nature. Our
human nature and our human minds are ephemeral products
of that one Nature.
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The
world-view of the Epicureans has been transmitted to modernity
with the 15th century discovery of a single surviving copy of
the Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature
of the Universe) by Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus (c.
99-55 BCE).
(Link).
in 1417
by an Italian Renaissance humanist and manuscript sleuth
Poggio Bracciolini (cf. Matthew Stewart, 2014. Nature's
God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, pp.
82-83; Stephen Greenblatt, 2011. The Swerve: How the World
Became Modern; see Greenblatt at the Getty: "Lucretius
and the Toleration of Intolerable Ideas" link).
Although suppressed for 2 centuries more, early modern and
Radical Enlightenment skeptical freethinkers, deists, and
rationalists of renown were deeply impacted by this text; this
time capsule message from the Ionian Dawn / Enlightenment.
A copy was even made for Pope Sixtus IV by Girolamo di Matteo de
Tauris in 1483 (Link).
(Link).
The first full published English translation of Lucretius' poem
by Thomas Creech in appeared in 1683.
The light coming into the mind of Epicurus as atoms! (https://jamesgray2.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/dsc_0001.jpg).
The whole translated work in rhyming couplets of iambic
pentameter may be read here.
Earlier, a Puritan lady named
Lucy Hutchinson (1620-1681; link;
cf. link)
translated De Rerum Natura into English verse, although
it wasn't published until the 20th century (link).
For a modern English recording of De Rerum Natura, see
this link.
The Stoics (3rd century BCE). Stoicism (Στωικισμός) was a
school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium
in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE (Wikipedia), which was essentially materialist,
teaching that all being (ὄντα, where we get the word ontology) is
corporeal but not necessarily all things (τινά), because of their rejecting any
dualism of the corporeal and the incorporeal, which contrary
to Plato and Aristotle does not exist. Everything, every
object (whether concrete or abstract) in the world is
derived from / made from primal, formless Substance (ὑποκείμενον). In and between these
objects, qualities and relations inhere, and every part of
the whole follows reason or logical causation (logos), such that the
Universe is a material, reasoning Substance, which can be
called God or Nature (cf. some roots of Spinoza's ontology,
Deus sive Natura),
with active and passive aspects.
Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς
Zeno of
Citium
c334 - c262 BCE (link).
The
cosmos of the Stoics was a small concentric cosmos, centered
on our solar system, spheres of the planets, & the
sphere of the 'fixed stars' beyond that, surrounded by the
great Void.
The infinite cosmos of the Stoics (http://eppursimuov3.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/reflections-in-cosmology-6-finite-or-infinite-universe/).
Hipparchos, 2nd century BCE (19th century woodcut, from Wilson, 1980) possibly the inventor of the
astrolabe,
and also one who helped the
geocentric system to triumph in ancient Greece.
In addition
to determining the relative distances and sizes of the
sun and moon,
~230 BCE:
On the Distances
and Sizes of the Sun and Moon, (Περὶ
μεγεθῶν καὶ ἀποστημάτων [ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης]) in
which he calculates the ratio of the distance
between Earth and the Sun to that between Earth and
the Moon. (His estimate was more than an order of
magnitude too small, but the fault was in his lack
of accurate instruments rather than in his correct
method of reasoning). This detail compares the line
subtending the arc dividing the light and dark
portions of the Moon in a lunar eclipse with the
relative diameters of the Moon and the Sun.
Aristarchos also found an improved value for the
length of the solar year. (Link; http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/1351/1383953/image/aristarchus_1.jpeg)
Aristarchos
made one of the great inductive leaps—
He postulated...
A heliocentric
world-view 17 centuries before Copernicus!
- Argued
that the stars are too distant to have a
detectable parallax
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Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ
Σάμιος
Aristarchos
of Samos
(c310-230 BCE)
'The Greek Copernicus'
Or
rather Copernicus was the 16th century
Aristarchus!
- Proposed a
heliocentric cosmology: Sun, not Earth at center
of the Cosmos (Philolaus' "central fire" = the
Sun)
- Calculated
the distances and sizes of the Sun and Moon,
accurately given his sparse data
- Used continued
fractional expressions to calculate the length of
the sidereal (stellar) year to be 365+1/152 and
the civil year to be 365+18/4868 days, &
precession to be about 1.38 deg / century
- Also
proposed an ancient Greek time period, his 'Great
Year' of 4868 solar years, equalling exactly 270
saroi, each of 18 Callippic years plus 10⅔
degrees. (Syntaxis,
book 4 chapter 2)
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(Koestler, 1959; Kristen Riley [1995];
cf. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/retrograde/copernican.html;
http://www.alpheratz.net/murison/papers/SolarSystemGravity/p14.html).
Ἀρχιμήδης ὁ Συρακούσες
Archimedes
of Syracuse
(c287 - c212 BCE)
Mathemetician, astronomer, physicist, inventor, and
engineer
- Approximated π by an
infinitesimal method of exhaustion, where he placed
circle-tangent polygons up to 96-sided and
calculating their perimeter: Between 31⁄7 (~3.1429)
and 310⁄71 (~3.1408), cf. actual six digit value,
3.14159
- Proved that
the area enclosed by a parabola and a straight line
is 4⁄3 times the area of a corresponding inscribed
triangle, expressed as an infinite geometric series
with the common ratio 1⁄4:
- Discovered
the "law of the lever": "Magnitudes are in
equilibrium at distances reciprocally
proportional to their weights."
- Originated a
mathematical method which included the use of zero
and infinity, limits, and infinitesimals in ways
similar to modern integral calculus
In the recently
discovered Palimpsest
(10th century CE), seven of his works are hidden
underneath later Judeo-Christian psalms: Equilibrium of Planes,
Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the
Circle, Sphere
and Cylinder, On Floating Bodies, The Method of Mechanical
Theorems, and the Stomachion.
Image in ultraviolet-illuminated
false color from the Palimpsest
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Newton and Leibnitz
were the 17th century Archimedes, the first discoverer
of the calculus
Approximation
of π
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archimedes/pi-flash.html;
local link)
(Image source)
Area of the parabolic segment limited by the
diagonal line segment AE is equal to 4/3 that of
the inscribed triangle ACE (On the Quadrature of
the Parabola; Image
source).
Using the boyancy of a liquid
displacement to differentiate the silver alloyed
impurity in King Hiero's votive crown compared to
a pure gold object of equal weight. Legend has it
that upon realizing this principle Archimedes
leaped out of his bathtub and ran through the
streets of Syracuse naked, shouting "Eureka!
[εὕρηκα!] I found it!" (Hydrostatic displacement
referenced in On Floating Bodies).
A sphere has 2/3 the volume +
surface area of its circumscribing cylinder.
Archimede's proudest accomplishment, placed on
his tomb by his request.
"Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the
Earth." [Greek: Δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω]
—Archimedes. "The law of the lever" from On
the Equilibrium of Planes.
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The rise (6th -
3rd centuries BCE) and decline of Greek science (3rd century
BCE - 1st century CE)
(from Koestler, 1959).
Aristarchus'
heliocentric world-view was forgotten in favor of the
Aristotelian geocentric system, and the religious / mystical
influence from the Orphic Mystery cult polluting the Ionian
science via the
Pythagoreans, signaled a departure from the
naturalistic-rational approach to discovering the world.
With
the arrival of the Socratic synthesis and the Platonic and
Aristotelian schools, a long decline of ancient Greek
science and cosmology began, which, abetted by the
Judeo-Christian adoption of neo-Platonism and later the
medieval institutionalization of Aristotle, lasted nearly
2000 years (developed more fully in Koestler,
1959).
Link
V. The Ptolemaic Geocentric System: 2nd-16th centuries CE
Κλαύδιος
Πτολεμαῖος
Claudius Ptolemy
of Alexandria
87-165 CE
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(turkeyinmaps.com/Sayfa4.html).
The
Ideal-mundane (heavenly-earthly) dualism of Plato (with
motivations later furthered by Christian influence by
neo-Platonism) led rather directly to the mature Ptolemaic
system with its search for 'uniform circular motion.'
However,
observation showed that the planets were not behaving with
such simple motion. The planets seemed to slow down, pause,
and move backward (retrograde motion) instead of pursuing a
straightforward motion:
(http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall03/AST1002/section2/History.htm).
Ptolemy (c 150 CE) The
Almagest
So,
Ptolemy suggested that the solution to preserve 'uniform
circular motion' was to add extra circles or 'epicycles':
Ptolemaic
epicyclic system of planetary motion was able to predict
planetary positions, but required a complex
addition of ad hoc free parameters in a
jerry-rigged, and ultimately untenable system to do so.
(http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall03/AST1002/section2/History.htm;
cf. Koestler, 1959).
The Ptolemaic system
required epicycles (circles centered on circles) to explain
'retrograde motion,' i.e., when a planet seems to pause and go
in reverse for a time against the background of the fixed
stars (since the Copernican Revolution we realize 'retrograde
motion' is a perspective effect from the orbit of the earth
around the sun).
When matured, the
Ptolemaic system required no less than 40 wheels some
turning clockwise and some counterclockwise to keep the sky
(Sun, Moon, planets, and fixed stars) in 'uniform circular
motion—an intellectual monstrosity (Koestler, 1959).
Ultimately, the Ptolemaic system was in context a pious
cosmology, friendly or at least non-threatening to the
theological world-view: An ordered and insular world under
divine supervision.
(http://www.math.brown.edu/tbanchof/STG/ma8/papers/mcecil/softball.html).
An example of "Epicycle
calculations. 16th-century calculations of epicycle motions of
an astronomical body. Epicycles were mathematical constructs
used to explain geocentric orbits before heliocentric models
simplified the calculations. This set of calculations starts
in 1580 (labelled at right) and finishes in 1596 (labelled at
left). An example of such a calculation was the orbit of the
planet Mars as seen from Earth. This diagram is from 'Sphaera
mundi' (1635) by Italian Jesuit astronomer and mathematician
Giuseppe Biancani (1566-1624)" (https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/568682/view).
VI. Darkening Age: The
Great Western Retreat
The
cosmologies of Medieval Judeo-Christendom (3rd - 17th centuries
CE)
& the pre-Renaissance (3rd to 14th centuries).
"View from the Greenwood cemetery, Brooklyn" (1881)
by Rudolph
Cronau (1855-1939); from the Brooklyn Museum (link;
cf. link
& link).
(19th century engravings accompanying
Byron's "Greece, sad relic of departed worth"
and Southey's 1802 "Inchcape Rock" about northern Roman
antiquity in Scotland).
The
ancient science of the classical Greco-Roman was built on
certain values and methods in seeking a natural cosmology,
as we have seen in the heritage of the Ionian Dawn and Greek
cosmology. The foundations and achievements of science in
the classical Greco-Roman world were multiform (Richard
Carrier, 2017. The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire.
Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing) and they shared and
transmitted that knowledge, including cosmology, through
education and libraries (Carrier, 2016. Science
Education in the Early Roman Empire. Durham, NC:
Pitchstone Publishing); see link.
Carrier summarizes the epistemic value system of the
ancient Greco-Roman scientists along with their
methodological accomplishments:
| Epistemological
& Societal Values |
Method |
- I. Curiosity:
Learning the secrets of Nature is a moral good.
- II. Empiricism:
Observing Nature to learn new things
- III. Progress:
Progress is possible and valuable
- IV. Freedom:
Unhindered by state, religion, or public
- V. Socio-economic:
Public-private careers, pensions, support for
research. Physicians, engineers,
philosophers, astronomer-astrologers enjoyed
respect & middle class status.
|
Scientific method in the classical Ancient
world:
- (1)
Innovative use of instruments
- (2)
Repeatable experiments
- (3)
Mathematical descriptions
- (4)
Logical argument from well-confirmed premises
- (5)
Seeking to establish consensus among experts,
even despite their various philosophical schools
of thought
|
A major
intellectual change came over the West with the decline
of the Greco-Roman classical culture and learning, and
the rise of Judeo-Christianity-Islam into ascendance in
the Mediterranean world, created a rejection of
classical learning and spirituality, intolerance, war,
and persecution of dissenters. Although
there are classical and Enlightenment era scholar who
discussed this decline into the "dark ages," the
Renaissance, and then the Enlightenment, these four recent
works summarize some of the intellectual and historical
roots of the "darkening age."
Kirsch, J. 2005. God Against the Gods: The History
of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism.
New York, NY: Viking Compass, Penguin Group.
|
Freeman, C. 2005. The Closing of the Western Mind:
The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. New
York, NY: Random House, Vintage.
|
O'Donnell, J. J. 2016. Pagans: The End of
Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity.
