6 Cosmology

The Greek cosmos (κóσμoς Latin mundus), meaning both order and ornament, was first used by the Pythagoreans as a term for the universe, conceived as harmoniously shaped and bounded, in opposition to shapeless and boundless chaos (1). The traditional Greek cosmology, emphasising the order, finiteness and constancy of the cosmos, dominated Western thought for almost 2,000 years, until in the hundred years from about 1550 to 1650 it was overthrown by the new cosmology in what is known as the Copernican revolution. The traditional cosmology provided a coherent account of the constitution of all existing things and the relationship between them, from the great cosmos or macrocosm, the universe, to the small cosmos or microcosm, man. Although certain modifications had to be made to the tradition to accommodate it to Christian belief, it remained extraordinarily consistent, deriving as it did from a few crucial texts. The most important of these were Plato’s Timaeus (an account of the creation of the world and the relationship between macro-and microcosm), and Aristotle’s On the Heavens, Physics, Metaphysics, On Generation and Corruption and On the Soul (works which modified the Platonic account significantly, and which provided what were to become the accepted definitions of concepts such as motion, function, growth and decay, stability and change). Other classical writers contributed to aspects of the tradition: Ptolemy to astronomy, Hippocrates and Galen to medicine, Strabo to geography, Pliny to natural history. This traditional cosmology was transmitted to the early Middle Ages through the works of encyclopedists and commentators, such as Chalcidius’ commentary on the Timaeus, Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (the vision at the end of the Republic of Cicero, modelled on the myth of Er at the end of the Republic of Plato), and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Although Aristotle’s writings on logic were translated by Boethius, his scientific writings were not generally accessible until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the bulk of the Aristotelian corpus was translated into Latin, some of it from Arabic versions of the Greek. From the thirteenth century Aristotle, christianised by Aquinas, was the recognised authority on philosophy (which included what we should now call science). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the English universities still based the teaching of science largely on Aristotle, while popular encyclopedias such as Batman upon Bartholomew and de la Primaudaye’s The French Academy helped to disseminate the tradition more widely.

The christianised Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology rests on a fundamental opposition between the earthly, which is characterised by generation and corruption, flux, mutability and inconstancy, and the heavenly, which is constant, orderly and eternal (4, 6). (Aristotle’s view that the cosmos had always existed was incompatible with the Genesis account of creation and had to be rejected, whereas the Platonic myth (2) could be incorporated. However, there was always a certain amount of tension between the Greek tradition of a pre-existent chaos out of which cosmos arose (3), and the Christian belief that God created the world out of nothing, ex nihilo.) The whole cosmos is a perfect, finite sphere, enclosing within itself a number of concentric transparent spheres, each with its particular motion. At the centre of the cosmos is the stationary earth; at the centre of the earth (as in Dante’s Inferno) is sometimes placed the Christian hell. The constituent materials of the terrestrial sphere and its inhabitants are the four elements: earth, which is cold and dry; water, cold and wet; air, hot and wet; and fire, hot and dry. (The theory of the four elements was derived by Plato and Aristotle from Empedocles, who taught that they are given shape by two conflicting forces, Love and Strife, which alternately combine and separate them (8).) The elements themselves are arranged in concentric spheres: the earth at the centre, enclosed in turn by the spheres of water, air and fire. The next sphere is that of the moon, which is especially important as the boundary between the earthly, the sublunary, and the heavenly, the trans-or superlunary. The characteristic motion of the imperfect sublunary elements is rectilinear: up, in the case of fire and air, down, in the case of water and earth. Everything in the region above the moon is formed of a different, perfect fifth element, the quintessence or aether (4). The characteristic motion of these spheres is circular. There is no space or void in the cosmos; each sphere, carrying a heavenly body embedded in it, moves separately, impelled partly by the motion of the sphere outside it. The number of spheres might vary with refinements of the cosmological scheme, but the cosmology received in the Renaissance contained ten. First are the seven planets, in the order Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; then the sphere of the fixed stars, or firmament; then the Crystalline sphere (a late addition); and finally the Primum Mobile, the outermost moving sphere which initiates the motion of all the rest. Beyond the Primum Mobile is the abode of God, the Empyrean Heaven, whose existence is of a different nature from that of the cosmos and incomprehensible to man. The Aristotelian Unmoved Mover, who moves the cosmos because he is an object of love (5), becomes the Christian God, who moves the cosmos through his active love of his Creation.

