Chapter 5
The heavens, stars and planets, the order and origin of the universe.
270 passages · 72 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Astronomy and cosmology together cover the oldest object of human attention, the sky above, and the most ambitious question that attention raises: what kind of whole the world is, how it came to be, and how far it extends. In the Harvard Classics the idea is unusually pervasive. It appears in the Hebrew psalms and the Koran, in Homer’s sailors and Dana’s, in Dante’s ascent through the spheres, in Copernicus’s dedication and Voltaire’s report of Newton, and in Newcomb’s attempt to measure the visible universe. It is a great idea for these books because the heavens have served at once as a calendar and a clock, a field of mathematical science, a supposed cause of human fortune, a testimony to God, and a mirror in which people have measured their own importance or insignificance.
The first conviction these authors share is that the heavens and earth form one order. Marcus Aurelius observes that sun, rain and stars differ in their work yet labour toward the same end1. Goethe’s Faust, contemplating the sign of the Macrocosm, sees all things woven into one vast whole as celestial powers rise and descend2. Milton’s Satan surveys a universe in which each star keeps its appointed place and course, the whole forming a wall around creation3,4. The theme of a governing centre persists into modern science in altered form. Harvey compares the heart to the sun as the heart of the world5, and Helmholtz names the sun the ultimate source of earthly forces6.
Whence this order comes is answered in two broad ways. Scripture and the Koran ascribe it directly to God. In Job, God hangs the earth upon nothing7, and the morning stars sing together at creation8. The Koran argues that raising the heavens is a greater work than creating man9,10. Milton’s account of the fourth day distinguishes the sun that stores light from the moon that borrows it11, and Dryden makes the universal frame begin from heavenly harmony, the elements leaping into their stations12. Descartes offers the other answer. In his suppressed treatise he proposed to show how chaotic matter, obeying only the laws of nature, would arrange itself into heavens, sun, stars, planets and comets13,14. Sainte-Beuve imagines Lucretius and Milton in conversation about this very reduction of chaos to order15, and Darwin’s dating of the earth’s crust at hundreds of millions of years gives the question a geological depth16.
The ancient and medieval picture of the cosmos placed the earth at its centre. Plato’s Socrates in the Phaedo wanted an account of the earth’s shape and position that would show why it is best17, and he describes a round earth held in equipoise at the centre of the heavens18. Dante makes this geometry dramatic. Passing the earth’s centre, toward which all heavy things are drawn, Virgil and Dante find the hemispheres reversed and morning and evening exchanged19,20. In the Paradise the poet rises through the moon, Venus with its epicycle, Saturn and the fixed stars21,22,23,24. From there he looks back on the planetary spheres and the small earth25. Beyond them lies the primum mobile, the source of time and of motion, contained by nothing but the divine mind26. Dante’s scheme is also a physics of influence. Intelligences move the heavens and pass virtues downward from sphere to sphere27. The obliquity of the zodiac carries the planets’ influence to earth, so that a different inclination would cause defects both above and below28. Marlowe’s Faustus disputes the same nine heavens with Mephistophilis29. Bacon borrows the spheres as an image of ordered government30, while Voltaire, looking back, finds the Greek belief in crystal heavens merely quaint31.
Copernicus breaks this picture. He expected rejection for giving motion to the earth32. Yet he argues that the mathematicians, with their conflicting concentric and eccentric circles, had failed to give the world its true shape and symmetry33. He found precedent among ancient Pythagoreans who moved the earth34. His decisive claim is coherence: once the earth moves, the orbits and the heavens are so bound together that nothing could be altered without confusing the whole35. Later notices show the system becoming ordinary. Locke would teach children the Copernican planets after the globes36. Berkeley remarks that our not perceiving the earth’s motion does not mean it would go unperceived from a distance37. Hume treats either system as capable of producing durable conviction38, and Emerson jokes that Oxford may still hold to Ptolemy39.
Milton offers the most interesting refusal to decide. His narrator describes sunset uncertain whether the sun moves or the earth turns40. Adam asks why the vast heavens should wheel about a tiny earth, a disproportion unworthy of wise Nature41. Raphael mocks the epicycles and says God left the fabric of the heavens to human conjecture42. He then sketches a sun-centred world, an inhabited moon and other suns, yet will not say which is true43. Huxley later draws the moral Milton withheld. The earth is not the chief body of the universe, nor is the world subordinate to man, as our ancestors supposed44,45.
A sun-centred geometry still needed a physics. Descartes made the moon and heavens the cause of the tides46 and filled space with vortices of subtle matter carrying the planets47. Voltaire reports how Newton destroyed them. Vortices contradict Kepler’s law and the planets’ ellipses, and comets cross the heavens in every direction48. In their place Newton put a gravity reaching the moon and planets and diminishing with the square of distance49. Voltaire describes the moon’s orbit used as a test50, one attraction ruling sun, planets and satellites51, and the same law explaining tides and comets52. Newton’s own preface describes deriving gravity from celestial phenomena and then deducing the motions of planets, comets, moon and sea53. Hume notes that astronomers passed from proving the motions to finding the forces behind them54. The nineteenth-century authors speak as heirs. Faraday cites the discovery of Neptune from its attraction55. Helmholtz says planetary motions can be predicted centuries ahead56. Kelvin calls the tides the last link in Newton’s chain57,58 and dismisses Hegel’s planets moving like blessed gods59. A question remains that mechanism does not close. Rousseau’s vicar holds that neither attraction nor vortices accounts for the planets’ first motion, so some hand must have impelled them60. Emerson notes that astronomers ask only for matter and one impulse, and metaphysicians reply that this begs the question of origin61.
