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STARS, MINDS AND FATE This page intentionally left blank STARS, MINDS AND FATE ESSAYS IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL COSMOLOGY J.D. NORTH THE HAMBLEDON PRESS LONDON AND RONCEVERTE Published by The Hambledon Press, 1989 102 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8HX (U.K.) 309 Greenbrier Avenue, Ronceverte, 24970 (U.S.A.) ISBN 0 907628 94 X © John D. North 1989 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data North, J.D. Stars, minds and fate: essays in ancient and medieval cosmology. 1. Cosmology - History I. Title 113'.09 BD494 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data North, John David. Stars, minds, and fate: essays in ancient and medieval cosmology/J.D. North. Includes index. 1. Cosmology. 2. Astronomy, Ancient. 3. Astronomy, Medieval. 4. Astrology. 5. Science - History. I. Title. QB981.N773 1989 523.1 - dc19 88-35243 CIP Printed and bound by W.B.C. Ltd., Bristol and Maesteg CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Preface ix List of Illustrations xi 1 The Attractions of Past Science 1 2 Moon and Megaliths 11 3 By Direction from Above 21 4 Neolithic Newtons 29 5 Venus, By Jupiter! 37 6 On the Trail of the Comet 45 7 The Culmination of Ptolemy 53 8 Astrology and the Fortunes of Churches 59 9 Chronology and the Age of the World 91 10 Between Experience and Experiment 119 11 Opus quarundam rotarum mirabilium 135 12 Monasticism and the First Mechanical Clocks 171 13 Hierarchy, Creation, and// Veltro: Three Footnotes to Dante's Inferno 187 14 The Astrolabe 211 15 Astrolabes and the Hour-Line Ritual 221 16 Summa ratione confectum: An Astrolabe Drawn by Computer 223 (with Ole 0sterby and Kurt M0ller Pedersen) 17 Eternity and Infinity in Late Medieval Thought 233 18 Celestial Influence — the Major Premiss of Astrology 243 19 Intimations of Cosmic Unity? Fourteenth-Century Views on Celestial and Sub-Lunar Motion 301 vi Contents 20 Kinematics — More Ethereal than Elementary 313 21 The Alfonsine Tables in England 327 22 1348 and All That: Oxford Science and the Black Death 361 23 Nicolaus Kratzer — The King's Astronomer 373 24 The Medieval Background to Copernicus 401 Index 415 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The articles in this volume first appeared in the following places. They are reprinted by the kind permission of the original publishers. 1 Times Literary Supplement (1972), pp. 1421-2. 2 Times Literary Supplement (1971), pp. 633-5. 3 Times Literary Supplement (1980), pp. 563-4. 4 Times Literary Supplement (1975), pp. 921 -2. 5 Times Literary Supplement (1976), pp. 770-1. 6 Times Literary Supplement (1982), pp. 1407-8. 7 Times Literary Supplement (1977), pp. 467-8. 8 Centaurus,24(l98Q),pp. 181-211. 9 Cosmology, History and Theology, ed. by W. Yourgrau and A.D. Breck (New York, Plenum Press, 1977), pp. 307-33. 10 Times Literary Supplement (1983), pp. 1163-5. 11 Physis, 8 (1966), pp. 337-72. 12 The Study of Time, ed. by J.T. Fraser and N. Lawrence (New York, Springer Verlag, 1975), pp. 381-93. 13 Annali delV Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza diFirenze, 1 (1981), pp. 5-28. 14 Scientific American (January, 1974), pp. 96-106. 15 Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 5 (1981), pp. 113-14. 16 Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 25 (1975), pp. 73-81. 17 Infinity in Science, ed. G. Toraldo di Francia (Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1987), pp. 245-56. 18 Astrologi hallucinati, ed. by P. Zambelli (Berlin, New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 45-100. viii Acknowledgements 19 Cahiers du Seminaire d'Histoire des Sciences de VUniversite de Nice (Journees Oresmes, Juin 1983), ed. by P. Souffrin, p. 30-42. 20 Machaut's World. Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, ed. by M.P. Cosman and B. Chandler (New York, Academy of Sciences, 1978), pp. 89-102. 21 Prismata. Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Festschrift fur Willy Hartner, ed. by Y. Maeyama and W. Saltzer (Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), pp. 269- 301. 22 From Ancient Omens to Statistical Mechanics: Essays on the Exact Sciences Presented to Asger Aaboe, ed. by J.L. Berggren and B.R. Goldstein (Copenhagen, University Library, 1987), pp. 155-65. Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium, 39. 23 Science and History: Studies in Honor of Edward Rosen (Ossolineum, Orbis, 1978), pp. 205-34. Studia Copernica (1978). 24 Copernicus Yesterday and Today, ed. by A. Beer and K.A. Strand (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1975), pp. 3-16. Vistas in Astronomy, 17. PREFACE The historical essays collected together in these pages are all in some way related to a lasting human preoccupation with cosmological matters.1 Far from having been written for each other's company, they were published over a period of twenty years. If this does not make them radically inconsistent, the span is long enough to have exposed changes in my own attitudes to a university discipline which, as Marvell might have said, fate so enviously debars. A third of my chapters first saw the light of day as reviews in the Times Literary Supplement: they were usually written in haste, and were probably the better for it. It must be said that their titles were not of my invention, but they are kept, for reasons that should be obvious. While I cannot pretend to the rank ofjournalist, I take some pleasure in the thought that, judged by irate correspondence alone, those pieces were exceptions to the rule that the average readership of a scholarly article is 1.4 (and presumably falling). The contents of the book must speak for themselves. They have been changed in only the most trifling respects, although comments have been appended to several of them, and some of the original illustrations have been replaced by more suitable ones. The early chapters tend to be of a more general kind than the later, and for the most part offer a survey of I current scholarship rather than any original contribution to it They might often seem to be putting across ideas that are commonplace, but I do not think that this was so when they first appeared. It is not every reviewer who has had his work wrapped round the Sunday edition of a weighty and well known American newspaper and hurled at its editor. It is hard now to credit the hostility that greeted Alexander Thorn's writings on what - for better or worse - became known as archaeo- astronomy. It is even harder to believe that one remembers correctly the strong reluctance shown even by many professional scientists to reject the pronouncements of Immanuel Velikovsky. These facts should be borne in mind when the relevant chapters are read. There are of course still those who scorn Thorn's work in private, but they are almost invariably wrong, and I shall shortly publish evidence of a new sort, supplementing Thorn's findings in a way that will make this more obvious than ever. 1 A second collection, covering a later historical period, has been published as The Universal Frame, also by the Hambledon Press (1989).