As the heavenly spheres revolve, the friction causes each to give out a different note, the resulting harmony or scale composing the music of the spheres. This Pythagorean theory, taken up by Plato in Republic X (11), was repudiated by Aristotle in On the Heavens II ix (12), but it was popularised by Macrobius (Commentary II iii) and became fused with Aristotle’s theory of an unmoved mover or intelligence for each sphere (Metaphysics XII viii). Plato supposed that eight sirens sang the heavenly notes; these later were identified with the nine Muses, and ultimately with the nine orders of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Powers, Virtues, Princedoms, Archangels and Angels). Thus the angelic choirs came to be associated both with the Pythagorean—Platonic celestial harmony and with the Aristotelian intelligences. The correspondence between heavenly and earthly music was explained by Boethius in The Principles of Music I ii (13). The music of the spheres or cosmic music (musica mundana) is inaudible to human ears, but the harmony can be approximated by the harmonious human life (musica humana) and by instrumental music (musica instrumentis constituta).

This correspondence between different kinds of music, and hence different levels of the cosmos, illustrates an extremely important aspect of the traditional cosmology. The separation between the earthly and the heavenly could be seen pessimistically, as showing the irremediable imperfection of the sublunary world (although Aristotle himself was far more interested in the changing processes of terrestrial life than in the constancy of the heavens). Alternatively, and more optimistically, the relationship between macro-and microcosm and the interdependence of the various planes of existence could be stressed. The dualistic cosmos, therefore, was also seen as a hierarchy, a series of gradations from the lowest to the highest forms of existence, from stones, plants, animals, men, angels, up to God (14). This hierarchy was known as the scala naturae, the ladder of nature, or the chain of being—sometimes symbolised by Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:12) or the golden chain with which Homer’s Zeus threatened to hang earth from Olympus (Iliad VIII ll. 18–27).

The central position in the scale of nature is held by man, the microcosm (22–6). His bodily structure mirrors the terrestrial sphere. The four humours (classified by Hippocrates in The Nature of Man IV), melancholy (cold and dry), phlegm (cold and wet), blood (hot and wet) and choler (hot and dry), parallel the four elements and the four seasons. The fact that he is compounded of body and soul shows that he is an amphibious creature, linked to both earthly and heavenly spheres (24). Man’s tripartite soul (the account was adapted from Aristotle On the Soul II) itself embodies the scale of nature: the vegetative, shared by plants, animals and man, capable of growth and reproduction; the sensitive, shared by animals and man, capable of sensation; and the rational, shared by man and angels, capable of thought and choice (22). (Aristotle’s term psyche ψυχή means life rather than soul, and does not imply a separate existence for the soul apart from the body, but it was readily adapted to the Platonic—Christian scheme.)

One way in which the belief in the interaction of the levels of existence found expression was the ‘science’ of astrology. Astrology, the study of the influence of the heavenly bodies on the earthly sphere, may now seem very different from astronomy, but the distinction was blurred until the end of the Renaissance period. The astronomer who engaged in pure observation or computation was also a practising astrologer who cast horoscopes and predicted future events; this activity was known as judicial astrology. The planets, identified with the pagan gods, were believed to influence a wide range not only of forms of life, from the characteristics of stones and plants to the humours of men, but also of events, from changes in the climate to the rise and fall of nations. Astrology in its first, more limited aspect was universally accepted, but where it implied moral and historical determinism and was seen to conflict with man’s free will and God’s providence it was condemned by theologians. (The problem is explored by Ralegh, History of the World I i 11.)

The traditional cosmology was thus not only intellectually and aesthetically satisfying, it had religious and moral significance. Man’s position at the centre of the universe was paradoxical: imperfect and earthbound, he was unhappily aware of the difference between the earthly and heavenly spheres of existence, yet he also knew that the cosmos had been created for him, and that through a proper exercise of the celestial faculties with which he was endowed he could aspire to the heavens. This religious and moral significance supported the long belief in the traditional cosmology. Yet this cosmology failed because it did not fit the observed facts: by the end of the seventeenth century it no longer survived as science, but only as poetic myth.

From the beginning Greek cosmology had been concerned with the problem of ‘saving the appearances’, that is of reconciling theories about the structure of the cosmos with observations of the heavenly bodies. Plato and Aristotle insisted that these movements were circular, yet it was difficult to show that this was true of the apparently irregular planets. Ptolemy devised an extremely elaborate system of eccentrics and epicycles to account for planetary motion, and although this was accepted as functioning mathematically it was clearly an absurd and implausible way of saving the appearances. Some other cosmology than Aristotle’s was needed if a truer picture of the cosmos was to be given, yet the problem was that a change in the moral and religious perspectives of the traditional cosmology would be entailed.