New York, NY: HarperCollins, Ecco. |
Nixey, C. 2019. The Darkening Age: The Christian
Destruction of the Classical World. London, UK:
Pan MacMillan, Pan Books.
|
Prelude:
Theological world-views have at times delayed and hindered
the advance of scientific knowledge of the world. During the decline of
Western civilization in the post Roman imperial period, after
fall of Rome in 476 CE, religious dogmatism in both Judaism
and Christianity, or Judeo-Christendom, pulled various
religious thought leaders back into major retreats from the
scientific knowledge of the cosmos in the Greco-Roman
classical antiquity era.
- The Jerusalem
and Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem
Talmud says that Alexander of Macedon (Alexander
the Great) was lifted by birds to the point that he
saw the curvature of the Earth. This story is mentioned as
well by the Tosafos commentary on the Babylonian Talmud.
This is used to explain why a statue of a person holding a
sphere in his hand is assumed to be an idol. The sphere
being held in its hand symbolizing the idol's purported
dominion over the world whose shape is a sphere.
- St. Athanasius (c
293-373 CE) of Council of Nicea fame, held that Earth is
flat and floating on the waters (Against the heathen).
- Augustine of
Hippo (354-430 CE) has been traditionally considered to
have endorsed the educated "sphericity of Earth" view of
his contemporaries, but recent scholarship has shown
that he probably believed in a flat, disc-shaped earth
"at the bottom of the Universe" despite his qualified
endorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram (Ferrari, 1996;
1999).
- Diodorus of Tarsus
(d. 394 CE) may have used scripture to argued for a flat
Earth (link).
- Severian, Bishop of
Gabala (d. 408 CE) advocated a flat Earth where the
Sun does not disappear to the other side, but rather
"travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a
wall" (J.L.E. Dreyer, A
History of Planetary Systems. 1906, p. 211-12; link).
- St. John
Crysostom (344-408 CE), citing scripture, advocated a
flat Earth upon the waters surrounding the firmament (Homilies Concerning the
Statutes). Other Early Christian fathers
supported a spherical Earth, while Basil of Caesarea
(329-379 CE) considered the subject irrelevant.
Kosmas Indicopleustes, 6th century CE entrepreneur, monk (of Nestorian
faith), and traveler to the Orient, who authored
Topographia Christiana
(547 CE)
- World
represented as a sacred tabernacle (cf. ark of the
covenant), where Earth is flattened and bounded by
oceans
- His map
of the World indicated a flat earth
(Larger view)
|
The Kosmos or World
|
Macrobian view of the World as a Ptolemaic geocentric
sphere, where Earth is spherical, globus terrae.
Macrobian cosmography (9th century CE;
link)
Bishop Isidore of Seville (560 - 636 CE) in
his widely read Etymologies,
held that Earth "resembles a wheel" with zones (cf.
Anaximander's disc-shaped world).
With
the approach of the Renaissance and the recovery of Greek
learning through the Arabic Enlightenment and from
Constantinople, a more spherical cosmography of Earth began
to reappear.
Hildegard
von Bingen (12th century CE) portrayed a spherical Earth
with the four seasons in his book, Liber Divinorum Operum.
Left below: 14th
century copy of the 12th century L'Image du Monde (c 1246 CE).
Right below: 1550
edition of the 13th century On the Sphere of the World, the most
influential astronomy textbook of that time.
The partial
Renaissance recovery of classical learning helped make the
difference between the earlier view and the latter.
19th century rendition of the medieval
conception indicating a mingling of the ancient
Near Eastern idea of the 'dome' of the sky with a
'mechanistic' view of the celestial 'clock works' behind (Universum).
Hierarchy: A modified view
of the Medieval Judeo-Christian conception of the geocentric
Cosmos, influenced in part by Biblical interpretation and
partly by the Ptolemaic system (Joseph, 2010b. Now-defunct Journal of Cosmology,
Vol 6, 1548-1615).
VII. The
(Aristarchan-)Copernican-Brunesian Revolution
(16th - 21st
centuries CE)
After many
reluctant years, Nicolas Copernicus nearly on his deathbed,
finally allowed his heliocentric theory to be published:
The Earth and
all the other planets orbited the Sun, while the Moon
orbited the Earth.
The Earth was
no longer the center of the Universe.
|
Nicolaus
Copernicus
(1473-1543)
De
Revolutionibus Caelestibus
(1543)
|
Copernican system diagram (link).The formative epoch
(16th-19th centuries) of the Copernican Revolution encompassed:
- Copernicus and the
sun-centered world-view of Copernicus based on Tycho Brahe's
observational foundations, setting Earth adrift in the cosmos,
- Giordano Bruno's
conception of 'innumerable suns and an infinite number of
planets,'
- Kepler's 3 laws of
planetary motion,
- Galileo's mechanics
and the Silent Revolution of the replacing of 'final
causation-purposes' by 'efficient causation,'
- Sir Isaac Newton's
& Gottfried Leibniz' calculus, 3 universal laws of motion
and universal gravity,
- The observational
astronomical revolution of Charles Messier and William
Herschel and family.
- Pierre Simon de
Laplace's celestial mechanics, probability, and a natural
origin of the solar system, i.e., the nebular hypothesis
Although the most
important consequence was not grasped at first, the new
Sun-centered or heliocentric worldview unmoored the Earth from
her safe, insular place (in the ancient and Medieval worldviews)
and set her adrift in the vast ocean of the cosmos: Every
thought system since then has had to come to terms with this in
some way whether honestly or otherwise.
Although other Christians
and religious thinkers welcomed the evidence, some
orthodox reactions were very strong against the new
Copernican view (cited in Russell, 1935).
- The Inquisition
agreed to spare Galileo "provided
that with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith,
in Our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest
the said errors and heresies." Mild sentence: "We condemn you
to the formal prison of this Holy Office for a
period determinable at Our pleasure; and by
way of salutary penance, we order you during
the next three years to recite, once a week,
the seven penitential psalms"
- Melchior
Inchofer, SJ: "The
opinion of the earth's motion is of all heresies
the most abominable, the most pernicious, the
most scandalous; the immovability of the earth
is thrice sacred; argument against the
immortality of the soul, the existence of God,
and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner
than [such] an argument."
- Martin Luther
referred to Copernicus as "an
upstart astrologer who strove to show that the
earth revolves, not the heavens or the
firmament, the sun and the moon. . . . This fool
wishes to reverse the entire science of
astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not
the earth."
- John Calvin:
"'The world also is
stablished, that it cannot be moved' Ps.
xciii, I. Who will venture to place the
authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy
Spirit?"
- John Wesley:
The new ideas in astronomy "tend
toward infidelity"
- Galileo's
writings
were
on
the
Vatican
Index of
Prohibited books (Index
Prohibitorum) until 1835 / 1822.
- 1979: Pope
John Paul II appointed a commission to study
Galileo's case: 13 years later there was a
report and...
- 1992: Pope
John Paul II apologized for the church's
treatment of Galileo
|
| N. Copernicus'
revolutionary book was popularized and published with
the assistance of Johannes Rheticus, a Protestant
scholar from Wittenberg, the citadel of the
Reformation. |
| However as attributed to
Galileo: "The Scriptures tell us how to go to heaven,
not how the heavens go" (Hummel, 1986). |
If the Earth was no longer
the center, but only one planet orbiting the Sun, then suppose
that the Sun was just an ordinary star in an infinite Universe of
stars, the Earth would simply be one speck of cosmic dust . . . .
within an infinite Universe of unified seamless causality.
One daring Renaissance
clergyman, inspired in part by the Epicurean Revolution, indeed
took that next leap of imagination: Giordano Bruno (1548-1600),
and thus was part of the underground forces which would launch
the Enlightenment a few decades later.
Bronze statue in
the Campo de Fiori (Rome), where Bruno was burnt to death,
casting an accusing glance toward St. Peter's:
Giordano Bruno
(1548-1600)
Over 4 centuries ago (17 Feb 1600) the great,
visionary Giordano Bruno (rebel Dominican friar,
philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, free spirit,
and even playwright and general polymath (who wrote
extensively) was brutally murdered, burnt to death by
the Inquisition after long years of imprisonment (Giordano
Bruno; see http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_kessler/giordano_bruno.html)
for various charges of heresies against Catholic
dogma, as well as his expansive cosmology of plurality
and eternity of worlds. He espoused the heliocentric
(Copernican, actually Aristarchus was first) model,
going beyond this and holding that the solar system
was only one of an infinity of stellar systems in the
universe (in fairness, this overall cosmic perspective
should be called the Aristarchan-Copernican-Brunesian
system). He coined Libertes philosophica,
later taken up in the early Radical Enlightenment by
Spinoza and Bayle as Libertas philosophandi,
i.e., the freedom to think and reason, ideas that
gained traction in the Golden Age of the Dutch
Republic (before the Orangist restoration), and later
throughout Europe in clandestine philosophical
circles, and of course ultimately became enshrined in
the Rights of Man in the French Revolution, US
Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the
UN Declaration of Human Rights, etc. Scientifically
and philosophically, Bruno influenced Kepler, Spinoza,
and Leibniz, as well as so many others down to our day
because he was one of the key founders of the modern
scientific world view.
In
his 1582 play, Il Candelajo (Candelier
or Chandler), he anticipated the idea of the
Enlightenment through freedom and the light of
knowledge: "Behold in the candle borne by this
Chandler, to whom I give birth, that which shall
clarify certain shadows of ideas ... I need not
instruct you of my belief. Time gives all and
takes all away; everything changes but nothing
perishes. One only is immutable, eternal and ever
endures, one and the same with itself. With this
philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands.
Whereof, however obscure the night may be, I await
the daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for
night ... Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if
you can, and return love for love."
|
[Continuing
from left column... {image}].
In De la Causa, Principio et Uno (On
Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1588), he wrote: "The
Universe is then one, infinite, immobile.... It is not
capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and
limitless, and to that extent infinite and
indeterminable, and consequently immobile." Bruno also
wrote De l'Infinito Universo et Mondi
(On the Infinite Universe and Worlds; 1584). The
universe's "immobility" should probably be understood in
the sense of being infinite and all-encompassing, since
the next quote indicates his view of the dynamism within
the infinite whole.
Also in De la Causa, he wrote: "This entire
globe, this star, not being subject to death, and
dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere
in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing
and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or
down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in
space; but the position of a body is relative to that of
other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative
change in position throughout the Universe, and the
observer is always at the center of things." Given the
limitations of knowledge in his time, it is interesting
to spot Bruno's anticipation of the notions of the law
of conservation of mass-energy, evolution of natural
processes, relativity of position in space and time, the
ever-changing flux (relativity) of reference frames /
inertial systems of moving bodies, and the isotropy of
the Universe from the observer's position, and so on.
Even though his day was not a
time of freedom, he lived, lectured, and wrote as if
free (although he was often on the run), commenting,
arguing, denouncing, and expounding on a whole variety
of issues that stirred his interest. Needless to say,
in publicly critiquing prominent ideas and people, he
earned the enmity of powerful enemies, and the fear
and condemnation of the oppressive churches and
institutions. During his long years of imprisonment,
he defended himself vigorously, and refused to recant
his views and freedom, even under the frown and threat
of the powerful cardinals (including Bellarmine and
Camillo Borghese, who became Pope Paul V). He was
sentenced to death by Pope Clement VIII on January 20.
He replied: "Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in
me fertis quam ego accipiam." "Maybe you give
this sentence with greater fear than mine in receiving
it."
We are all among Bruno's beneficiaries! |
(https://colosseumrometickets.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Rome-statue-of-Giordano-Bruno-in-Campo-de-Fiori-fields-of-flower.jpg).
'The restless spirit of the
Copernican Revolution'
(1548-1600)
former
Dominican turned itinerant philosopher, mystic,
mentalist, and truth seeker.
|
Likewise following
Lucretius, he anticipated the early Enlightenment
Spinozists by monistically equating God and Nature as
one infinite substance.
- Advocated the
Copernican system and placed it in an infinite starry
universe, an "infinity of worlds":
"There are
innumerable suns and an infinite number of planets
which circle around
their
suns as our seven planets circle around our Sun."
- Proposed
an early form of the "nebular hypothesis" to
account for the origin of our stellar system.
|
Bruno's theological and
philosophical heresies, together with the mistake of returning
from N Europe to his native Italy, earned him 7 years in the
dungeons of the Inquisition and finally a death sentence. When
sentenced to be burnt at the stake (1600) Giordano Bruno said to
his judges:
"Perhaps your fear in
passing judgment on me is greater than mine in receiving it."
(http://www.theharbinger.org/xvi/971111/birx.html;
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/modeur/ph-holli.htm).
