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Dr Robert A. Hatch - University of Florida
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| The diagram above is perhaps the most widely reproduced image of Aristotle's 'closed cozy cosmos'. The illustration derives from the Cosmographia seu descriptio totius orbis (1524) of Petrus Apianus (Peter Apian, 1495-1552). The essential elements are easily identified. Earth is at the center of the cosmos, fixed and stable, followed by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and finally, three medieval nether regions that culminated with the Empyrean Sphere. The ordering of the planets differed, so far as we know, between Aristotle and Ptolemy. The above illustration follows Ptolemy, which places Venus closer to the Sun than Mercury. There was much debate throughout antiquity and the middle ages about the precise relation of the planets and the sun. Some modern commentators have been confused by the fact that the Sun was sometimes placed in the 'middle of the planets'. This meant, in the context of the time, that the Sun was located in the middle of all of the planets, that is, between Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the superior planets. |
| A less known but widely reproduced image of the finite cosmos (technically Ptolemaic but quasi-Aristotelian) derives from the obscure, encyclopedic, but no less influential Frenchman, Oronce Finé (1494-1555). This illustration comes from Finé's Theorique de la cieux (theorique de la huictieme sphere et sept planets) which was published in 1528. Here again the sequence follows Ptolemy, with Earth at the center of the cosmos, fixed and stable, followed by the Moon, then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and finally, the sphere of fixed stars, which rotated daily taking all of the heavenly bodies with it around the central earth. |
| Perhaps the best-known Renaissance astronomer, other than Copernicus, was Johannes Muller, widely known as Regiomontanus. The above illustration represents the frontispiece of his highly regarded Epitome of Ptolemy's Almagest. Here again the sequence follows Ptolemy, with Earth at the center of the cosmos followed by the planets and finally the sphere of fixed stars. |
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Dr Robert A. Hatch - All rights reserved