Alternatives existed in the early Greek cosmologies rejected by Aristotle and in rival ones developed after him. Thus, among preAristotelian philosophers, it was held by the Pythagoreans that fire is at the centre of the universe; by Anaxagoras that the heavenly bodies are formed of the same matter as earth; by the atomists, Democritus and Leucippus, that the universe is boundless, has no centre, and contains a plurality of worlds. (The views of the atomists were incorporated after Aristotle in the Epicurean philosophy, and propagated by the Roman poet Lucretius in The Nature of the Universe I—II. The text of Lucretius, unknown in the Middle Ages, was rediscovered in 1417; it profoundly influenced Bruno, who, drawing both on Lucretius and on the fifteenthcentury Neoplatonist Nicholas of Cusa, was the first Renaissance philosopher to propose the theory of an infinite universe (28).) Among post-Aristotelians Aristarchus held that the sun is at the centre of the universe with the planets, including the earth, revolving around it and rotating on their own axes. Such views, held only by a minority, were generally regarded in antiquity and later as impious and absurd, yet many of them were incorporated into the new Copernican cosmology.

The Copernican revolution was largely the work of four astronomers: initiated by Copernicus, it was developed by Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. Copernicus realised that the difficulties of explaining planetary motion encountered in the Aristotelian—Ptolemaic system could be resolved if it were accepted that the earth rotated diurnally on its axis and annually (together with the other planets) around the sun (27). However, although Copernicus much enlarged distances within his heliocentric cosmos, he retained an essentially Aristotelian system, with a finite outer sphere and concentric inner spheres carrying the heavenly bodies. Copernicus was cautious of disseminating his views and finally published them fully in the year of his death, 1543, in On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. The implications of the Copernican system were worked out within the next seventy years. Tycho Brahe, the first astronomer to make adequately detailed and precise observations, devised a system of his own with the sun revolving round the earth but the other planets revolving round the sun. Tycho’s importance lies in the conclusions he drew from his observations of a new star and of the motion of comets (hitherto regarded as a sublunary phenomenon): the supposedly constant Aristotelian heavens were, like the earth, subject to change and capable of non-circular motion. In addition, Tycho denied the existence of the concentric spheres: instead, the heavenly bodies revolved in a void. Further evidence for Tycho’s breakdown of the distinction between the earthly and the heavenly was provided by Galileo. In his influential Starry Messenger (1610) Galileo recorded how he observed the heavens through the newly invented telescope and discovered that the surface of the moon, far from being perfectly spherical, shows the same irregularities as the earth, that the universe contains stars invisible to the naked eye, that such stars make up the Milky Way, and that Jupiter has four moons revolving round it. Kepler, using Tycho’s observations, finally demonstrated that the motion of the planets is not circular, as the traditional cosmology demanded, but elliptical; he assumed that it was magnetic attraction that kept the planets in their orbits. Yet Kepler’s cosmos was in many ways conservative; in two works, the Cosmographic Mystery (1596) and the Harmony of the World (1619), he argued, as had Plato in the Timaeus, that the structure of the cosmos is based on geometrical and musical proportion, and he rejected the theories of cosmic infinity and a plurality of worlds.

The Copernican cosmology provoked varied responses. The Catholic Church was hostile: the heliocentric theory, which seemed to conflict with Scripture (30–32), was condemned in 1616, and Galileo, after the publication of his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 (29), was forced to recant and kept under arrest (Milton visited him in 1638). Many divines, Protestant as well as Catholic, thought that the new cosmology, by moving the earth from the centre and breaking down the distinction between the earthly and the heavenly, undermined the Christian view of man’s dual nature and his special position in the creation. Yet in England the response was often more positive and ultimately more fruitful, in terms of both science and theology. Scientists like Robert Recorde, Thomas Digges, John Dee and William Gilbert were early espousers of aspects of Copernicanism. One reason for the success of the Copernican cosmology in overthrowing the Aristotelian was the hostility towards Aristotelianism coupled with the revival of Pythagoreanism and Platonism which was generated by the humanists: Copernicus regarded his system as Pythagorean. Another kind of anti-Aristotelianism was represented by the Baconian emphasis on experiment and the role of science in controlling nature for the benefit of man. Bacon, not himself a scientist but a philosopher of science, set out in The New Organon (1620) his utilitarian programme and described in The New Atlantis (1627) his ideal scientific community, which ultimately was realised by the founding of the Royal Society in 1662. In theological terms, the overthrow of the Aristotelian finite cosmos came to be seen by the end of the seventeenth century not as undermining God’s order and man’s moral nature but rather as magnifying God’s power as the creator of an infinite, unknowable cosmos and concentrating man’s attention on self-knowledge. The Cambridge Platonist Henry More enthusiastically propounded the theory of infinite space in which God is immanent.