Giordano
Bruno (1548-1600) was a martyred witness to the might of
truth and truth-seeking in the human quest for truth about
the Universe and our place in it, against any and all
temporary cults of power.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
In Memoriam ad Gloriam Veritas
(cf. link).
(http://www.nada.kth.se/~fred/tycho/nose.html;
http://www.nada.kth.se/~fred/tycho/index.html)
Tycho Brahe
(1546-1601)
The greatest
observational astronomer of his age
Moved toward a
heliocentric system by observations, but still held
the more traditional cosmology.
|
Tycho Brahe's
semi-heliocentric, semi-geocentric system
|
cf. http://www.astroportal.sk/astro_gallery/pages/008_ss_Tycho%20Brahe.htm).
A new "physics of the
sky"
THE WATERSHED of the Copernican
Revolution
Johannes
Kepler
(1571-1630)
|
(www.spacefame.org/kepler.html).
Johannes Kepler sought a
cosmology not only able to predict the motions of heavenly
bodies but able to give a physical explanation of those motions:
He succeeded in explaining the retrograde motion as the result
of our perspective from a sun-orbiting earth (eliminating the
epicycles necessary in the Ptolemaic system). His dream of 'a
physics of the sky' or a true physical explanation of the
motions of the heavenly bodies would have to await the work of
Sir Isaac Newton.
The Copernican model
predicted the phases of Venus (which has a smaller orbit closer
to the sun than earth). Galileo with his telescope first
observed the apparent change in the size of Venus during its
phases, an observation also consistent with a heliocentric
model, but incompatible with the Ptolemaic system.
(http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall03/AST1002/section2/History.htm)
The Copernican model also provided
an explanation for planetary retrograde motion, as a
projection of the larger orbit against the night sky:
(http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall03/AST1002/section2/History.htm).
|
Kepler's three
laws of planetary motion:
- Planets
travel in ellipses around the sun, with the sun at
one of the foci (work done with motion of Mars:
Astronomia Nova, 1609)
- The
sun-planet sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals
of time
- The
relation between any two planets around the sun is
the ratio of the 3/2nd power of their mean
distances.
|
Kepler's 3 laws (L) and the 2nd law
(animated, R).
(link).
What
Johannes Kepler did do for cosmology writ large was one of the
early specific statements of the 'cosmological principle' (link)
inherent in a 'Copernican-Brunesian principle' (link)
where Earth occupies no special place in the cosmos but is a
typical location, such that the Universe exhibits homogeneity
and isotropy at sufficient (cosmological) scale—a principle
which has been assumed and useful in cosmology-making in the
modern era but not established. In his Epitome Astronomiae
Copernicanć (1617-1621), Kepler like a few thinkers ever
since Democritus and Epicurus represented the Earth (Mundus)
as simply belonging to our Sun as a star just as any star
would be in our cosmos.
From Kepler's Epitome
Astronomiae Copernicanć (1617-1621), in a Doctrina
Sphćrica where M stands for Mundus
or world, i.e., Earth (link),
where by implication the 'cosmological principle,'
where our Earth is not at a special vantage place
or peering from a special view upon the Universe.
|
|
This was the continuing
forward leap in cosmic world-view, getting outside of our
conceptions and narrow self-focus.
Galileo's Discoveries and his
unintended Silent Revolution
Galileo sharing
his telescopic discoveries about the Moon and the Jovian moons;
Jean Leon Huens, Artist
(https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/galileo-discovers-jupiters-moons).
Galileo's
looking out at the Universe through the telescope is one of
the pivotal and revolutionary moments in the human
understanding of the cosmos, and the construction of a more
enlightened world-view. For an excellent overview of the
changes in views of the cosmos from prehistory to Galileo's
telescopes, see link.
As epochal as all that is, it was not the deeper Galilean
Silent Revolution.
Galilean Silent Revolution. The natural philosophy
edifice of Aristotle as institutionalized / hegemonized in
Christendom is what Galileo overthrew in an unintended way.
The hegemony of Aristotelian Ptolemaicism with a
Judeo-Christian setting was the established Medieval
cosmology, upon which were sur-added the "great chain of
being" and so on.
Outside the sub-lunar
terrestrial spheres are the incorruptible celestial
spheres, beyond all of which is the Empyrean realm
of the habitation of God over all (Peter Apian,
cosmic representation, 1524).
|
Aristotelian causation
included the "end," "purpose," or final "cause"
(τέλος, telos),
i.e., "that for the sake of which a thing is done."
It is the last of 4
types of causes: (α) material, (β) formal, (γ)
efficient, and (δ) final.
The
Ptolemaic / Aristotelian physics / Christendom
cosmology consisted of concentric spheres centered
on the classical elements (i) Water, (ii) Earth,
(iii) Air, and (iv) Fire (in the terrestrial
corruptible spheres where the characteristics are
made up of different elemental compositions (dry,
cold, hot, wet), and the higher spheres include
the 5th classical element Aether in the celestial
spheres (link).
|
Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642)
Professor of Mathematics
University of Pisa
|
07 January 1610:
First light: Galileo first turned a telescope on the
heavens: Saw the mountains on the moon & the moons
of Jupiter, &c.
- In 1638,
founded the modern science of mechanics (1638) by
applying mathematics to the real world, reducing
celestial and terrestrial motion to one kind of
motion.
- In writings
he defended the Copernican world-view and attacked
the Ptolemaic.
- Galileo's
inadvertent punch, the Silent Revolution: Efficient
causes replace 'final causes.' Natural events are
explained by efficient causes, leaving appeal
to 'final causes' apparently unnecessary and
redundant:
- Raised
the specter of a "purposeless world."
- Also
anticipated a view of an ordered world of
'seamless causality' a recovery of the Ionian
Enlightenment insights especially of Leuchippus,
Democritus, Epicurus, and the Epicurean school.
|
(Audi [ed.] et al.
1995).
In raising up
(again) the idea of efficient natural causation, Galileo
revolutionized physics (and all science) on the basis of the
study of empirical data, and made many specific advances
toward a more accurate cosmology. What empirical world-view
did Galileo begin to construct with his scientific
instruments?
Some of his
contributions were tests consistent with and then also
confirmatory of the newly recovered, hypothetical cosmology,
that of the (Aristarchan-)Copernican heliocentric system (link):
- A. The use of the
experimental method and quantitative measurements as part of
experiments (Einstein called him 'the father of modern
physics—a number of Ionian Greek philosophers also did
experiments). He discovered the law of falling bodies
descending at equal rates (uniform acceleration), including
experiments of dropping objects from the leaning tower of
Piza, as opposed to the Aristotelian idea that the rate of
fall is proportional to mass. One of his experimental
apparati was used to test his hypothesis: The inclined plane
with bells for timing balls (masses) rolling or 'falling'
down the incline, and ringing the bells as they passed. He
could then time the ringing of the bells.
- B. He also discovered the principle
of pendula, that pendulum swings take the same amount of
time to complete, however far they swing—directional
transfer of kinetic energy. This principle allowed for
the technology for more accurate time-keeping, which he
did by designing a pendulum clock:
- C. He improved
the telescope (first invented by Hans Lippershey in 1608)
and kept building more powerful telescopes, using them to
make discoveries in astronomy of cosmological significance.
(See below, one of Galileo's telescopes with a broken lens
surviving in a frame): (a) confirmed Democritus'
hypothesis that the Milky Way consists of distant stars, (b)
discovered sunspots, which showed that the heavens are not
perfect or unchanging in any Platonic way as imagined by
Aristotle, Ptolemy, and others.
- (c) The
Moon has features like mountains, craters, and valleys (even
though sub-lunar features of the heavens were supposed to be
imperfect in the ancient cosmologies, since the Moon was the
dividing marker between super-lunar empyrean realm of
unchanging perfection and the sub-lunar realm of change and
decay):
- (d) The
planet Jupiter has 4 major moons, Jovian or Galilean
satellites orbiting it. This tested the inference that all
objects are not circling Earth as the Ptolemaic system held.
The Jovian system resembles a postulated solar system such
as the Copernican model proposed, which takes its satellites
with it, suggesting that an Earth on the Copernican move
would also not leave our Moon behind. These observational
tests mitigate against the Ptolemaic system indirectly.
Galileo documented these Jovian satellite motions. Here from
his notes is the draft of a letter written in August of 1609
to the Doge of Venice, as well as his observational notes
from 10 January 1610 about Jupiter its 4 major Jovian moons:
- (e) In addition
to viewing a number of the planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn,
and Uranus, he also made paradigm-smashing observations of
the phases of Venus:
While the crescent
phases of Venus could be explained by Earth-centered epicycles,
where that of Venus had a smaller radius the epicycle of the
Sun, the greater than half phases of Venus could not be
explained in the Ptolemaic paradigm, but required a heliocentric
model, the (Aristarchan-)Copernican cosmology.
Ptolemaic system prediction
|
(Aristarchan-)Copernican
prediction
|
The Ptolemaic
system only predicts different sizes of crescent-phases for
Venus, while the (Aristarchan-)Copernican system predicts
non-crescent, less than full phases of Venus as well (Image link).
The >1/2 Venusian phases and the telescopic angular size
variations falsify the Ptolemaic system, and are consistent with
and confirmatory of the predictions of the heliocentric
(Aristarchan-)Copernican system:
 |
In
the animation, the magenta dot shows the postulated
heliocentric orbital path of Venus from Earth's
perspective (right), compared to the change in angular
size (left) we would see in a small telescope as Venus'
orbit brought it closer to and further from Earth, as
Venus orbits the Sun (link). |
The
combination of Kepler's Laws of planetary motion (based on
Kepler's ingenious extrapolations from Tycho's observations
of the Martian orbit with it's retrograde motion) along with
the Venusian phase observations of Galileo definitively
falsified the Ptolemaic cosmology. Proclaiming that spelt
trouble for Galileo down near Rome.
- D. One of
Galileo's greatest insights was his conceptualization of inertia
= If an object is at rest (within a frame of
reference or an inertial frame of reference), then it
remains at rest unless an external force / object
acts upon it to move it. If an object is moving at
constant velocity in a straight line (within a
reference frame, and without friction), it will continue
to do so unless acted upon by an external force / object.
Because of friction ([statistical mechanical] motions of
atomic parts) being so common, inertia has often escaped
notice.
- E. Galileo's law
of Inertia anticipated the Newtonian generalized laws of
motion, gravity, and orbital mechanics thus: (a) If there's
no friction in space, the planets would move forward in
straight paths forever without losing their energy (inertial
linear momentum). (b) Since their paths are curves of some
sort, there must be some force acting on the planets to
change their paths into these curves.
- F. Galileo's law
of Inertia also opened the way for the following
paradigm-blasting conceptual-cosmological revolutions: (i)
Inertia operates on objects on Earth and in the ethereal
realm of the Heavens, indicating that one form of motion
governs all objects in the Universe, showing that motion is
not because of final causes but because of universal
efficient causation, suggesting the Universe is one seamless
causal whole, as Epicurus postulated. (ii) Inertia,
inertial reference frames, and Galilean dynamics suggest a
path toward the theories of special and general relativity
in the 20th century. (iii) Inertia (conservation of
linear and angular momentum) suggested the generalization of
Mach's Principle or Mach's Conjecture (admired
but never formally incorporated into relativity theory) may
be stated thus in informal terms: The cosmic
distribution of mass affects and causes local reference
frame inertia. How? No one knows still. (iv)
Ultimately, inertia expressed in terms of Mach's Conjecture
has inspired such efforts as Hoyle-Narlikar conformal
gravitation (1964 & following) and other attempts to
expand general relativity, and may help explain such
phenomena as discordant and quantized redshifts discussed
later in our account. (v) Inertia and Mach's Conjecture /
Principle may likely have a role in a future theory uniting
of quantum phenomena and gravitation.
Galileo's famous
confrontation with the established Roman Catholic Church and
the Roman Inquisition is dramatically depicted in this
painting:
The controversy over
cosmology in both Catholic and Protestant Christendom
continued for a number of centuries thereafter up through the
Enlightenment and beyond. In our recent times, some quite
apologetic re-writings of the history of the controversy have
emerged, often making excuses for Christendom's actions
against and suppression of heliocentricism, and even
victim-blaming Galileo for not being more diplomatic and
thereby hurting feelings in high places, and so forth.
However, it is instructive to trace what earlier historians
and many primary documents stated (see historian, educational
reformer, founder of Cornell University, Andrew Dickson
White's 1896 volume I of A History of the Warfare of
Science with Theology in Christendom, New York,
NY: Appleton; reprinted in 1993 by Prometheus Press, Amherst,
NY; chapters III, IV; pp. 114-208; also https://archive.org/details/historyofwarfare189701whit).
