Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology
From Thales to Heraclides Ponticus
Page
%P
-
Book
-
Chapter
Bellows or Lightning? A Curious Terminology Explained
Anaximander’s image of celestial wheels is in itself clear: it visualizes the circular orbits of the celestial bodies, and it explains why these bodies turn in circles around the earth, as well as why they do ...
-
Chapter
A Survey from Anaximander to Aristarchus
With his three fundamental insights, that the celestial bodies make full circles around the earth, that the earth dwells unsupported in the center of the universe, and that the celestial stars are behind each ...
-
Chapter
The Sun at the Horizon, Anaxagoras’ Proof of the Flatness of the Earth
Most Presocratics believed that the earth is flat, shaped like a drum, as we see in Chap. 4. In On the Heavens 293b34 ff. Aristotle argues with those who maintain that the earth is flat, until he finally, in 298b...
-
Chapter
The Shape of the Earth According to Thales
In the archaic world picture, the earth is flat and usually conceived of as a round disk. First of all, it is important to bear in mind that almost all the Presocratics, of which we have reports about what the...
-
Chapter
The Dodecahedron, or the Shape of the Earth According to Plato
The discovery of the spherical shape of the earth is the finishing touch of the new world picture that was introduced by Anaximander. Strictly speaking, it is not right to use the word “discovery,” since the i...
-
Chapter
The First Map of the Earth
Several sources attest that Anaximander drew a map of the earth and even that he was the first one to do so (see DK 12A1(2) and DK 12A6). His map has been lost, just like his book. Several scholars, however, h...
-
Chapter
Heraclides Ponticus and the Infinite Universe
In Chap. 8, it was explained how Anaximander, with one of his fundamental speculative insights, broke through the firmament of the archaic world picture by placing the celestial bodies at different distances f...
-
Chapter
The Visualization of Anaximander’s World Picture
In Chap. 9, we drew a map, a two-dimensional representation, of Anaximander’s universe (see Fig. 9.5). One of the conclusions was that Anaximander probably did not fabricate a three-dimensional model of his co...
-
Chapter
Critique of an Alleged Cosmic Architecture
According to Anaximander, the earth has the shape of a cylinder and looks like a column drum, the height of which is one third its width. This datum has induced Robert Hahn to outline in several studies what h...
-
Chapter
The Archaic World Picture
The archaic world picture, the picture of a flat earth with the dome of the heaven vaulted above it, on which the celestial bodies are attached, is the basic world picture of many ancient cultures. Here “world...
-
Chapter
With Fear for His Own Life: Anaxagoras as a Cosmologist
The dates of Anaxagoras’ life are a matter of dispute. Usually they are given as 500–428 B.C. but the dates 533–462 B.C. have also been defended. According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxagoras was an apprentice of...
-
Chapter
How Thales Was Able to Predict the Solar Eclipse of 28 May 585 B.C.
In the year 467 B.C. at Aegospotamoi, a stone fell from the heaven. It is said that Anaxagoras, thanks to his knowledge of astronomy, was able to predict the fall of this famous meteorite (DK 59A1(10), DK 59A6...
-
Chapter
The Sun Is as Big as the Peloponnesus
Plutarch, Hippolytus, and Diogenes Laertius report that Anaxagoras compared the size of the sun with the Peloponnesus (see Fig. 16.1). The aim of this chapter is to show that Anaxagoras was not crazy when he s...
-
Chapter
The Riddle of the Celestial Axis
The tilting of the axis of the heavens must have been one of the big riddles for the ancients who studied the skies. Why does it look as if the stars turn around a point in the northern region of the heavens, ...
-
Chapter
Fear of Falling: Aristotle on the Shape of the Earth
The fear that the heavens will fall down is a universal theme in mythology. Strabo tells that the ancient Celts did not fear anything so much as the possibility that the heaven would collapse (Geographica liber V...
-
Chapter
Anaximander: A Survey of His Ideas
The history of Western philosophy begins with Anaximander of Miletus (610–547 B.C.), in Asia Minor, now Turkey. This is how he is treated, for instance, by Karl Jaspers in the first volume of his Die grossen Phil...
-
Chapter
Anaximander’s Numbers: The Dimensions of the Universe
In this chapter, I deal with the problems that arise when we try to draw a map of Anaximander’s universe, and suggest ways to solve them. In discussing several authors who have studied the subject, I will poin...
-
Chapter
Archaic Astronomical Instruments
The oldest astronomical instrument is the naked eye, with which the courses of the celestial objects were observed. Since time immemorial, people have noticed that the celestial bodies rise at the eastern horizon...
-
Chapter
The Discovery of Space: Anaximander’s Cosmology
At first sight, Anaximander’s cosmology looks like an eccentric vision sprung from a bizarre mind. Anaximander imagined the celestial bodies as huge rings, or more precisely, chariot wheels, consisting of opaq...