The traditional cosmology with its system of correspondences profoundly influenced the subject matter, the theory and the structure of Renaissance poetry. Although the Renaissance produced no major poem like Dante’s Divine Comedy with its meticulously ordered Aristotelian cosmology, an enormous number of poets expounded aspects of the traditional system: the macro-and microcosm (23, 25, 26), the superlunary and sublunary, the music of the spheres (20, 21), the aether and the elements (17, 18), and the dual nature of man. Sometimes the object is didactic and encyclopedic, as in the very popular Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, translated from the French by Joshuah Sylvester (23, 33), which roundly condemns Copernican interference with the received cosmology. More often there is a significant connection between the poem itself and the cosmological ideas it embodies. Thus the work of art is itself a microcosm, like the greater cosmos a unified, ordered, finite whole. (See also Chapters 11 and 13.) The involved and apparently disorderly structure of a poem like The Faerie Queene, which the modern reader has difficulty in unravelling, itself illustrates the cosmic principle of concordia discors or discordia concors, concord through discord, and unity through variety (7, 8, 15). (The most influential classical poem to work out this idea was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, particularly Books I and XV (9,10).) Just as in God’s cosmos there exist correspondences and analogies between macro-and microcosm, between the several planes of existence, so in the poet’s cosmos these correspondences and analogies are evoked by means of metaphor and conceit. A conceit which compares two apparently dissimilar objects from separate planes (like the soul and the dew in Marvell’s ‘On a Drop of Dew’) is illustrating the fundamental unity of the cosmos. This is the characteristic technique of ‘meta-physical’ poetry (the theory underlying it has been described as the ‘poetic of correspondence’).

Spenser’s cosmos is the traditional one: the goddess Mutability, viewing apparent disorder from a false earthly perspective, is defeated in her attempt to establish the dominance of change in the regions below and above the moon (16). The poets who responded most eagerly to the new cosmology were Donne and Milton. Donne’s reading of the ‘new philosophy’ of Kepler and Galileo (which is evident in his satire on the Jesuits, Ignatius his Conclave) led him in the Anniversaries to scepticism about the possibility of any real scientific knowledge, and hence to reliance on faith (35, 36). Yet Donne repeatedly drew for his conceits on both old and new cosmologies (25), often in a spirit of intellectual play. Milton’s treatment of cosmology in Paradise Lost shows scientific curiosity, poetic audacity and Christian humility, which do not altogether cohere. His system is predominantly Aristotelian— Ptolemaic with Copernican and idiosyncratic components. It has four localities: above, the Empyrean; hanging suspended from it, the created cosmos or world, with the earth at the centre; beneath it, Hell; and surrounding the whole, Chaos. Throughout the poem Milton’s system of correspondences and parallelisms is based on the old cosmology, yet he uses Satan’s voyage through Chaos to earth (Book II) to explore aspects of the new, such as the plurality of worlds. In the dialogue on astronomy (Book VIII) Adam is taught by Raphael that disputes about cosmological systems are unimportant, that knowledge of nature is of value only in so far as it leads man to God, and that self-knowledge should be his aim (37). This advice has seemed to some to be belied by Milton’s own enthusiastic voyages through the cosmos as narrator of Paradise Lost.

THE TERM ‘COSMOS’

1 We are told on good authority…that heaven and earth and their respective inhabitants are held together by the bonds of society and love and order and discipline and righteousness, and that is why the universe is called an ordered whole or cosmos and not a state of disorder and licence.

Plato Gorgias 508

THE CREATION OF THE COSMOS

2 This was the plan of the eternal god when he gave to the god about to come into existence a smooth and unbroken surface, equidistant in every direction from the centre, and made it a physical body whole and complete, whose components were also complete physical bodies. And he put soul in the centre and diffused it through the whole and enclosed the body in it. So he established a single spherical universe in circular motion, alone but because of its excellence needing no company other than itself, and satisfied to be its own acquaintance and friend. His creation, then, for all these reasons, was a blessed god.

Plato Timaeus 34

3 Before there was any earth or sea, before the canopy of heaven stretched overhead, Nature presented the same aspect the world over, that to which men have given the name of Chaos. This was a shapeless unco-ordinated mass, nothing but a weight of lifeless matter, whose ill-assorted elements were indiscriminately heaped together in one place… Nothing had any lasting shape, but everything got in the way of everything else; for, within that one body, cold warred with hot, moist with dry, soft with hard, and light with heavy. This strife was finally resolved by a god, a natural force of a higher kind, who separated the earth from heaven, and the waters from the earth, and set the clear air apart from the cloudy atmosphere. When he had freed these elements, sorting them out from the heap where they had lain, indistinguishable from one another, he bound them fast, each in its separate place, forming a harmonious union.