The replacing of
teleological (Aristotelian) 'final causes-purposes' by natural
'efficient causes' was Galileo's unintended Silent Revolution.
If only natural 'efficient causes' need to be invoked, one
might wonder whether teleological (Aristotelian) 'final
causes-purposes' even exist, leaving one with a 'purposeless
world.' This was one revolutionary philosophical result of
Galileo's work. Essentially most of western history since and
modern culture, literature, art, philosophy, and religion
since then can be understood to be a reaction implicitly or
explicitly, and a wrestling with the specter of a "purposeless
world" raised by Galileo's Silent Revolution at the dawn of
the age of science (cf. W. T.
Stace's essay. 1948. Man against Darkness. The Atlantic
Monthly 182, 53-58). The intellectual world of the West has
never been the same since then.
The thesis-antithesis of
Galileo's confrontation with the theological cosmology of
western Christendom led to a synthetic denouement as regards the
leading ecclesiastical institution of western Christianity, the
Roman Catholic hierarchy, with whom Galileo directly clashed,
and under which he suffered confinement and humiliation.
The Vatican Observatory
has given it's own apologetic retelling of "the Galileo Affair"
so-called: The
Galileo Affair, in explanation of the question of why
Galileo got in trouble with the church, and claiming that the
church has never been opposed in principle to the advance of
science. That is of course a complex question for historical
research of which there has been much, not a matter of Vatican
assertion. Too much historical documentation shows that the
church has often found itself in de facto and sometimes
even malicious opposition to many advances of science.
On 10 November 1979, the
then recently elected pontiff, John Paul II, in an audience
celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's birth with the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the College of Cardinals, and
the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, asked for theologians, scholars,
and historians, with scientists to study and clarify the events
of the confrontation between Galileo and the church, within the
context of the so-called Ptolemaic-Copernican controversy of the
16th and 17th centuries. Thus started the Studi Galileiani
commission which issued its reports in several volumes over the
years (link),
the one on science and epistemology co-directed by Director of
the Vatican Observatory (1977-2006), George Coyne, S.J.,
appointed by Pope John Paul I. Pope John Paul II officially
closed the work of the commission in 31 October 1992 with a
conciliatory apology / non-apology for how the church treated
Galileo and the controversy (Vatican
documents).
Castle Gandolfo:
Papal residence outside of the Vatican as well as home to the
Vatican Observatory (link):
Although Galileo and his
famous stand in the face of theological authority in Christendom
triggered the Galilean Revolution, the pursuit of 'efficient
causation' which was a furtherance of the Epicurean Revolution,
re-introduced secretly through Lucretius' Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things) in the European Renaissance. One of
the major steps forward in the early Enlightenment was the
philosophy of Rene Descartes (Cartesianism), and the development
of the philosophical advance toward the modern scientific
world-view and its vision of an ordered world of 'seamless
efficient causality' was also the 17th century Dutch-Jewish
dissident Radical Enlightenment philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza
who became one of the very key founders of the Enlightenment and
the modern world-view. He did this largely by opposing authority
in religion and philosophy, rejecting neo-Platonic and Cartesian
dualism in favor of a naturalistic (Epicurean) monism—the entire
world is of a single coherent 'substance' or whole, determined
by natural laws of necessary, of efficient causality.
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Early Enlightenment rationalist philosopher and
mathematician, considered the father of modern philosophy
(http://philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/descartes.html;
link).
- In his Meditations on First
Philosophy (1641), he argued for a kind of
substance dualism: The world is composed of extended
matter (res extensa) and thinking matter (res
cogitans).
- Principles of Philosophy (1644):
- One of the earliest articulations of
the principle of inertia (see historical summary
cited under E. Mach below).
- An early form of the conservation of
angular momentum
- Articulated a fully relationalist
account of motion (thus he was a precursor of Ernst
Mach and the so-called 'Mach's Principle,' what I
have also called 'Mach's Conjecture' above) with
rectilinear motion, in order to avoid the 'Earth
moving' heresy of the Galilean system condemned by
the Inquisition in 1633, and strongly implied by his
own vortex model of the solar system.
- Held that the void or empty space was a
contradiction, and therefore, space itself cannot be
a property of reality.
- Founded algebraic geometry, including the
Cartesian coordinate system, named after him,
preparing the way for the calculus discovered by
Newton and Leibniz.
The Cartesian Vortex cosmology
image (link)
from his 1644 Principia Philosophiae, resembling a
bubble foam.
In the
repeated references above and in chapter II as well as in
the main hub of our Enlightenment legacy
homepage, to Benedict de Spinoza (17th century
optics-maker, philosophe, heretic outcast from
Judeo-Christianity), and one of the founding fathers of the
Radical Enlightenment, we must note that this philosopher in
adopting and thinking through the consequences of metaphysical
monism, he in a sense was also a contributor to cosmology, and
viewing the Universe as a whole, and thinking about the
relation of mythos to cosmos to ethos.
The
Radical Enlightenment philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza
(1632-1677) of Portuguese-Jewish extraction and a heretic to
his own Jewish religious community to Christendom in the
Dutch Republic's 'Golden Age' is one of the most important
figures in the nexus of Radical Enlightenment, theology, and
philosophy, and development of cosmology durig the early
modern period in the west. Having roots in the Abrahamic
faiths, from which he was an outcast, and a philosophical
ontology indebted to the Greek and Radical tradition in its
monism, and also to the geometric method of the 17th century
rationalists after Descarte, Spinoza had two strikes against
him (cited in this engraving), his religious cultural
heritage and the full radical world-view he espoused in the
Ethica published posthumously (1677) in a series of
axioms and propositional statements and their logical
development:
The New York Public Library Digital
Collections (link).
Here, we include a summary of "Spinoza's System" cit. Israel,
2001; pp. 230-241; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spinoza.jpg,
referring to selected propositions in his Ethica. The
issues raised will be engaged in greater depth in Chapter II. The Enlightenment:
Ontology of the Divine (mid-17th - 18th centuries).
Benedictus de
Spinoza
(1632-77)
(link;
first Bento, Baruch; also Benoit before his rejection
of and by his Jewish community).
Dutch Jewish
philosopher (of metaphysics, religion and morals),
radical freethinker, metaphysician (naturalistic
monist), epistemologist, psychologist, historical
exegete, political theorist, author-activist, optics
maker, mathematician, a key founder of the
modern-scientific world-view, famously characterized
by the philosopher Novalis as "the God-intoxicated
man"
A founder of
the modern world, via
the Radical Enlightenment:
- Relating natural
law (lex naturae) to God's immanence (i.e.,
the Deist insight in a monist, immanentist view of
God or Nature, Deus
sive Natura)
- Motion is not
distinct from the world of substance, but inherent
in it
- Affirming
naturalistic monism in science &
psychology
- Early proponent of
historical critical exegesis in Biblical studies
- Advocated freedom
of thought, inquiry, and conscience for its own
sake.
- An early exponent
of democracy.
Outline
of the Ethica (Ferguson recording of Edwin
Curley's translation: Videolink):
- Part I. Concerning
God—Video time signatures during the 9 h, 6 m,
55 s recording.
- Part II. Of the
Nature and Origin of the Mind—1:30:35
- Part III. Of the
Nature and Origin of the Emotions—3:22:00.
- Part IV. Of Human
Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions—5:47:00.
- Part V. Of the
Power of the Understanding or Human
Freedom—8:03:09.
|
First page of the
Pieter van Gent copy of the Ethica (Vatican
copy).
In Korte Verhandeling
(1660-61), Cogita Metaphysica (1663), Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus (1670), Ethica Ordine
Geometrico Demonstrata (1677), and other works,
Spinoza set forth a revolutionary monistic world-view
(largely matured by the time he was 28, 1660) about
reality-existence or 'substantia'
('substance'):
-
Whereas
Descartes begins subjectively with the self: Cogito,
ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am),
Spinoza starts with the encounter with the
totality of existence, that is, everything that
exists, exists in 'an infinite and eternal being
-- God (or Nature)' as undeniable, consistent, and
self-contained (Israel, 2001)
-
'every
substantia is necessarily infinite' (I Prop
VIII) & 'except God no substantia can
exist or be conceived' (I Prop XIV)
-
Substantia
'is what is absolutely independent in itself,
there can only be one substantia (i.e.,
'causally self-sufficient and indestructible'
Bennett), and so 'only one set of rules governing
the whole of reality' of which 'we are a part'
(universe of causality).
-
Whatever
is 'determined by God to produce an effect cannot
render itself undetermined' (I Prop XXVII), so 'in
nature there is nothing contingent, but all things
have been determined from the necessity of the
divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a
certain way' (I Prop XXIX)
-
God
& the world are distinct (i.e., not pantheism
in any meaningful sense; Israel, 2001)
-
Natura
naturans ('Nature naturing') = what is
independently self-existent and self-conceived
-- 'God, insofar as He is considered to be a
free cause': The fundamental laws (lex
naturae) governing the universe
-
Natura
naturata ('Nature being natured') = 'by
[this] I understand whatever follows from the
necessity of God's Nature, or from any of God's
attributes' (I Prop XXXI): 'The actuality or
determinate state of nature' (Israel, 2001) in
all its myriad parts and processes
-
Extension
and thought (intellect) are also part of 'Nature
being natured' governed by lex naturae,
therefore 'will cannot be called a free cause, but
only a necessary one' (I Prop XXXII).
-
In Part
V, having 'completed everything which concerns
this life' (Collected Works of Spinoza, i,
606), Spinoza turns to sections 'which have an
enigmatic, inscrutable quality, which many feel
lack the air of inevitability and logical cogency
prevailing hitherto' (Israel, 2001; p. 240). This
enigmaticity finds beautiful expression in V Prop
XXIII: 'The human mind cannot be absolutely
destroyed with the body, but there remains of it
something which is eternal,' which is itself a
development of V Prop XXII: 'Nevertheless in God
there is necessarily an idea, which expresses the
essence of this or that human body under the form
of eternity.'
And 'Whatsoever the mind understands under the
form of eternity, it does not understand by virtue
of conceiving the present actual existence of the
body, but by virtue of conceiving the essence of
the body under the form of eternity' (V Prop
XXIX). 'Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and
the body under the form of eternity, has to that
extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows
that it is in God, and is conceived through God.'
(V Prop XXX). 'The intellectual love of God, which
arises from the third kind of knowledge [deep
intuition], is eternal' (V Prop XXXIII), &c.
Although our bodies (including all living things
in the evolutionary saga of life) can only be
experienced while the body endures, under the
category of time or duration, they of necessity
are conceived in God beyond time under the form of
eternity. These profound thoughts have deep
implications for ontology, theology, and cosmology
(see under 'Ontological status of 'universalism'
as a contribution to Enlightenment thought at
homepage https://enlightenmentlegacy.net/
and chapter
II. The Enlightenment: Ontology of the Divine).
-
These
insights interestingly parallel Qōheleṯ (קֹהֶלֶת
) or Ἐκκλησιαστής (LXX)
which with Persian and Greek influence is
likely dated from (~330-180 BCE):
"Everything He (God) has made beautiful in
its time; also eternity He has put in their
hearts, so that one can find out the work
that God does from the beginning to the end"
(Eccl. 3:11).
|
|
On the problem of 'free will'
within the Western tradition, perhaps no philosopher
seems to advocate so opposite a view to the
determinism of Spinoza than Jean-Paul Sartre's
radical, phenomenological affirmation of a deep,
unavoidable human existential freedom. However,
there is an underlying compatibility. The world is
what is, sheer determined facticity,
'being-in-itself (roughly analogous to Spinoza's
effects of substantia) while fragile human
consciousness is 'being-for-itself /
being-for-others,' i.e., not a wholly determined
being, but a self becoming, a 'nothingness'
or 'not a thing.' The paradox of human freedom arises
from this tension [see in Being and Nothingness, chapter 1, section V, 'The
origin of nothingness' (1943)]:
Human freedom is the ability of
the consciousness to step back, reflect on oneself and
imagine oneself and the world other than it is
('negation'), to choose, to commit, to become. With
angst, consciousness views the (admittedly limited)
options into which one is thrown, from a 'distance'
(which is really 'nothingness' since there is no real
'distance' between the consciousness and the self) as
if seeing someone else and sees that 'nothing' can
prevent one from taking an option. This is what it
means to be "condemned to be free,' i.e., freedom is
experienced in all its anguish! We often try to avoid
or deny our freedom through excuses, and that is
called, 'bad faith,' a form of self-deception!
