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Series Editor: Roger French
Director; Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
University of Cambridge
C O S M O L O G Y IN
ANTIQUITY
M.R. Wright
for M.W.
amicissime scripsi
CONTENTS
viii
List offigures
General series introduction
Acknowledgements
IX
X
1 IN T R O D U C T IO N
11
37
4 M ACROCOSM AN D M ICROCOSM
56
75
93
109
126
145
163
Glossary
Bibliography
Index o f classical sources
General index
185
188
193
196
vii
FIGURES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Vlll
13
17
21
29
30
49
50
76
111
127
134
147
150
154
157
179
G E N E R A L SERIES
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The last thirty years have been called 'the golden age of cosmology'.
With the discovery of the microwave background, the launching of
the 'Cosmic Background Explorer" (COBE), the general advances in
astrophysics and the increased sophistication of radio-telescopes,
particle accelerators and computer modelling, it would seem that we
are on the brink of solving the enigma of the origins of the universe,
yet the paradoxes inherent in the subject, the continuing controversies and the difficulties of verification make that solution still
elusive. Many of today's problems awaiting solution are more
sophisticated versions of issues which engaged the interest of ancient
cosmologists. The Aristotelian 'perfect cosmological principle', for
example, of a universe maintained indefinitely by natural laws
foreshadows the 'steady state' concept, whereas the opposed view of
a 'big bang' theory of the universe starting from a single point and
erupting out from there had its adherents then as now.
Ongoing arguments even among the theorists who are in general
agreement on the 'big bang' and the events immediately following
the crucial first moment come up against a need to assume either 'godgiven' initial conditions or some kind of cosmic organising basis in
addition to the recognised laws of physics; to affirm that an initial
condition or an increase in complexity is a fundamental property of
nature is an answer that received short shrift from Plato and his
followers. Once the events are in train 'inflationists' who expect
expansion to continue indefinitely are in the tradition of Anaxagoras,
1
C O S M O L O G Y IN A N T I Q U I T Y
INTRODUCTION
common grounds in the assumption of orderly arrangements emerging from the outward rippling of featureless swirling 'stuff 5 , and
especially in the crucial realisation that cosmological theorising rests
on some understanding of the essential linkage of the minutely small
with the immensely large.
The name of the science of cosmology is derived from ancient
Greek, and has an interesting history. In the earliest Greek texts, the
Homeric epic poems of the Iliad and Odyssey, the word kosmos had
primarily the sense of 'order', used, for example, of rowers at their
place by the oars (Odyssey 13.77) or of soldiers sleeping with their
equipment properly set out around them {Iliad 10.472), whereas the
absence of kosmos would characterise the ragged rout of an army
{Iliad 2.214). The Greek aesthetic sense of style saw beauty in
arrangement and proportion, so that kosmos could be used for
geometric decoration on a vase, as well as for the array of dress,
perfume, jewellery and sandals put on by the goddess Hera in her
glamorous preparations for seduction {Iliad 14.187); this meaning of
'adornment' still lingers in the derivation 'cosmetics'. A song or story
with the parts well arranged was also a kosmos, and to show the
courtesy of good manners, adapting to the needs of others was to
be kosmic. The historians extended this use to cover well-regulated
states such as Sparta (so Herodotus at 1.65), officials who maintained
political order, and harmonious relationships generally.
By the end of the sixth century BC the combination of these senses
of a continuing orderly arrangement of parts showing beauty and
adornment was appropriated for the grand structure of earth, sea and
the sky above, encompassing by day the sun, clouds and rainbow,
and by night the bright patterns of moon, stars and planets. Xenophanes, a refugee from the expansion of the Middle Eastern empire
of the Medes in the sixth century BC, is said to have been the first
'who looked up at the sky and had a theory of everything' (reported
by Aristotle Metaphysics 986b). The move towards calling this
whole world-system 'the kosmos,' on the other hand, was attributed
to his near contemporary Pythagoras in the notice that:
He was the first to call the sum of the whole by the name of
kosmos, because of the order which it displayed.
(Aetius 2.1.1)
To this word, still ambiguous between the beautiful arrangement
of parts in the whole and the whole itself, was added logos, meaning
'a reasoned and rational account', to give the compound noun
3
C O S M O L O G Y IN A N T I Q U I T Y
onwards to cover
phenomena of the
of 'world order' is
Anaximenes:
INTRODUCTION
C O S M O L O G Y IN A N T I Q U I T Y
INTRODUCTION
C O S M O L O G Y IN A N T I Q U I T Y
INTRODUCTION
C O S M O L O G Y IN A N T I Q U I T Y
10
A S URVEY OF
C O S M O L O G I C A L TEXTS
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