1.
Flammarion engraving
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The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarions 1888 book Latmosphère, météorologie populaire. The engraving has often, but erroneously, been referred to as a woodcut, the caption that accompanies the engraving in Flammarions book reads, A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch. In 1957, astronomer Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance, therefore, it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image, though the evidence for this remains circumstantial. Like most other illustrations in Flammarions books, the engraving carries no attribution, the decorative border surrounding the engraving is distinctly non-medieval and it was only by cropping it that the confusion about the historical origins of the image became possible. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid substance, and so recently as Copernicus. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets, the correspondence between the text and the illustration is so close that one would appear to be based on the other. Had Flammarion known of the engraving in 1872, it seems unlikely that he would have left it out of that years edition, the more probable conclusion therefore is that Flammarion commissioned the engraving specifically to illustrate this particular text, though this has not been ascertained conclusively. The idea of the contact of a sky with the earth is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarions earlier works. In his Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels, he cites a legend of a Christian saint, Macarius the Roman and this legend includes the story of three monks who wished to discover the point where the sky and the earth touch. Such is the notion of the universe, it is always the terrestrial valley crowned by the canopy of the heavens. In the legend of St. Macarius, the monks do not in fact find the place where earth, in Les mondes imaginaires Flammarion recounts another story, This fact reminds us of the tale which Le Vayer recounts in his Letters. Flammarion also mentioned the story, in nearly the same words, in his Histoire du Ciel, I have in my library, interrupted the deputy. The Letters referred to are a series of essays by François de La Mothe Le Vayer. Le Vayer does not specify who this anchorite was, nor does he provide further details about the story or its sources, the combination of the story of St. Macarius with Le Vayers remarks seems to be due to Flammarion himself. It also appears in his Les terres du ciel, With respect to the bounds, the Flammarion engraving appeared in C. G. Jungs Flying Saucers, A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. The first color version to be published was made by Roberta Weir and that color image spawned most of the modern variations that have followed since. Donovans 1973 LP, Cosmic Wheels, used an extended black, the image also appeared in The Compleat Astrologer by Derek and Julia Parker in 1971. The Flammarion engraving appeared on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstins bestselling history of science The Discoverers, other books devoted to science that used it as an illustration include The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Vollmann
2.
Universe
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The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the size of the entire Universe is unknown. The earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. In developing the law of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton built upon Copernicuss work as well as observations by Tycho Brahe. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy and it is assumed that galaxies are distributed uniformly and the same in all directions, meaning that the Universe has neither an edge nor a center. Discoveries in the early 20th century have suggested that the Universe had a beginning, the majority of mass in the Universe appears to exist in an unknown form called dark matter. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the Universe, under this theory, space and time emerged together 13. 799±0.021 billion years ago with a fixed amount of energy and matter that has become less dense as the Universe has expanded. After the initial expansion, the Universe cooled, allowing the first subatomic particles to form, giant clouds later merged through gravity to form galaxies, stars, and everything else seen today. Some physicists have suggested various multiverse hypotheses, in which the Universe might be one among many universes that likewise exist, the Universe can be defined as everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. According to our current understanding, the Universe consists of spacetime, forms of energy, the Universe encompasses all of life, all of history, and some philosophers and scientists suggest that it even encompasses ideas such as mathematics and logic. The word universe derives from the Old French word univers, which in turn derives from the Latin word universum, the Latin word was used by Cicero and later Latin authors in many of the same senses as the modern English word is used. Another synonym was ὁ κόσμος ho kósmos, synonyms are also found in Latin authors and survive in modern languages, e. g. the German words Das All, Weltall, and Natur for Universe. The same synonyms are found in English, such as everything, the cosmos, the world, the prevailing model for the evolution of the Universe is the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang model states that the earliest state of the Universe was extremely hot and dense, the model is based on general relativity and on simplifying assumptions such as homogeneity and isotropy of space. The Big Bang model accounts for such as the correlation of distance and redshift of galaxies, the ratio of the number of hydrogen to helium atoms. The initial hot, dense state is called the Planck epoch, after the Planck epoch and inflation came the quark, hadron, and lepton epochs. Together, these epochs encompassed less than 10 seconds of time following the Big Bang, the observed abundance of the elements can be explained by combining the overall expansion of space with nuclear and atomic physics. As the Universe expands, the density of electromagnetic radiation decreases more quickly than does that of matter because the energy of a photon decreases with its wavelength
3.