As a former
Resistance freedom fighter himself, he even asserted
(in an existential sense) that France was never more
free than during the Nazi German occupation when every
act had the weight of a commitment.
|
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
French
philosopher, novelist, and playwright, a key founder
of the important existentialist insights in
philosophy, French Resistance freedom fighter,
independent journalist, human rights activist,
leftist, and Nobel laureate. His philosophical magnum
opus on human freedom and its angst was Being
and Nothingness (1943), written while Sartre
was part of the French Resistance against the Nazi
occupation and its Vichy puppet regime during World
War II.
|
Spinoza and Sartre on ontology and
human freedom (cf. Appendix in Greer, 2014).
Now we turn to the likely greatest genius and
physicist of the last millennium, Sir Isaac Newton.
Sir Isaac Newton
& a Physics of the Skies / the Universe at last
(Image;
larger version).
Published the
masterpiece Philosophić Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, or the Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy, in 1687.
Three Universal Laws of Motion (summarized and in
translation from the Latin; link;
link;
link,
where we use p from Latin pellere 'push,
drive').
In summary:
- I. A body remains
at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a
straight line, unless acted upon by a force. (See
the history of 'inertia' under E. Mach below).
- II. The net force
on a body is equal to the body's acceleration
multiplied by its mass or, equivalently, the rate
at which the body's momentum changes with time.
- III. If two bodies
exert forces on each other, these forces have the
same magnitude but opposite directions.
And translated from Newton's
Latin:
- I.
Every body perseveres in its
state of rest, or of uniform motion [quantitus
motus, 'quantity of
motion,' i.e., inertia / momentum]
in a straight line, unless it is compelled to
change that state by forces impressed upon it.
or  ,
where —>p or p
(the momentum) = the
m (mass times) X —>v or v
(velocity is speed & direction).
- II. The
change of motion [mutatio motus, i.e., Δ in
inertia
/ momentum] of an
object is proportional to the force impressed; and
is made in the direction of the straight line in
which the force is impressed.
The Ist
Law having defined momentum (inertia), the IInd
Law defines force —>F
 ,
i.e., 
as the instantaneous rate / derivative of momentum —>p with
respect to the time derivative, dt, which
when there's no variation in mass m, dt
acts only on —>v,
i.e., acceleration —>a.
Force can also be defined in terms of acceleration
as the second derivative of location, d2—>s with
respect to time, dt2:
- III. To
every action, there is always opposed an equal
reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies
upon each other are always equal, and directed to
contrary parts [equal and opposite].
Universal Law of
Gravitation / Gravity (link,
from Latin gravitas 'weight'): Force of
attraction between bodies is proportional to the
product of their masses and diminishing as the
square of the distance between them:
%20.png) ,
where F (force), m1
and m2 are two masses, r2 is the
square of the distance between, G is the
gravitational constant, 6.674 × 10-11 m3⋅kg-1⋅s-2.
Apocryphally inspired by the fall of an apple from an
apple tree in Cambridge.
(Smoot &
Davidson, 1993).
Upon these universal laws and gravitation, any
orbit and associated masses could in principle be
calculated near & far across the vast expanses
of the Universe.
The broad foundations of the questions which
modern physics and cosmology seeks to address were
largely laid by Sir Isaac Newton.
|
Sir Isaac Newton
(1642-1727)
Co-discoverer of the calculus with
Gottfried Leibniz (nearly 1000 years after
Archimedes, who first proposed the
methods of integral calculus in his Palimpsest),
Sir Isaac Newton solved
every major problem in physics known in his day, and has been called 'the
greatest genius of all time'.... Newton provided 'the physics
of the sky' sought by Johannes Kepler.
Newton's Laws of Motion (Momentum) and Gravity were
built upon and depend on notions of coordinate
space, intervals of time, particle-bodies or
point-masses, velocity (speed over time in
coordinate space) discovered by others, and
prerequisite to making sense of Newton's work.
Although, Newton called it 'the science of fluxions'
or calculus, the method of limits and infinitesmals
for which we use Leibniz' analytic notations, is a
foundation of Newtonian physics.
Velocity is the average change in
location (speed) of a body / point-mass over an
interval of time, as indicated:
where Δs is the change in
location (speed) over Δt, the change in time,
calculated by taking the difference between the end
location s(t1) minus the
starting location s(t0)
divided by the difference in time interval between
end of interval t1 and the
start of the time interval, t0.
In order to find the velocity of a
body / point-mass at any given instant in time, we
take the limit of the velocity as the time interval
Δt approaches
0, also called the derivative of Δs
with respect to time (ds / dt) when Δt
—> 0.
 
so that velocity (v) is
the instantaneous change in position s(t)
or ds at any instantaneous moment in time,
dt.
Newton's
'fluxions' and laws of motion (& universal
gravitation) were ultimately applied to harmonic
oscillating motion, to multi-body gravitational
systems (3-body problem), to statistical
mechanics, thermodynamics, kinetic theory of
atomic gases and Brownian motion of a larger
particle pummeled by smaller atomic particles:
Brownian motion of particles
in an atomic / molecular gas (cont. link).
As well as on to electromagnetism, special and
general relativity, and quantum mechanics in the
modern atomic world (see more below).
After Pierre-Simon Laplace
published his five-volume Traité de
Mécanique Céleste (1798-1825; volumes
linked in the https://enlightenmentlegacy.net/
Chronology of the Enlightenment)
converting Newton's orbital mechanics into
analytic algebraic form, and solving other
problems, Mary Somerville (see below) expanded
on Laplace's first two volumes in her Mechanism
of the Heavens (1831), where she built a
towering pillar to the dream of a 'physics of
the skies'—deducing
the inverse-square Law of Universal
Gravitation from from Kepler's 3 laws of
planetary motion.
(p. 157; cont. link).
-1.jpg)
(Arp 273: Galaxies UGC 1810
and 1813 in a gravitational dance; link).
|
Sir Isaac
Newton, a repressed, irascible, cantankerous, brooding, and
lonely man, despite being in part enthralled by (a) the old
medieval world of alchemy, hermetic esoterica, biblical
prophecies, and arcane theology, and (b) being cautiously
involved in the zeitgeist and semi-hesitant world-view
of the moderate Enlightenment, nonetheless (c) his singular
massive scientific contributions brought the Greek category of
physics to the heavens, uniting the mundane and the
'supramundane,' the terrestrial and the celestial, decisively
carrying the study of the Universe out of the old realm of
'metaphysics' and mythogeny into the new, emerging realms of
physics, astronomy, cosmogony, and cosmology.
- Building on the
foundations built and forgotten work of Archimedes and the
Ionian Greeks, Sir Isaac applied the real number continuum
to problems of rates of natural events in the causal
fabric of the Universe, through the calculus, thus
incorporating and unifying analytic, geometric, and
numerical methods of modeling Nature.
- With the framework
of the three laws of universal laws of motion and
gravitation, Sir Isaac espied the causality and
predictability in celestial orbital and terrestrial
mechanics, uniting orbiting planets and moons, celestial
bodies and Earth's tides, and falling objects in terrestrium.
- Sir Isaac
hypothesized a provisional null hypothesis of absolute
space and time, which with advances from Euclidean to
differential and non-Euclidean geometries, provided a
backdrop to the development of relativity theory and
modern field theories.
- In his experiments
on diffraction of light and by postulating the corpuscular
theory of light, Sir Isaac built upon the foundations of
Greek Democritan atomic theory which would transform into
modern atomic theory, quantum duality(/complementarity)
and mechanics, and the ongoing developing of modern
quantum field theories to model the fundamental forces of
Nature. Sir Isaac serves as a forerunner for the day when
more advanced theories of gravitation, electromagnetic,
and atomic nuclear forces will be unified.
- With his
contributing advances to astronomical telescopy and the
reflecting telescope, the Newtonian reflector, Sir Isaac
opened the heavens to our view farther and deeper, as the
old refracting telescopes practically never could, laying
the road stones to the modern era cosmological time
machines of Mt. Wilson, Mt. Palomar, Mona Loa, ESO, and
others around the world, and the orbiting Hubble Space
Telescope, and now the James Webb Space Telescope, as well
as anticipating the terrestrial and orbiting telescopes
surveying the gamma, x-ray, infrared, and radio regions of
the electromagnetic spectrum, including the so-called
cosmic microwave background (CMB) radation.
In all this, he inadvertently
advanced the Radical Enlightenment tradition from
Democritus, Epicurus, onward, upward, and outward toward the infinitude of
Nature. Within the Epicurean-Galilean-Copernican
Revolutionary tradition, Sir Isaac took
some of the boldest steps in transforming our
world-views from mythos to cosmos,
and became one of the leading but reluctant luminaries of the
Enlightenment. (For more
on Sir Isaac's role and the role of moderate Newtonian
philosophy in the intellectual conflicts of the Enlightenment,
see relevant passages in the historical works by Israel, 2001,
2005, and Stewart, 2014, cited in the Enlightenment
Legacy website's "Select Bibliography and Online Resources").
The Enlightenment
Radicalizing of the (Aristarchan-)Copernican Revolution
One of the mind-expanding effects of the early Enlightenment
was a vast conceptual expansion of the cosmology of the
Copernican Revolution. Before the publication of the
Newtonian advances in astronomy and physics (1687), there
was the celestial cartography of Dutch cartographer,
engraver, and artist of the Dutch Golden Age, Frederik de
Wit (c1629 - 1706; link)
who owned a shop, De Witte Pascaert in Amsterdam. As an
engraver he worked on map publication, including Nova
Orbis Tabula in Lucem Edita and Nova Totius
Terrarum Orbis Tabula (c1660). About 1670, he
published his atlas of the Netherlands,
Nieuw
Kaertboeck van de XVII Nederlandse Provincien
(20 engravings), followed by a marine atlas in 1675. By
1695, he was publishing urban maps of Dutch cities. In 1898,
he published his atlas of all Dutch cities and villages,
Le theatre des plans de toutes les
villes qui sont situeez dans les XVII Provinces du Pays
Bas parfaictement deseigneez, under the
title,
Theatrum ichnographicum omnium urbium et praecipuorum
oppidorum belgicarum XVII provinciarum peraccurate
delineatarum (first edition with 124 engravings, 2nd
edition with 128 engravings; title).
It was in 1670, when de Wit published his planisphere and
celestial sky map of the constellations (referenced earlier
in the history of the constellations), with representations
of rival cosmologies.
De Wit's 1670 celestial map of the
ancient constellations, including Bayer's added
constellations (link).
De Wit's celestial map was published 17 years before
Newton's Principia in the midst of the
Copernican Revolution, and on the margins he published
graphical schema of the rival cosmologies from the
ancient Greeks to the controversies of his day.
In the order in which
De Wit placed them, with the main rivals Hypothesis
Ptolemaica (top center) and Hypothesis Copernicana
(bottom center):
(link).
From this milieu, philosophes of the Enlightenment
(moderate and Radical) building on the larger
Epicurean-Brunesian views of the Copernican Revolution
took the further leap of imagining farther than ever
seen before. By 1750, a mere 80 years later, visionaries
reaching out beyond the telescopic vistas glimpsed by
the Herschel family astronomers and others, not only saw
the Sun with its orbiting planets, the stars as their
own stellar systems (like Epicurus and Bruno), but also
peered out to glimpse the possibility that our whole
star system, the Milky Way, was just a speck, like our
own Sun among the stars, amidst a boundless realm of
star systems stretching away into infinity, a world of
'island universes' of alien star systems in the abyssal
night. The scientific data confirming an 'island
universe' cosmology only caught up to their imaginative
vision more than one and a half centuries later, ending
a 20 year controversy of the first two decades of the
20th century.
By the mid-18th century, two philosophers had taken that
leap. In 1750, English astronomer and mathematician
Thomas Wright published his An original Theory or
new Hypothesis of the Universe, founded upon the Laws
of Nature, and solving by Mathematical Principles the
General Phaenomena of the Visible Creation; and
particularly The Via Lactea. Compris'd in Nine
Familiar Letters from the Author to his Friend. And
Illustrated with upwards of Thirty Graven and
Mezzotinto Plates, By the Best Masters (London,
UK: H. Chappelle, Grosvenor-Street; entire 1750 volume Gutenberg
pdf). In 1755, philosopher Immanuel Kant published
Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels
or Universal Natural History and Theory of the
Heavens (full text in German
and in English).
Early pioneers of the "island universes" an
insight that the Universe is far more than our local
stellar system, the Milky Way.
 Figure of distant star
systems from Wright's An Original Theory
or New Hypothesis of the Universe
(1750).
