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1 - Celestial speculations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

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Summary

This chapter demonstrates how analogies and models are used in literature about Newtonian astronomy to communicate a cognitive experience of outer space. The argument centres on a series of educational dialogues on astronomy – John Harris’s Astronomical Dialogues, James Ferguson’s The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Astronomy, and Benjamin Martin’s The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Philosophy – and astronomical poems by John Hughes, David Mallet, Elizabeth Carter, Richard Blackmore, and Mark Akenside. The chapter surveys a series of analogical techniques for transmitting knowledge about space: conversation, the use of models such as orreries and globes as physical analogies that permit a range of cognitive and somatic experiences, explanatory domestic analogies that make comprehensible the vast scales and unseen forces of space, the Newtonian concept of an infinite universe as physico-theological trope, and the possibilities and restrictions of imaginative journeys into space. These examples demonstrate how the use of analogy transforms astronomy from an abstract and solitary philosophy into a polite, communal activity. From domestic familiarity to imaginative journey amongst the stars, the analogies surveyed in this chapter are shown to facilitate connections between the known and the unknown.

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