Ovid Metamorphoses I ll. 5-9, 17-25

THE FIFTH ELEMENT

4 The primary body of all is eternal, suffers neither growth nor diminution, but is ageless, unalterable and impassive… Throughout all past time, according to the records handed down from generation to generation, we find no trace of change either in the whole of the outermost heaven or in any one of its proper parts. It seems too that the name of this first body has been passed down to the present time by the ancients… Thus they, believing that the primary body was something different from earth and fire and air and water, gave the name aither to the uppermost region, choosing its title from the fact that it ‘runs always’ and eternally.

Aristotle On the Heavens I iii

THE UNMOVED MOVER

5 There is something which is eternally moved with an unceasing motion, and that circular motion… Then there is also something which moves it. And since that which is moved while it moves is intermediate, there is something which moves without being moved; something eternal which is both substance and actuality… It causes motion as being an object of love, whereas all other things cause motion because they are themselves in motion… Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy [i.e. thought].

Aristotle Metaphysics XII vii

THE SPHERES

6 Africanus shows the cosmos to Scipio:

These are the nine circles, or rather spheres, by which the whole is joined. One of them, the outermost, is that of heaven; it contains all the rest, and is itself the supreme God, holding and embracing within itself all the other spheres; in it are fixed the eternal revolving courses of the stars. Beneath it are seven other spheres which revolve in the opposite direction to that of heaven. One of these globes is that light which on earth is called Saturn’s. Next comes the star called Jupiter’s, which bring fortune and health to mankind. Beneath it is that star, red and terrible to the dwellings of man, which you assign to Mars. Below it and almost midway of the distance is the Sun, the lord, chief, and ruler of the other lights, the mind and guiding principle of the universe, of such magnitude that he reveals and fills all things with his light. He is accompanied by his companions, as it were—Venus and Mercury in their orbits, and in the lowest sphere revolves the Moon, set on fire by the rays of the Sun. But below the Moon there is nothing except what is mortal and doomed to decay, save only the souls given to the human race by the bounty of the gods, while above the Moon all things are eternal. For the ninth and central sphere, which is the earth, is immovable and the lowest of all, and toward it all ponderable bodies are drawn by their own tendency downward.

Cicero ‘The Dream of Scipio’ Republic VI xvii (note that there is no crystalline sphere in this system, and that the spheres are numbered from the outside)

HARMONY FROM DISCORD AND UNITY IN VARIETY

7 Things taken together are whole and not whole, something which is being brought together and brought apart, which is in tune and out of tune; out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things.

Heraclitus Fragment 10

8 And these things never cease from continual shifting, at one time all coming together, through Love, into one, at another each borne apart from the others through Strife. So, in so far as they have learnt to grow into one from many, and again, when the one is sundered, are once more many, thus far they come into being and they have no lasting life; but in so far as they never cease from continual interchange of places, thus far are they ever changeless in the cycle.

Empedocles Fragment 17

9 Although fire and water are always opposites, none the less moist heat is the source of everything, and this discordant harmony [discors concordia] is suited to creation.

Ovid Metamorphoses I ll. 432–3

10 Pythagoras is speaking:

Nothing is constant in the whole world. Everything is in a state of flux, and comes into being as a transient appearance. Time itself flows on with constant motion, just like a river: for no more than a river can the fleeting hour stand still. As wave is driven on by wave, and, itself pursued, pursues the one before, so the moments of time at once flee and follow, and are ever new. What was before is left behind, that which was not comes to be, and every minute gives place to another… Time, the devourer, and the jealous years that pass, destroy all things and, nibbling them away, consume them gradually in a lingering death. Even the things which we call elements do not remain constant… Nor does anything retain its own appearance permanently. Ever-inventive nature continually produces one shape from another. Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase ‘being born’ is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while ‘dying’ means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sum of things remains unchanged.

Ovid Metamorphoses XV ll. 177–85, 234–7, 252–8

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

11 The Spindle [by which the circles of the planets revolved] turned on the knees of Necessity. Upon each of its circles stood a Siren, who was carried round with its movement, uttering a single sound on one note, so that all the eight made up the concords of a single scale. Round about, at equal distances, were seated, each on a throne, the three daughters of Necessity, the Fates, robed in white with garlands on their heads, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, chanting to the Sirens’ music, Lachesis of things past, Clotho of the present, and Atropos of things to come.

Plato Republic X 617

12 It seems to some thinkers that bodies so great must inevitably produce a sound by their movement: even bodies on the earth do so…and as for the sun and the moon, and the stars, so many in number and enormous in size, all moving at a tremendous speed, it is incredible that they should fail to produce a noise of surpassing loudness… To meet the difficulty that none of us is aware of this sound, they account for it by saying that the sound is with us right from birth and has thus no contrasting silence to show it up… Now this theory, I repeat, shows great feeling for fitness and beauty, but nevertheless it cannot be true… When so many bodies are in motion, if the noise which travels here is in proportion to the size of the moving body, it must be many times greater then thunder when it reaches us, and of insupportable force and violence. No, there is a good reason why we neither hear anything ourselves nor see violence done to inanimate objects, namely that the movement is noiseless.