Of those numerous faint nebulae which we
now know to be distant galaxies of
stars, Wright wrote:
- "..the many cloudy
spots, just perceivable by us, as
far without our Starry regions, in
which tho' visibly luminous spaces,
no one star or particular
constituent body can possibly be
distinguished; those in all
likelyhood may be external creation,
bordering upon the known one, too
remote for even our telescopes to
reach."
In a
passage that surely resembles and seems to
place Wright among the non-providential
Deists of the Radical Enlightenment, he
extended the Copernican Revolution
world-view thus:
- "In this great
Celestial Creation, the Catastrophy
of a World, such as ours, or even
the total Dissolution of a System of
Worlds, may possibly be no more to
the great Author of Nature, than the
most common Accident in Life with
us, and in all Probability such
final and general Dooms Days may be
as frequent there, as even
Birth-Days or Mortality with us upon
this Earth."
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Thomas Wright
(1711-1786)
English
philosopher, astronomer,
mathemetician, instrument maker,
architect, designer of gardens (Wikipedia;
Thomas Wright's star systems: http://www.torinoscienza.it/galleria_multimediale/apri?obj_id=1589)
Wright published his
An
Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the
Universe (1750): What appears to us as
a Milky Way is "an optical effect due to our
immersion in what locally approximates to a
flat layer of stars."
|
In 1755 Kant
proposed the
"island universe"
hypothesis of spiral nebulae as other Milky
Way galaxies, in his work, here in full text:
Universal Natural
History and Theory of Heaven
(& in the original German: Allgemeine
Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels):
- "Now,
if the fixed stars make up a system whose
extent is determined by the sphere of
attraction of the body located at the
centre, will not more solar systems and,
so to speak, more Milky Ways have arisen,
which were produced in the limitless field
of space? With astonishment we have seen
figures in the heavens which are nothing
other than such systems of fixed stars
restricted to a common plane, such Milky
Ways, if I may express myself in this way,
which present themselves to our eyes in
different positions with a weakly
glimmering elliptical shape appropriate to
their infinite distance away. They are
systems, so to speak, of infinitely more
infinite diameter than the diameter of our
solar system, but without doubt they arose
in the same way, are organized and
arranged by the same causes, and maintain
themselves by the same dynamics as our
system in its arrangement." —Section Seven: Concerning
Creation in the Total Extent of
its Infinity Both in Space and
Time.
- It is fascinating to note
that Immanuel Kant (and in
implication, Thomas Wright)
anticipated the extension of the
Copernican Principle across time
and space, such as was later
framed as the so-called Perfect
Cosmological Principle (mid 20th
century).
|
Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
One of the most influential moderate
philosophers of the Enlightenment (Aufklarung)
in Germany, epistemologist, moral
philosopher-ethicist, metaphysician,
political-educational theorist, early
thinker in anthropology, &c.
|
Although rather
obsessed with circles and globes, Thomas Wright's
expansive vision of the cosmos (See select plates).
Plate II. "A representation of
a solar System." Note: Wright does not
refer in his text to the
οὐροβόρος or ouroboros,
i.e., 'tail-eating' serpent encircling the
then-known solar system beyond Saturn. While
this may indicate an interest in esotericism, he
could be referring to the οὐροβόρος as the originally-Egyptian
symbol of chaos surrounding the ordered
cosmos (cf. Hornung, 1982. Conceptions of
God in Egypt: The One and the Many.
Cornell University Press. pp. 163-64), a
conception which Wright was bursting, pushing
back the chaos, with his new theory of cosmos.
|
Plate IV. "A true Delineation
of the Solar System, with the Trajectories of
three of the principal Comets. The Scale being
nearly five hundred and eighteen Millions of
Miles to an Inch."
|
Plate IX. "An exact Scheme of
the principal known Comets, in just Proportion,
to the Globe of the Earth."
|
Plate V. "A true Projection of
the System of the known Comets, all in just
Proportion and Position to the Orbits of Saturn
and Jupiter." Note: Perhaps including
the comets of 1680, 1682, 1665, 1742, 1744.
|
Plate XI. "Geometrical Scale to
all the primary Parts of the visible Creation,
with regard to the Distance of Orbits of
Mercury, Saturn and Syrius, compared with the
Globe of the Sun." Note: The importance
of the Dog star, Sirius (now known to be ~8 ly
away) in the imagination of the ancients up to
the modern era may be indicated here.
|
 
L-R: Plate XII. "[Hemisphere]
where the true Tract of this most surprizing
Zone of Light is distinguished amongst the
principal Stars." Plate XIII.
"[Hemisphere] where the true
Tract of this most surprizing Zone of Light is
distinguished amongst the principal Stars." Note:
The reference is to La Via Lactea or the
Milky Way. The other light band is the Sun's
annual path or the ecliptic with its
constellations.
In essence he argued that the
our view of the Milky Way was, "an optical
effect due to our immersion in what locally
approximates to a flat layer of stars" (link).
On the form of the Milky Way, La Via
Lactea, he specifically wrote: "To
a Spectator placed in an indefinite Space,
all very remote Objects appear to be
equally diftant from the Eye; and if we
judge of the Via Lactea from Phenomena
only, we muft of courfe conclude it a vaft
Ring of Stars, fcattered promifcuoufly
round the celeftial Regions in the
Direction of a perfect Circle" (Ibid.,
p. 48).
|
Plate XVII. "A perspective View
of the visible Creation, including the regions
around our Sun, Syrius and Rigel. The rest is a
promiscuous Disposition of all the Variety of
other Systems within our finite Vision, as they
are supposed to be posited behind one another,
in the infinite Space, and round every visible
Star." Note: This evocative image
denotes "the theory of the plurality of world"
famously linked with Bruno.
|
Plate XXIII. View from being
within a cross section of the "artificial
Horizon of a Globe [of stars]" with "all the
stars scattered promiscuously." Note: In
the Wrightian model, the Milky Way is a
horizontal view of a global star system.
|
Plate XXIV. "A Representation
of the Convexity, if I may call it so, of the
intire Creation [Milky Way system], as a
universal Coalition of all the Stars consphered
round one general Center, and as all governed by
one and the same Law." Note: Again, the
Wrightian model of systems of stars, what Kant
later called 'island universes' and we today
call galaxies.
|
Plate XXVI. "A Creation of a
double Construction, where a superior Order of
Bodies C, may be imagined to be circumscribed by
the former one A, as possessing a more eminent
Seat, and nearer the supream Presence, and
consequently of a more perfect Nature." Note:
A conception of worlds of stars within worlds of
stars.
|
Plate XXVII. Entails a
cross-sectional view of Wright's conception of
"A Creation of a double Construction," such "as
I hope will give you a perfect Idea of what I
mean by such a Theory." |
Plate XXIX.
By analogy to Saturn's rings
at the star system level, "not only the
Phenomena of the Milky Way may be thus accounted
for, but also all the cloudy Spots, and
irregular Distribution of them."
|
Plate XXVIII. Using analogy of
star systems
"in the Manner of Saturn's
Rings, nay, perhaps Ring within Ring, to a third
or fourth Order."
|
Plate XXXII. "The Object of
that incomprehensible Being, which alone and in
himself comprehends and constitutes supreme
Perfection." |
Plate XXXI.
"You may if you please, call a
partial View of Immensity, or without much
Impropriety perhaps, a finite View of Infinity."
Note: Wright's vision in this engraving
gives us the earliest known reach-exceeding the
grasping of the Universe of galaxies and galaxy
clusters stretching away into infinity.
|
In Wright's discussion leading up to Plate XXXI, he
says, "And farther fince
without any Impiety; fince as the Creation is, fo is
the Creator alfo magnified, we may conclude in
Confequence of an Infinity, and an infinite all-aCtive
Power; that as the vifible Creation is fuppofed to be
full of fiderial Syftems and planetary Worlds, fo on,
in like fimilar Manner, the endlefs Immenfity is an
unlimited Plenum of Creations not unlike the known
Univerfe." In the following paragraph, he
summarizes his vision to include the faint nebulae
barely discernible with the eye or the telescopes of his
day: "That this in all Probability may be the real
Cafe, is in fome Degree made evident by the many
cloudy Spots, juft perceivable by us, as far without
our ftarry Regions, in which thofe vifibly luminous
Spaces, no one Star or particular conftituent Body can
pofiibly be diftinguifhed; thofe in all likelyhood may
be external Creation, bordering upon the known one,
too remote for even our Telefcopes to reach."
(Ibid., pp. 83-84).
In 1756, James Ferguson (1710-1776) popularized the
findings of Newtonian cosmology of the Enlightenment era
in his Astronomy Explained On Sir Isaac Newton's
Principles and Made Easy to Those Who
Have not Studied Mathematics (1766; 1756), London,
UK: Andrew Millar:
The
Observational Astronomical Revolution of Charles Messier et
al., and the family Herschel (1771 - 1789).
After the advent of the telescope, before the advent of
astrophotography, graphic representations of the telescopic
views of celestial objects had to be produced by hand drawings
and sketches. Pioneers in such visual astronomy, who advanced
observational astronomy during the Enlightenment, included
French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier and the
German-English astronomer William Herschel and his astronomer
son and daughter, the brother and sister team of John Herschel
and Carolina Herschel, as well as other early visual
astronomer pioneers.
And next we go to the extraordinary
works of the family Herschel.
A natural origin (cosmogony) of the
solar system
Modern
cosmogony (the study of the natural origin of structure in the
Universe), building on and clarifying the ideas of Emmanuel
Swedenborg and Immanuel Kant, started in a quantitative sense with an
Enlightenment era French monsieur:
Pierre Simon de
Laplace
(1749-1827)
|
A purveyor of
the Radical Enlightenment worldview, he wrote
- Exposition du
Systéme du Monde (1796): The Nebular
Hypothesis of the origin of the solar system.
- Traité de
Mécanique Céleste (5 volumes over 26 years,
1799-1825): Showed that the
eccentricities and inclinations of planetary orbits
to each other always remain small, constant, and
self-correcting. The solar system is stable, without
the divine intervention about which Newton
speculated.
-
Théorie Analytique Des Probabilités (1812):
Established
the foundation of probability theory.
- Also
contributed to differential equations, physics, and
mathematics.
- He published
tidal equations and the equations of spherical
harmonics.
- Far ahead of
his time, he even proposed that some stars may be so
massive that light cannot escape their gravity,
i.e., black holes (Laplace,
1799. Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden
herausgegeben von F. von Zach. IV. Band, I.
Stuck, I. Abhandlung, Weimar; link).
|
The modern
Nebular Hypothesis
(The
nebular hypothesis)
The early
claim that it is a special 'providential'
circumstance that all the planets orbit in the
same direction and are in the same basic
plane was explained naturally by the breaking off of
bodies from the central condensing cloud of gas
which became the Sun.
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The modern Nebular Hypothesis is an
elegant naturalistic cosmogony: Fundamental forces
build a new stellar-planetary system:
- (1)
nuclear strong force in fusion builds the
elements in the nebula from earlier star
generations,
- (2)
gravity and
- (3)
angular moment cause condensing cloud into
protostar and rotating planetary disk, cooling
condensing into dust
- (4)
ignition of nuclear fusion & stellar winds
blows the new stellar system clear of nebular
gas and dust,
- (5) while
disk fragments collide into planets, some of
which have active cores heated by radioactivity,
in part a product of the nuclear weak
force.
Reportedly,
when receiving a copy of Laplace's Traite,
this exchange took place:
Napoleon:
"M.
Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book
on the system of the universe, and have never even
mentioned its Creator.''
de Laplace:
"I have no need of that hypothesis [Je n'avais pas
besoin de cette hypothese-la].''
|
Modern 'recipe' for stellar-planetary system
formation in simplified steps (Webblink):
Ingredients and mechanisms for planetary birth and evolution
(Image link).
The formation of a stellar system (panoramicuniverse.com).
However for many
Enlightenment freethinkers, the idea that an orderly, causal
Newtonian universe pointed to the existence of a Supreme Being,
quite apart from any revelation, a viewpoint called Deism, which
could be either of the providential or nonprovidential (radical)
variety. This conception forwarded the emerging Enlightenment
ideals of free inquiry, freedom of conscience, and individual
liberties. There were some for whom 18th century freethought
included modern naturalistic atheism. Charles Darwin's Origin
of species (1859) with its exposition of life as the result
of evolution and the struggle for existence was not far behind:
The image that became current was that of a lonely
mechanical world and an absentee God was a stereotype of the
position of the Enlightenment Deists. Actually most of them
believed in providence and had a far more optimistic worldview.
By the 19th century, for many freethought was becoming more
pessimistic.
The late 19th century poet, Matthew
Arnold captured the proto-existential angst of the late
Victorian time:
"I am a wanderer between worlds,
the one dead and the other powerless to be born."