Chaos (cosmogony)
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Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, or to the initial gap created by the original separation of heaven and earth. Greek χάος means emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss, from the verb χαίνω, gape, be open, etc. from Proto-Indo-European *ǵheh2n, cognate to Old English geanian, to gape. It may also mean space, the expanse of air, pherecydes of Syros interpretes chaos as water, like something formless which can be differentiated. Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony, Hesiods chaos has been interpreted as a moving, formless mass from which the cosmos and the gods originated. In Hesiods opinion the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate, and it represents disorder, Chaos has been linked with the term tohu wa-bohu of Genesis 1,2. The term may refer to a state of non-being prior to creation or to a formless state, in the Book of Genesis, the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters, and the earliest state of the universe is like a watery chaos. The Septuagint makes no use of χάος in the context of creation, instead using the term for גיא, chasm, cleft, in Micah 1,6, a parallel can be found in the Genesis. In the beginning God creates the earth and the sky, the earth is formless and void, and later God divides the waters under the firmament from the waters over the firmament, and calls the firmament heaven. In both cases, chaos referring to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmos in potentia and this model of a primordial state of matter has been opposed by the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited a creation ex nihilo by an omnipotent God. In modern biblical studies, the chaos is commonly used in the context of the Torah. Parallels between the Hebrew Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish were established by Hermann Gunkel in 1910, besides Genesis, other books of the Old Testament, especially a number of Psalms, some passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Book of Job are relevant. Use of chaos in the sense of complete disorder or confusion first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English. The motif of Chaoskampf is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon. The same term has also extended to parallel concepts in the religions of the Ancient Near East, such as the abstract conflict of ideas in the Egyptian duality of Maat. Early work by German academics such as Gunkel and Bousset in comparative mythology popularized translating the mythological sea serpent as a dragon. Indo-European examples of this mythic trope include Thor vs. Jörmungandr, Tarhunt vs. Illuyanka, Indra vs. Vritra, Fereydun vs. Aži Dahāka, and Zeus vs. Typhon among others. In the Theogony of Hesiod, Chaos is a divine primordial condition, which is the origin of the gods and it seems that in Hesiods opinion, the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate, and it may represent infinite space, or formless matter. The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the conception of immortality
4.
Cosmology
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Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blounts Glossographia, religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology. Physical cosmology is studied by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time. Because of this scope with philosophy, theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions, and may depend upon assumptions that can not be tested. Cosmology differs from astronomy in that the former is concerned with the Universe as a whole while the latter deals with individual celestial objects. Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as a science because when we look out in space. Physics and astrophysics have played a role in shaping the understanding of the universe through scientific observation. Physical cosmology was shaped through both mathematics and observation in an analysis of the whole universe, cosmogony studies the origin of the Universe, and cosmography maps the features of the Universe. In Diderots Encyclopédie, cosmology is broken down into uranology, aerology, geology, metaphysical cosmology has also been described as the placing of man in the universe in relationship to all other entities. Physical cosmology is the branch of physics and astrophysics that deals with the study of the physical origins and it also includes the study of the nature of the Universe on a large scale. In its earliest form, it was what is now known as celestial mechanics, greek philosophers Aristarchus of Samos, Aristotle, and Ptolemy proposed different cosmological theories. The geocentric Ptolemaic system was the theory until the 16th century when Nicolaus Copernicus. This is one of the most famous examples of epistemological rupture in physical cosmology, when Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica in 1687, he finally figured out how the heavens moved. A fundamental difference between Newtons cosmology and those preceding it was the Copernican principle—that the bodies on earth obey the same laws as all the celestial bodies. This was a crucial advance in physical cosmology. Physicists began changing the assumption that the Universe was static and unchanging, in 1922 Alexander Friedmann introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter. In parallel to this approach to cosmology, one long-standing debate about the structure of the cosmos was coming to a climax. This difference of ideas came to a climax with the organization of the Great Debate on 26 April 1920 at the meeting of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D. C
5.
