Table Of ContentSTARS, MINDS AND FATE
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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).