As
telescopic astronomy advanced through the 18th and 19th
centuries, the cosmic realm of the 'fixed stars' continued to
acquire vastly increasing depth. A beautiful example may be
found in the case of the "Amas du Toucan" or 47 Toucanae (47
Tuc) located in the southern constellation Toucan (imagined by
Petrus Plancius c1598, and memorialized in Bayer's Uranometria,
1603, 1661). It was the other great early cosmographer /
uranographer and astronomer, Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille
(1713-1762), who published the ~10,000 southern star catalog,
Coelum Australe Stelliferum (1762) including 14 new
southern constellations, including the break up of Argo Navis,
who first realized that 47
Toucanae is too misty and fuzzy to be a single star. 47
Toucanae also was included in the great work by another French
astronomer, Charles Messier,
Catalogue des Nebuleuses et des Amas d'Etoiles (Catalogue
of Nebulae and Star Clusters) in 1771. It was the great
telescopic German-English astronomer, Sir William Herschel,
who along with his siblings Caroline Herschel and John
Herschel, observed and documented stars, binaries (double
stars), star clusters, and nebulae for many decades, who made
this representation, transferred into an engraving. Today, we
know that 47 Toucanae is a
Milky Way galactic globular cluster 120 light-years wide, and
16,700 light-years distant from Earth, now designated as NGC
104.
(https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/astronomy/page/5/).
The
beautiful engraving behind this artistic image came from
Amedee Guillemin (1865), Le Ciel: Notions d'Astronomie a
l'Usage des Gens du Monde et de la Jeunesse (Librairie
de L. Hachette and Company; see the Clark
Digital Collections). What it reveals is the emerging
profound profound perception of depth of the Universe (moving
away from the impression of a dome of fixed stars which is
such a temptation to the unaided and uniformed eye). This
increase in depth accompanying the emergence of modern
cosmology-making with and since the Scientific Revolution and
the ensuing Enlightenment.
VIII.
The (Aristarchan-)Copernican Revolution coming of age
(19th-early 20th
centuries)
Although Kepler and Newton sought and began to deliver what
we've called a 'physics of the sky,' cosmology only became a
branch of physics in the 20th century (see discussion in
Hermann Bondi's classic, 1950;
1959. Cosmology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press). However, there were two major yet simple 19th
century observations and thought conceptions which paved the
way for modern cosmology in the 20th century. One of these was
by German astronomer Heinrich W. M. Olbers and the other
German physicist Ernst Mach.
Olber's Paradox was an insight by German astronomer and
physician, Heinrich Wilhelm Mathias Olbers: He asked the
simple question, Why is the sky dark at night?
The dark sky at Night.
(link).
Along with
others, he reasoned thus, if there were an
infinite number of stars homogeneously placed at
scale in a Universe infinite in space and in time,
every line of sight would eventually land on some
stellar surface and the sky should be as bright as
the surface of the Sun, or even infinitely bright.
Why is it not?
(link;
animation of Olber's Paradox, link).
With
great clarity in the mid-20th century, cosmologist
Hermann Bondi stated the assumptions of Olber's
Paradox (1950; 1959. Cosmology. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press), chapter III:
- "(i) The average
density of stars and their average luminosity
do not vary throughout space.
- (ii) The same
quantities do not vary with time.
- (iii) There are
no large systematic movements of the stars.
- (iv) Space is
Euclidean.
- (v) The known
laws of physics apply."
With these powerful
assumptions, Olber's Paradox seems impregnable,
even with absorption, scatter, and re-emission of
light under thermal equilibrium, yet our observed
night sky is dark. Bondi pointed out that
cosmologists have struggled as of his time,
debating which of Olber's assumptions are not
sound, especially among postulates (i), (ii),
(iii), and (v), leaving us with a dark night sky.
The standard resolution to the paradox, given that
stars do not last for ever, and that (galaxies of)
stars are not homogenously distributed through
space (and Bondi does give mention of a nested,
hierarchical Universe arrangement which could also
resolve the paradox), are
- I. The
Universe is finite or young in age (e.g.,
HBBC, or similar) and / or, i.e., violations
of postulates (ii) & (iii)
- II. The
Universe is expanding so that (galaxies of)
stars recede beyond our sight by receding
beyond the cosmic horizon of expansion of
the Universe (e.g., HBBC, similar models, or
the CSSC and similar models); i.e.,
violation of postulate (iii).
- For both
the HBBC and the CSSC in an expanding
Universe, the question of baryon number or
mass-energy conservation under postulate (v)
is also under question, at least without a
generalization of the law of conservation of
mass / energy.
It has been argued that
the situation has potentially changed now again
since the publication of a radical aether gravity
theory proposal claim by Ranzan, C. 2016. Olbers'
Paradox resolved for the infinite nonexpanding
Universe. American Journal of Astronomy and
Astrophysics 4 (1), 1-14. Doi:10.11648/j.ajaa.20160401.11.
We may return to this subject again. It should be
noted that the Ranzan (2016) proposal falls into
the general category of a nested, hierarchical
Universe.
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Heinrich Wilhelm Mathias
Olbers
(1758-1840; link)
German physician, student of mathematics, and
astronomer
- Discovered the
minor planets (asteroids) Pallas and Vesta,
and proposed that the asteroid belt or ring is
actually the remnants of a destroyed planet
- Published Abhandlung
uber die leichteste und bequemste Methode
die Bahn eines Cometen zu berechnen (Treatise
on the easiest and most convenient method of
calculating the orbit of a comet),
Weimar: Verlag des Industrie-Comptoirs. 1797.
- Discovered
periodic comet 13P/Olbers in 1815 which has an
orbital period of 69 years.
- Described
and reformulated his famous Olber's
Paradox (link),
which essentially states how can the night
sky be dark if an infinite number of stars
are evenly distributed in an infinite
Universe? (Figure below illustrates how
postulate, I. 'young' or 'finite' cosmos is
one possible resolution of the paradox; cit.
Narlikar & Burbidge, 2008).
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How in an infinite Universe the radiation
influx could become infinite for an observer, in Olber's
famous Paradox (Figs. 6.1 & 6.2 modified from Narlikar
& Burbidge, 2008. Facts and Speculations in
Cosmology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
The other simple observation and thought conception was
introduced by German physicist and philosopher, Ernst Mach, related to the unsolved
question of the origin of the phenomenon of inertia? Along
with other resources here, we follow the discussion of the
problem of inertia and "Mach's Principle" in Hermann
Bondi's (1950, 1959; 1960) classic, Cosmology. (With a
new Introduction by Ian W. Roxburgh for the Dover edition,
2010, which is a full reprint of the 1960 second edition of
the first edition published by Cambridge University Press in
1952. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications).
The principle of Inertia
(link):
What is it? Defined in the 1st of Newton's 3
laws of motion: "Law I. Every object
perseveres in its state of rest, or [state] of
uniform motion in a right line, unless it is
compelled to change that state by forces
impressed thereon," i.e., F = ma,
where F is force, m is mass times
a, the acceleration.
- During China's Warring
States period (475-221 BCE), the Mohist
philosophers in the Mozi text
gave a first description of inertia.
- Greek Aristotle
(384-322 BCE) observing mechanics of
bodies with gravity, friction, and air
resistance wrongly defined inertia as objects
only moving so long as a force was applied to
them, and projectile motion was (un)explained
by surrounding medium still applying force to
them. Aristotelian 'inertia' sadly bore sway
for long in Christendom and in the Islamic
world as a part of the intellectual decline
and stagnation of 'the darkening age').
- Epicurus (341-271
BCE), the Epicureans, via Lucretius
(~99-55 BCE) in On the Nature of Things
(London: Penguin, 1988; pp. 80-85) more
correctly defined inertia as material bodies
(atoms) which must move or remain in motion
rather than in stasis.
- John Philoponus
(6th c CE), a Byzantine philologist,
Aristotelian commentator, and Christian
theologian and philosopher, argued Aristotle
was wrong and that the media in the void would
slow down the projectile, so the projectile
must move from a property imparted to it at
the time of launch. Although a minority
position, a number of followers, furthered his
thought.
- In the Islamic world,
Persian philosopher / genius Ibn Sīnā or
Avicenna (11th c CE) held that a
projectile in a vacuum of the void would
continue unless acted upon by an outside
force.
- French philosopher Jean
Buridan (14th c CE) rejected a
spontaneous dissipation of the projectile's
imparted moving property, which he called impetus,
which could be both linear and circular (cf.
modern conception of linear and angular
momenta).
- Buridan's student Albert
of Saxony (1316-1390) & the 'Oxford
Calculators' practically performed
experiments on laws of motion with
illustrative graphs.
- Giambattista Benedetti
(1530-1590), mathematician, physicist,
and polymath anticipated Galileo's framing of
inertia: "... any portion of corporeal
matter which moves by itself when an impetus
has been impressed on it by any external
motive force has a natural tendency to move
on a rectilinear, not a curved, path"
(Stillman Drake, 2000. Essays on Galileo
and the History and Philosophy of Science; Vol. 3.
Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press;
p. 285; link;
link).
- Rene Descartes
(1596-1650) "geometriz[ed] of
space-matter, combined with the immutability
of God" according to Gillispie, C. C. 1960. The
Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History
of Scientific Ideas. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press; pp. 367-368.
- Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630) in Epitome Astronomiae
Copernicanae (3 parts during 1617-1621)
introduced the term 'inertia' (from Latin for
'laziness' or 'idleness') to a physical body's
resistance to movement.
- Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642) wrote, "... all external
impediments removed, a heavy body on a
spherical surface concentric with the earth
will maintain itself in that state in which
it has been; if placed in a movement towards
the west (for example), it will maintain
itself in that movement" (Ibid., p. 113;
link).
- And that brings us to the
statement of the Principle of Inertia
by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) as
translated above.
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Ernst Waldfried
Josef Wenzel Mach
(1838-1916); (link;
link)
German experimental and theoretical
physicist, philosopher, & experimental
physiologist / psychologist; professor of
mathematics
- Experimented on the physics
of light refraction, diffraction,
interference, and polarization in different
media, as well as in optic and acoustic
manifestations of the Doppler effect.
- Investigated supersonic
fluid mechanics (and with photographer Peter
Salcher) deduced and documented supersonic
conic shockwaves from supersonic projectile
motions.
- The ratio, vp
/ vs, of the velocity of
a fluid to the local velocity of sound is
called the 'Mach number,' used as an important
parameter in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics.
- Philosophically contributed
to empirical philosophy in the form of logical
positivism, and has been considered a
precursor to phenomenological
constructivism.
- Physiology:
Independent discoverer (apart from
physiologist / physician Josef Breuer) of the
role of fluid in the inner ear's semicircular
canals role in the sense of balance,
confirming experimentally with a spinning
chair device.
- Psychology:
Discovered the optical illusion of 'Mach
bands' where slightly differing shades seem
strongly exaggerated in contrast as soon as
they make contact; more clearly distinguished
than anyone between physiological (incl.
visual) space and geometric space; views of
mediating structures influenced B. F.
Skinner's inductivism in behavioral /
psychological science.
- Influenced the following
philosophers and scientists from different
fields: 'Vienna Circle' of empirists, Ludwig
Boltzmann, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg,
Wolfgang Pauli, William James, Wilhelm Kienzl,
Pierre Duhem, Henri Poincare, Alexander
Bogdanov & other Russian 'Machists.'
- Cosmology: Famous
for what Einstein called 'Mach's Principle'
that inertial frames should be with reference
to relative motions among bodies / masses in
the Universe. Einstein aspired to incorporate
Mach's Principle into relativity but never
succeeded.
|
Foucault's gyroscope: Conserved angular
momenta:
(Foucault's gyroscope facsimile, link;
gyroscope animation, link).
Newton's bucket experiment & Mach's
observation
Water in spinning vessel climbs the sides forming a
concave paraboloid surface (link;
powered Newton's bucket experiment video https://youtu.be/t77m4YXCcJU;
cf. this visualization: https://www.theimagineershome.com/blog/absolute-space-time-and-newtons-bucket/).
Mach imagined a container for the bucket several
leagues thick (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-theories/).
Big Question: In reference to what
does Newton's bucket & its contents, or
Foucault's gyroscope and his pendulum, have
their angular velocity? (See H. Bondi,
1950, 1959; 1960; ch. IV; p. 17).
- Newton:
With reference to the ideal inertial frame
of absolute space.
- Mach:
With reference to the relative distributions
of masses in the starry Universe.
This Machian
approach to inertia in the Universe is one of
the huge steps in developing modern cosmology.
|
Pendulum of Foucault (Pantheon, Paris)
showing conserved angular momenta:
Bucket experiment
(link):
Sir Isaac Newton (1687). Principia, Book 1:
Scholium, translated
by Andrew Motte (1846); pp. 79-81.