Philosopher
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A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theology or science. The term philosopher comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος meaning lover of wisdom, the coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. Typically, these brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers. The separation of philosophy and science from theology began in Greece during the 6th century BC, thales, an astronomer and mathematician, was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. While Pythagoras coined the word, the first known elaboration on the topic was conducted by Plato, in his Symposium, he concludes that Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher is one who seeks wisdom, if he attains wisdom, therefore, the philosopher in antiquity was one who lives in the constant pursuit of wisdom, and living in accordance to that wisdom. Disagreements arose as to what living philosophically entailed and these disagreements gave rise to different Hellenistic schools of philosophy. In consequence, the ancient philosopher thought in a tradition, as the ancient world became schism by philosophical debate, the competition lay in living in manner that would transform his whole way of living in the world. Philosophy is a discipline which can easily carry away the individual in analyzing the universe. The second is the change through the Medieval era. With the rise of Christianity, the way of life was adopted by its theology. Thus, philosophy was divided between a way of life and the conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials to justify that way of life, philosophy was then the servant to theology. The third is the sociological need with the development of the university, the modern university requires professionals to teach. Maintaining itself requires teaching future professionals to replace the current faculty, therefore, the discipline degrades into a technical language reserved for specialists, completely eschewing its original conception as a way of life. In the fourth century, the word began to designate a man or woman who led a monastic life. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes how his sister Macrina persuaded their mother to forsake the distractions of life for a life of philosophy. Later during the Middle Ages, persons who engaged with alchemy was called a philosopher - thus, many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, with the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent
6.
Pythagoras
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Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and the putative founder of the movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written centuries after he lived. He was born on the island of Samos, and travelled, visiting Egypt and Greece, around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, in Magna Graecia, and there established some kind of school or guild. In 520 BC, he returned to Samos, Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religion in the late 6th century BC. He is often revered as a mathematician and scientist and is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues, some accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and that numbers were important. It was said that he was the first man to himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato. Burkert states that Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus are the most important accounts, Aristotle had written a separate work On the Pythagoreans, which is no longer extant. However, the Protrepticus possibly contains parts of On the Pythagoreans and his disciples Dicaearchus, Aristoxenus, and Heraclides Ponticus had written on the same subject. These writers, late as they are, were among the best sources from whom Porphyry and Iamblichus drew, while adding some legendary accounts. Herodotus, Isocrates, and other writers agree that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus and born on the Greek island of Samos. His father is said to have been a gem-engraver or a wealthy merchant, a late source gives his mothers name as Pythais. As to the date of his birth, Aristoxenus stated that Pythagoras left Samos in the reign of Polycrates, at the age of 40, around 530 BC he arrived in the Greek colony of Croton in what was then Magna Graecia. There he founded his own school the members of which he engaged to a disciplined. He furthermore aquired some political influence, on Greeks and non-Greeks of the region, following a conflict with the neighbouring colony of Sybaris, internal discord drove most of the Pythagoreans out of Croton. Pythagoras left the city before the outbreak of civil unrest and moved to Metapontum, after his death, his house was transformed into a sanctuary of Demeter, out of veneration for the philosopher, by the local population. In ancient sources there was disagreement and inconsistency about the late life of Pythagoras. His tomb was shown at Metapontum in the time of Cicero, according to Walter Burkert, Most obvious is the contradiction between Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, regarding the catastrophe that overwhelmed the Pythagorean society
7.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