Aristotle On the Heavens II ix

13 There are three types of music. The first type is the music of the universe (musica mundana), the second type, that of the human being (musica humana), and the third type is that which is created by certain instruments (musica instrumentis constituta)… Now the first type, that is the music of the universe, is best observed in those things which one perceives in heaven itself, or in the structure of the elements, or in the diversity of the seasons… Now one comes to understand the music of the human being by examining [one’s] own being. For what unites the incorporeal existence of the reason with the body except a certain harmony…and, as it were, a careful tuning of low and high pitches in such a way that they produce one consonance?

Boethius The Principles of Music I ii

RENAISSANCE VIEWS OF COSMIC ORDER

14 Behold the four elements whereof the body of man is compact, how they be set in their places called spheres, higher or lower according to the sovereignty of their natures, that is to say, the fire as the most pure element, having in it nothing that is corruptible, in his place is highest and above other elements. The air, which next to the fire is most pure in substance, is in the second sphere or place. The water, which is somewhat consolidate, and approacheth to corruption, is next unto the earth. The earth, which is of substance gross and ponderous, is set of all elements most lowest. Behold also the order that God hath put generally in all his creatures, beginning at the most inferior or base, and ascending upward … Every kind of trees. herbs, birds, beasts. and fishes, beside their diversity of forms, have (as who saith) a peculiar disposition appropered unto them by God their creator: so that in everything is order, and without order may be nothing stable or permanent; and it may not be called order, except it do contain in it degrees, high and base, according to the merit or estimation of the thing that is ordered.

Elyot The Governor I i

15 Scudamour describes the figure of Concord in the Temple of Venus:

On either side of her two young men stood,

Both strongly armed, as fearing one another;

Yet were they brethren both of half the blood,

Begotten by two fathers of one mother,

Though of contrary natures each to other:

The one of them hight Love, the other Hate.

Hate was the elder, Love the younger brother;

Yet was the younger stronger in his state

Than th’ elder, and him mastered still in all debate.

Nathless that Dame so well them tempered both,

That she them forced hand to join in hand,

Albe that Hatred was thereto full loth,

And turned his face away, as he did stand,

Unwilling to behold that lovely band.

Yet she was of such grace and virtuous might,

That her commandment he could not withstand,

But bit his lip for felonous despite,

And gnashed his iron tusks at that displeasing sight.

Concord she clepèd was in common rede,

Mother of blessed Peace and Friendship true;

They both her twins, both born of heavenly seed,

And she herself likewise divinely grew;

The which right well her works divine did show:

For strength and wealth and happiness she lends

And strife and war and anger does subdue:

Of little much, of foes she maketh friends,

And to afflicted minds sweet rest and quiet sends.

By her the heaven is in his course contained,

And all the world in state unmoved stands,

As their Almighty maker first ordained,

And bound them with inviolable bands;

Else would the waters overflow the lands,

And fire devour the air, and hell [i.e. cover] them quite,

But that she holds them with her blessed hands.

Spenser The Faerie Queene IV x stanzas 32–5

16 Mutability summarises her argument:

Then, since within this wide great Universe

Nothing doth firm and permanent appear,

But all things tossed and turned by transverse,

What then should let [i.e. prevent], but I aloft should rear

My trophy, and from all the triumph bear?

Now judge then (O thou greatest goddess true)

According as thyself doest see and hear,

And unto me addoom that is my due;

That is, the rule of all, all being ruled by you.

Nature’sreply:

I well consider all that ye have said,

And find that all things steadfastness do hate

And changed be: yet, being rightly weighed,

They are not changed from their first estate;

But by their change their being do dilate,

And turning to themselves at length again,

Do work their own perfection so by fate:

Then over them change doth not rule and reign,

But they reign over change, and do their states maintain.

Faerie Queene VII vii stanzas 56, 58 (compare 10; see also Ch. 5.16)

17 First stepped the Light, and spread his cheerful rays

Through all the Chaos; darkness headlong fell,

Frighted with sudden beams, and new-born days;

And plunged her ugly head in deepest hell:

Not that he meant to help his feeble sight

To frame the rest, he made the day of night:

All else but darkness; he the true, the only Light.

Fire, Water, Earth, and Air (that fiercely strove)

His sovereign hand in strong alliance tied,

Binding their deadly hate in constant love:

So that great Wisdom tempered all their pride,

(Commanding strife and love should never cease)

That by their peaceful fight, and fighting peace,

The world might die to live, and lessen to increase.