"If a vessel, hung by a
long cord, is so often turned about that the cord
is strongly twisted, then filled with water, and
held at rest together with the water; after, by
the sudden action of another force, it is whirled
about in the contrary way, and while the cord is
untwisting itself, the vessel continues for some
time this motion; the surface of the water will at
first be plain, as before the vessel began to
move; but the vessel by gradually communicating
its motion to the water, will make it begin
sensibly to revolve, and recede by little and
little, and ascend to the sides of the vessel,
forming itself into a concave figure.... This
ascent of the water shows its endeavour to recede
from the axis of its motion; and the true and
absolute circular motion of the water, which
is here directly contrary to the relative,
discovers itself, and may be measured by this
endeavour.... And therefore, this endeavour does
not depend upon any translation of the water in
respect to ambient bodies, nor can true circular
motion be defined by such translation....; but
relative motions... are altogether destitute of
any real effect.... It is indeed a matter of great
difficulty to discover, and effectually to
distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies
from the apparent; because the parts of that
immovable space in which these motions are
performed, do by no means come under the
observations of our senses" (Emphasis
added to illustrate Newton's explicit conception
of absolute motion with regard to absolute
space).
Paraboloid calculation in classical
Newtonian mechanics (link).
 |
The
axis of rotation Ω is a constant
rate-of-water-rotation vector and r
is the radius of rotation. By vector
addition, Fg (Fgravity)
+ FCfgl (Fcentrifugal)
yields a resultant Fn (Fnormal
to water surface) at angle
φ.
Since FCfgl
= mΩ2r
and Fg
= mg,
then tan φ =
(FCfgl
/ Fg)
= (Ω2r
/ g) = dh/dr,
where on Earth, g ~ 9.8 m-1
s-2. At every given r the
tangent yields the summed force vectors
infinitesimally vanishing according to
which, when integrated
gives us the function h(r),
where h(0) is the
water height at r = 0.
|
In Newtonian mechanics this
experiment can also be modeled via potential
energy. Cf. also Schuler, R. L. 2014. A new spin on
Newton's bucket. Physics Education 50
(1), 88. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9120/50/1/88.
|
(Mach's Principle; link).
Mach's
Principle: "... the local inertial frame is
determined by some average of the motion of the
distant astronomical objects.... [to bring
it down to a single body] ... magnitude of the
inertia of any body is determined by the masses
of [in] the Universe and their
distribution" (H. Bondi, 1950, 1959; 1960; ch. IV;
pp. 28-29).
- One
anecdote has Mach saying, "When the subway
jerks, the stars throw you down." Or as
Hawking and Ellis (1973) put it, "...
local physical laws are determined by the
large-scale structure of the Universe," The
Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press;
p. 1.
- In Mach's
own words, "[The] investigator must feel
the need of... knowledge of the immediate
connections, say, of the masses of the
universe. There will hover before him as
an ideal insight into the principles of
the whole matter, from which accelerated
and inertial motions will result in the
same way" (Mach, E. 1960 reprint of
Thomas H. McCormack 1906 translation. The
Science of Mechanics; a Critical and
Historical Account of its Development.
LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing; link).
Earlier reference
as cited by H. Bondi (1950, 1959; 1960; ch. IV):
Mach, E. 1893. The Science of Mechanics.
London; pp. 229-238.
|
(Mach's Principle; link).
Although no theory has probably yet fully
incorporated Mach's Principle, there have been
strides in the 20th century which have relevance
for the 21st century. The Hoyle & Narlikar
action-at-a-distance theory (1962, 1964ff, 1966;
1974) and Narlikar (1977) postulated that when
(a) gravitational field equations are
scale-invariant, singularities disappear, and
(b) baryon number is not conserved, and with a
negative scalar field or C-field, suggesting
incorporation of Mach's Principle provides a
natural cosmology of baryogenesis or matter
creation. These ideas need to be developed or
superseded.
|
Another
huge contribution to laying the foundations for modern 20th
century physics and cosmology, as well as building the
discipline of abstract algebra was the too-often unsung work
of mathematician Emmy Noether, protégé of the also
too-little heralded mathematician David Hilbert, to whom
we'll return later.
Emmy Noether
(1882-1935)
German mathematician, notably an
abstract algebraist. She proved two theorems, which
have been invaluable in modern physics:
- First Theorem (link): 'Every continuous symmetry of the
action of a physical system with conservative
forces has a corresponding conservation law,'
where a physical system can be described by a
Lagrangian integrated over time as determined by
the principle of least action. This applies only
to smooth and continuous symmetries of physical
space, thus meaning that linear and angular
momentum are conserved, corresponding to those
symmetries. This can be generalized in both
classical, quantum, 4-d manifolds, and quantum
field there, and any modern field theory (details
beyond our purpose here).
- Second Theorem (link):
'...if the action has an infinite-dimensional Lie
algebra of infinitesimal symmetries parameterized
linearly by k arbitrary functions and their
derivatives up to order m, then the
functional derivatives of L satisfy a
system of k differential equations.
' This 2nd Theorem is sometimes applied to gauge
theory, which are formally invariant, with
applications in modern quantum physics, including
the Standard
Model.
These theorems
apply to symmetries space relating to physical
systems from the very small to the very large.
 (link).
|
Noether, E. 1918. Invariante
Variationsprobleme. Nachr. D. König. Gesellsch. D.
Wiss. Zu Göttingen, Math-phys. Klasse, 235-257 (link);
English translations: https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0503066;
https://doi.org/10.1080/00411457108231446.
Illustration of Noether's 1st Theorem for a
coordinate-transformation across time in a physical
system:
|
1st Theorem: For every continuous symmetry in space, there's a
law of conservation & vice versa (link).
In
perfunctory summary, Noether's theorems can be informally
summarized as underlying the basic symmetries of all of the
forces of Nature and their laws of conservation. Gravitation
has not yet been fully brought into the scale-invariant fold
yet, but we'll return to that in a later chapter. This summary
can be visualized by this undergraduate physics diagram:
(Modified from Hecht, 1996).Other
contributions to the future of cosmology becoming a branch
of physics were developments from Greek atomic theory, the
wave conception of light, and the 19th century founding of
field theory.
Attempts to find
classical unified field theories of electromagnetism,
relativity, and the quantum world
Early
atomist theories of light (link). From
the ancient Greek atomists such as Leuchippus, Democritos, and
Epicuros, we have a tradition of modeling the world as
subdivided and based on fundamental particles called atoms.
Through Lucretius' poem De Rerum Natura, atomism
revived in the early modern world among an underground of more
radical thinkers. Before being propounded by Sir Isaac Newton,
a modern (atomic) corpuscular theory of light was propounded
by Christian atomist Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679), while Étienne-Louis Malus (1810) and
Jean-Baptiste Biot (1812) even showed that a particle theory
of light an explain polarization of light.
.
(link).
Early
wave theories of light. On the other hand, Robert Hooke
in 1665 in Micrographia held that the oscillation of
light could be perpendicular to the direction of propagation (link). In his
1690 Treatise on Light, Christian Huygens argued that
light is emitted in all directions, like the surface of an
expanding sphere, transmitted as waves in a medium of
luminferous ether. In his Nova Theoria Lucis et Colorum
(1746), mathematician Leonard Euler (1703-1783) also argued
for the wave theory of light. By 1800, Thomas Young
(1773-1829) was conducting diffraction experiments showed that
light diffracted in wave-like fashion when propagated throug a
double slit, consistent with a wave-like nature. He drew the
observed results (see figure below). By 1816, Augustin-Jean
Fresnel (1788-1827) had been introduced to the idea by
physicist André-Marie Ampčre (1775-1836) that light
polarization can be explained in the wave theory if the
phenomenon results from light as transverse waves (see
Hofmann, J. R. 1996. André-Marie Ampčre: Enlightenment and
Electrodynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1996, p. 222).
Thomas Young's drawing of light diffraction
through a double slit (link).
The whole issue of
luminiferous ether was changed by the null result of the
Mickelson-Morley experiment (1881) and the many followup
experiments (link).
Of course, the stage was set between the particulate and wave
aspects of light to make one of the great unifications of
physics between the electrical and magnetic forces into
electromagnetism, which came with the work of James Clerk
Maxwell.
 |
James Clerk
Maxwell
(1831-1879)
In time (1862,
1864, 1873), Maxwell published equations showing that
light is the interaction of seemingly independent
fluctuating electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields
mutually inducing each other and propagating
indefinitely outward into space, i.e., an
electromagnetic wave! (see Hecht, 1996).
One of the great
unifications of physics!
|
(http://geography.uoregon.edu/shinker/geog101/lectures/lec01/lec01_figs/electromagnetic-spectrum-fig2-6.gif;
http://65.107.211.206/victorian/science/maxwell1.html).
A. Thermodynamics,
Electromagnetism, and Quantum atomism. We turn to Max Planck
(1900) and others in the development of Quantum Mechanics
(1900-1940:
 |
Erwin Schroedinger, Paul A.
M. Dirac, Louis de Broglie, Albert Einstein, Werner
Heisenberg, Richard Feynman, etc.
|
(micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/planck.html).
Photon-wave packet.
Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle
B. Precursors and Priority in Special and
General Relativity. In this forthcoming section will
be a summary discussion with documentation of the question
of precursors and priority in the discoveries which have
made and constitute the body of work now recognized under
categories of special relativity and general relativity, as
well as the frontiers of questions yet to be resolved.
C.
Development of Special Relativity. The most famous
result of this theory was that energy is equivalent to mass
(m) X the square of the speed of light (c), i.e., the
famous matter-energy equivalence (E=mc2). Because c
behaves as a constant, space-time are equivalent geometric
dimensions (x, y, z, t) and the laws of physics must be
formulated relative to the 'observer's' inertial system (frame
of reference). The subjectivity of an 'observer's' inertial
frame of reference has been criticized and the local frame of
reference might be more objective, local with reference to
proximal physical events, such as the local electric field,
etc. (See Beckmann, 1991).
D.
Development of General Relativity. Existence of
mass-energy determines the geometry of space-time, i.e.,
gravity = mass-energy-induced space-time curvature (x, y, z,
t).
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
(link;
cf. old
link).
E.
Willem de Sitter: Applying General Relativity to Cosmology.
Einstein had introduced an ad hoc term into his
gravitational equations (since called the 'cosmological
constant' and appealed to since the discovery in 1998 of the
so-called 'accelerating universe') to keep his cosmological model
static. Willem de Sitter put forward a need for correction in
Einstein's approach.
The 'de Sitter universe'
can be diagrammed thus:
Technically, a
'de Sitter universe' is a benchmark, null universe with
constant curvatures of various degrees, where there is no
ordinary matter, and the universe expands because of a
positive 'cosmological constant' Λ which
sets the rate of the expansion rate H (link).
Willem De Sitter
(1872-1934)
|
1917: Pointed out
that Einstein's calculations were not a unique or even a
correct solution, and that the equations of general
relativity suggested that a simple universe must either
expand or contract.
In fact, de Sitter showed that the simplest cosmos with
negligible mass would expand forever. |
(http://clubastronomie.free.fr/histoire/willem_de_sitter.htm).
de Sitter and Einstein discussing space (link).
de Sitter space with
constant curvatures allows one to think of the curvature of the
Universe (link).
IX. Chapter I Epilogical Question:
Was the 'southern cosmology' or 'northern cosmology' mythos(es)
actually closer to the reality of the Cosmos?
Chapter I
Epilogical Question: We close this first chapter, from Mythos
to Cosmos, by asking this question: As we review the rise of
modern cosmology since the Greeks and especially since the
Enlightenment, the Copernican Revolution, and the various
modern theories of cosmology from the 19th to the 21st centuries, are we finding evidences from
ancient Mythos that the most ancient Afro-Austromelanesian
"Southern Cosmologies" (>315,000 ya-60,000 ya, &c.)
are actually more accurate to the Universe than the later
Afro-Eurasian-Amerind "Northern Cosmologies" (~100,000 ya - 11,000 ya,
&c.) of violent cycles
of birth and destruction which have influenced our modern
religions and cultures? Or vice versa?
In the following chapters we
suggest keeping this epilogical question in mind! Whatever
cosmological model, whether based on the big bang, an
oscillatory, steady state, quasi-steady state, plasma,
conformal cyclic, or some other model, both routes of human
development were necessary, but it seems likely that one of the overall
'Southern' or 'Northern Mythic cosmologies will turn out by
happenstance to have been closer to the Cosmos nature of the
Universe itself.
(
(
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& center of mass calculations
(Euler's 1st law):
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