The telescope enlarged the field. Milton compares the moon to the view through Galileo’s glass62. Pascal notes that the Milky Way proved to be countless stars and that comets crossed the moon’s sphere, refuting ancient views63. He cautions that Scripture should not be attacked over the number of the stars64. Berkeley sees in telescopic multitudes and innumerable worlds a display of immense order65. Newcomb takes up the question of extent as a measurable problem. He describes the Milky Way and the sun’s drift toward Lyra66, and argues that the symmetry of star distribution reveals an organized system67,68. He recounts Bessel’s parallax of 1837 and the few, often doubtful distances since measured69. From star counts and proper motions he estimates the bounds of the visible stars70,71,72. He judges that the extinction of light is negligible73 and concludes that the visible universe is a bounded whole encircled by the Milky Way, whose limits later astronomers will fix more exactly74. Homer’s ship had reached the world’s edge at Oceanus75; Newcomb’s edge is numerical.
Long before such theory, astronomy served practical life. Aeschylus’s watchman knows the risings and settings of the stars that mark the seasons76, and his Prometheus claims to have taught men them77. Herodotus praises the Egyptian star-reckoned year over Greek intercalation78. Plutarch ties Caesar’s reform to computing the solar year79, and Copernicus names calendar reform among his motives80. Voltaire explains the precession of the equinoxes, which the ancients wrongly assigned to a moving sphere of fixed stars81, and uses the drifting equinoxes as a clock for ancient history82. Dryden defends Virgil as an exact astronomer for his age83. Dante tells the hour by the sun’s place over Jerusalem and the Ganges84,85, and Chaucer’s Chanticleer reads it by the sun in Taurus86. At sea Odysseus steers by the Pleiads and the Bear87, and Palinurus reads the stars for weather88. Dana watches the north star sink and the Magellan Clouds rise89,90 and sees his captain fix position by lunar observation91.
The worth of such study was itself debated. Cicero honours Gallus, who mapped the sky and predicted eclipses until his death92, and Plutarch has Pericles explain an eclipse naturally rather than as an omen93. Augustine admires the astronomers who number stars and predict eclipses. Their calculations helped expose Manichaeus’s false teaching on the heavens, yet he still ranks their science below the knowledge of God94,95. Marcus Aurelius is grateful that he never busied himself with appearances in the heavens96. Montaigne finds it simple to teach children the stars before they know themselves97. More’s Utopians are expert on the motions of the spheres98.
The Utopians also reject astrological divination98, and astrology is where the question of celestial influence grows sharpest. Believers abound. Astrologers in the Thousand and One Nights read a youth’s death99, and a barber consults his astrolabe before shaving100. Chaucer’s physician watches the ascendant101, and Calderón’s Basilio reads men’s destinies in the book of heaven102. Manzoni’s Don Ferrante blames the plague on a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter103. Augustine meets the claim with the case of births at the same moment yet unlike lives104,105. Browne says that one born under a planet owes homage to God, not to the star106, and Jonson’s characters dismiss birth constellations as stale107. Between belief and rejection stands a middle view. Dante holds that the heavens influence but do not determine action108, while granting that they shape men’s capacities at birth109. Bacon doubts stellar influence on individuals but allows an effect on the mass of things110. Omens draw the same divided response. Lear’s characters dispute whether eclipses govern affairs111, Hobbes lists comets and eclipses among supposed forecasts of calamity112, and Pascal records how rare conjunctions are taken as omens113.
For many authors the sky is chiefly a testimony. The heavens declare God’s glory114. God counts the stars and names them115 and asks Job whether he can bind the Pleiades116. The Koran’s heavens stand without pillars117, and Addison’s ordered frame declares its origin118. Habington reads the sky as a volume spelling the Creator’s name119. A related tradition hears music. Milton’s Sirens sing on nine spheres120, Browne finds harmony struck upon the understanding121, and Goethe’s archangels hear the spheres in rival song122. Whether order proves a Creator is contested more cautiously. Raleigh argues that sun, moon and stars could not have bounded themselves123. Augustine insists that the sun and moon are beautiful creatures, not the creator124. Pascal thinks it a mistake to offer the course of the planets as proof of God125.
The order is not taken to be eternal. Buddhist writings describe cycles ending in world-burning126. Luke and the Koran foretell darkened suns and falling stars127,128. Byron imagines the sun extinguished and stars wandering rayless129. Raleigh answers the argument that the heavens show no corruption by suggesting that they are merely new130.
Last comes the question of feeling. Burke finds sublimity in the stars’ number and apparent disorder131. Marcus Aurelius would purge earthly filth by watching their courses132, yet calls continents mere corners of the universe133. Dante looks down on the earth’s small region134. Pascal makes the earth a point135 and shudders at the silent, frightful spaces surrounding man in his corner136,137. Tennyson’s stars are pitiless, passionless eyes138, and Longfellow’s move on unperturbed by human sorrow139.
What remains open is whether the order mechanics has mapped carries meaning. Rousseau’s first impulse, Newcomb’s provisional boundary and Pascal’s silence leave unsettled whether the heavens speak to man at all, or only to his instruments.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: World 2a
See also: Mechanics 3b · Mathematics 4a · Cause 8b
See also: Prophecy 6a · Fate 1d
See also: Religion 6b
See also: God 5d · Religion 6b