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12 - Early-Medieval Cosmology, Astronomy, and Mathematics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2013

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Summary

Cosmology, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry meant very different things in a fifth-century Roman villa, a seventh-century Irish monastery, a ninth-century royal library, and an eleventh-century ecclesiastical school. The spatial framework in medieval cosmology contained a central spherical Earth and an enclosing sphere with stars fixed to it. In the Christian literary tradition, commentaries on the biblical book of Genesis used Greek cosmological doctrines extensively. Encounters with Virgil's Georgics and one of the Latin translations of Aratus's Phaenomena were among the natural points of intersection for the study of both language and astronomy. Models and applied mathematics together prepared Latin astronomers for the research of the twelfth century into the Greco-Arabic traditions of their discipline. Saint Augustine, in a discussion of the order found in each of the liberal arts, explained how measurement, or number, lay beneath the essential character of grammar, astronomy, and the other arts as well.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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