Phineas Fletcher The Purple Island I i stanzas 40–1 (compare 3 and 8)

18 Uriel describes the creation:

I saw when at his word the formless mass,

This world’s material mould, came to a heap:

Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar

Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;

Till at his second bidding darkness fled,

Light shone, and order from disorder sprung:

Swift to their several quarters hasted then

The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire,

And this ethereal quintessence of heaven

Flew upwards, spirited with various forms,

That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars

Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;

Each had his place appointed, each his course,

The rest in circuit walls this universe.

Milton Paradise Lost III ll. 708–21 (compare 3)

COSMIC MUSIC IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

19 There is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer, there is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers. It is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God, such a melody to the ear, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony, which intellectually sounds in the ears of God.

Browne Religio Medici II

20 The Genius of the Wood speaks:

But else in deep of night when drowsiness

Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I

To the celestial sirens’ harmony.

That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres,

And sing to those that hold the vital shears,

And turn the adamantine spindle round,

On which the fate of gods and men is wound.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,

To lull the daughters of Necessity,

And keep unsteady nature to her law,

And the low world in measured motion draw

After the heavenly tune, which none can hear

Of human mould with gross unpurgèd ear.

Milton Arcades ll. 61–73 (compare 11, and see also Prolusion II On the Harmony of the Spheres and ‘At a solemn music’)

21 Such was God’s poem, this world’s new essay,

So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;

The ungoverned parts no correspondence knew,

An artless war from thwarting motions grew;

Till they to number and fixed rules were brought

By the eternal Mind’s poetic thought.

Water and air he for the tenor chose,

Earth made the bass, the treble flame arose,

To the active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,

To Saturn’s string a touch more soft and grave.

The motions straight, and round, and swift, and slow,

And short, and long, were mixed and woven so,

Did in such artful figures smoothly fall,

As made this decent measured dance of all.

And this is music…

Cowley Davideis I

RENAISSANCE VIEWS OF THE NATURE OF MAN

22 Truly, just as God is God not only because He understands all things, but because in Himself He assembles and unites the total perfection of the true substance of things, so also man (although differently, as we shall show, else he would not be the image of God, but God) collects and joins to the completeness of his substance all the natures of the world. We cannot say this of any other creature, angelic, heavenly, or sensible. The difference between God and man is that God contains all things in Himself as their origin, and man contains all things in himself as their centre. Hence in God all things are of better stamp than in themselves, whereas in man inferior things are of nobler mark and the superior are degenerate.

Pico della Mirandola Heptaplus V vi (see also opening of On the Dignity of Man)

23 There’s under sun (as Delphos God did show)

No better knowledge than our self to know:

There is no theme more plentiful to scan,

Than is the glorious goodly frame of man:

For, in man’s self is fire, air, earth and sea;

Man’s (in a word) the world’s epitome

Or little map…

Du Bartas Divine Weeks and Works
‘The Sixth Day of the First Week’

24 That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture; but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetoric, till my near judgement and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein: for first we are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kind of being not yet privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the world, but of the universe; thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason; the one visible, the other invisible.

Browne Religio Medici I (see also Ralegh History of the World I ii 5)

25 I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements, and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betrayed to endless night

My world’ s both parts, and, oh, both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly…

Donne Holy Sonnet v ll. 1–8

26 Man is all symmetry,

Full of proportions, one limb to another,

And all to all the world besides:

Each part may call the farthest, brother:

For head with foot hath private amity,

And both with moons and tides.

Nothing hath got so far,

But man hath caught and kept it, as his prey.

His eyes dismount the highest star:

He is in little all the sphere.

Herbs gladly cure our flesh; because that they

Find their acquaintance there.

Herbert ‘Man’ ll. 13–24

THE NEW COSMOLOGY

27 We therefore assert that the centre of the Earth, carrying the Moon’ s path, passes in a great circuit among the other planets in an annual revolution round the Sun; that near the Sun is the centre of the universe; and that whereas the Sun is at rest, any apparent motion of the Sun can be better explained by motion of the Earth. Yet so great is the universe that though the distance of the Earth from the Sun is not insignificant compared with the size of any other planetary path, in accordance with the ratios of their sizes, it is insignificant compared with the distances of the sphere of the fixed stars. I think it easier to believe this than to confuse the issue by assuming a vast number of spheres, which those who keep Earth at the centre must do… In the middle of all sits Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the lamp, the mind, the ruler of the universe; Hermes Trismegistus names him the visible God, Sophocles’ Electra calls him the all-seeing. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle round him.

