Knowledge and Cosmos

Robert K. DeKosky

doi:10.5771/9780761874034

Summary

In Knowledge and Cosmos: Development and Decline of the Medieval Perspective, 2nd Edition, Robert K. DeKosky focuses on issues in astronomy, cosmology, physics, matter theory, philosophy, and theology vital to the “Copernican Revolution.” This book describes efforts among individuals advocating different world views to fit new ideas compatibly into broad perspectives reflecting four traditional patterns of interpretation: teleological, mechanical, occultist, and mathematico-descriptive. These four modes had guided medieval accounts of heavenly phenomena, material process, and motion.

The teleological explanation, prevalent in Aristotle’s natural philosophy, posited “final causes” (ends or goals toward which objects strove or attempted to become). Ancient classical atomists had emphasized strictly mechanical explanations, invoking direct material contact and collision of moving matter as agents of physical change. Traditions of astrology, magic, and alchemy embraced an occultist pattern of interpretation—citing hidden forces opaque to both sensual detection and rational understanding as explanations of various phenomena. Finally, the mathematico-descriptive approach interpreted natural phenomena according to geometric or arithmetic relationships; unlike the other three, this did not involve causal explanation of a process.

Part I discusses development of the four patterns in the ancient period and their uneasy medieval relationships with each other and with basic Judaeo-Muslim-Christian exigencies of faith. Theory of the heavens follows, including the mathematico-descriptive approach of Ptolemaic astronomy, the teleological and mechanical cosmology of Aristotle, and occultist interpretations of astrologers and magicians. Part I then turns to matter and materiality, discussing differences among the mechanical philosophy of classical atomism, teleological emphases in Aristotle’s material theory, and occultist assumptions of some alchemists. Finally, Part I analyzes conceptions of motion, focusing on Aristotelian interpretations and critical commentaries thereon during the Middle Ages.

Part II relates struggles of leading early-modern figures to adapt new concepts (e.g., Copernicus’ heliocentric astronomy/cosmology, Galileo’s inertial theories of motion, and Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbit) to an allegiance to two or more of the four patterns of interpretation. By this approach, it identifies decreasing dependence on teleological explanation of physical phenomena as crucial to decline of medieval interpretations of those phenomena, followed by rejection of teleology in the natural philosophy of Descartes, and subsequent fruitful confluence of the mechanical, mathematico-descriptive, and occultist patterns in the physics and cosmology of Isaac Newton.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7618-7400-3
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7618-7403-4
Publisher: Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 508
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Figures No access
3. Tables No access
4. Acknowledgments No access
5. Preface No access
6. Abbreviations of Citations in Notes and Bibliography No access
1. 1. Plato and Aristotle No access
  2. Late Antiquity No access
  3. Islamicate Philosophical Syncretism No access
  4. High Scholasticism and the Universities No access
  5. William of Ockham and the 14th-Century Critique of Human Knowledge No access
2. 1. Development of Astronomy No access
  2. The Teleological-Mechanical Cosmos of Aristotle‌‌ and Its Influence on Medieval Natural Philosophy No access
  3. Astrological Causation and the Occultist Interpretation‌‌ of Heavenly Bodies and Their Influences No access
3. 1. Classical Atomism No access
  2. Aristotelian Conceptions of Materiality and the Teleological Mode No access
  3. Alchemy No access
  4. Conceptions of Motion No access
  5. Projectile Motion No access
  6. Falling Bodies No access
  7. Emergence of a Kinematic Approach to Motion No access
1. 1. Copernicus No access
  2. Responses to Copernicus No access
  3. Kepler No access
2. 1. Galileo and Astronomy No access
  2. Galileo and the Science of Motion No access
  3. The Galilean Approach to Explication of Physical Process No access
  4. Galileo and the Nature of Materiality No access
Epilogue No access Pages 441 - 466
Bibliography No access Pages 467 - 488
Index No access Pages 489 - 506
About the Author No access Pages 507 - 508