Copernicus On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres I x

28 Democritus and Epicurus, who maintained that everything throughout infinity suffereth renewal and restoration, understood these matters more truly than those who would at all costs maintain belief in the immutability of the universe… Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres… We know that the Supreme Ruler cannot have a seat so narrow, so miserable a throne… On the contrary we recognise a noble image, a marvellous conception, a supreme figure, an exalted shadow, an infinite representation of the represented infinity, a spectacle worthy of the supremacy of Him who transcendeth understanding, comprehension, or grasp. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made manifest; he is glorified not in one, but in countless suns, not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

Bruno On the Infinite Universe and Worlds ‘Introductory Epistle’

29 The Copernican Salviati addresses the Aristotelian Simplicio: I declare that we do have in our age new events and observations such that if Aristotle were now alive, I have no doubt he would change his opinion. This is easily inferred from his own manner of philosophising, for when he writes of considering the heavens inalterable, etc., because no new thing is seen to be generated there or any old one dissolved, he seems implicitly to let us understand that if he had seen any such event he would have reversed his opinion and properly preferred the sensible experience to natural reason… Excellent astronomers have observed many comets generated and dissipated in places above the lunar orbit, besides the two new stars of 1572 and 1604, which were indisputably beyond all the planets. And on the face of the sun itself, with the aid of the telescope, they have seen produced and dissolved dense and dark matter, appearing much like clouds upon the earth… Now, if Aristotle had seen these things, what do you think he would have said and done, Simplicio?

Galileo Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems ‘The First Day’ (compare 4)

BIBLICAL TEXTS CITED AGAINST THE NEW COSMOLOGY

30 …[Joshua] said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies… So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

Joshua 10:12–13

31 The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved.

Psalm 93:1

32 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

Ecclesiastes 1:4–5

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THROUGH THE CREATION

33 The world’s a school, where (in a general story)

God always reads dumb lectures of his glory:

A pair of stairs, whereby our mounting soul

Ascends by steps above the archèd pole:

A sumptuous hall, where God (on every side)

His wealthy shop of wonders opens wide:

A bridge, whereby we may pass o’ er (at ease),

Of sacred secrets the broad boundless seas.

…… The world’s a book in folio, printed all

With God’s great works in letters capital:

Each creature is a page; and each effect

A fair character, void of all defect.

But, as young truants, toying in the schools,

Instead of learning, learn to play the fools:

We gaze but on the babies [i.e. pictures] and the cover,

The gawdy flowers, and edges gilded over;

And never farther for our lesson look

Within the volume of this various book;

Where learned nature rudest ones instructs,

That, by his wisdom, God the world conducts.

……

But he that wears the spectacles of faith,

Sees through the spheres, above the highest height:

He comprehends the Arch-mover of all motions,

And reads (though running) all these needful notions.

Du Bartas Divine Weeks and Works The First Day of the First Week’

34 The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: ‘tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads, that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works; those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.

Browne Religio Medici I

SCIENTIFIC SCEPTICISM AND MORAL KNOWLEDGE

35 We think the heavens enjoy their spherical,

Their round proportion embracing all.

But yet their various and perplexed course,

Observed in divers ages, doth enforce

Men to find out so many eccentric parts,

Such divers down-right lines, such overthwarts,

As disproportion that pure form. It tears

The firmament in eight and forty shares,

And in these constellations then arise

New stars, and old do vanish from our eyes.

Donne The First Anniversary ll. 251–60

36 Have not all souls thought

For many ages, that our body is wrought

Of air, and fire, and other elements?

And now they think of new ingredients,

And one soul thinks one, and another way

Another thinks, and ‘tis an even lay.

……

What hope have we to know our selves, when we

Know not the least things, which for our use be?

……

Thou look’st through spectacles; small things seem great

Below; but up unto the watch-tower get,

And see all things despoiled of fallacies:

Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes,

Nor hear through labyrinths of ears, nor learn

By circuit, or collection to discern.

In heaven thou straight knowest all, concerning it,

And what concerns is not, shalt straight forget.

Donne The Second Anniversary ll. 263–8, 279–80, 293–300

37 Raphael to Adam:

To ask or search I blame thee not, for heaven

Is as the book of God before thee set,

Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn

His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years:

This to attain, whether heaven move or earth,

Imports not, if thou reckon right, the rest

From man or angel the great architect

Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge

His secrets to be scanned by them who ought

Rather admire; or if they list to try

Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens

Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move

His laughter at their quaint opinions wide

Hereafter, when they come to model heaven

And calculate the stars, how they will wield

The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive

To save appearances, how gird the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o’ er,

Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb:

……

Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,

Leave them to God above, him serve and fear;

……heaven is for thee too high

To know what passes there; be lowly wise:

Think only what concerns thee and thy being;

Dream not of other worlds…

Milton Paradise Lost VIII ll. 66–84, 167–8, 172–5