One of the major scientific debates in the seventeenth century was about the nature of the universe. The Ptolemaic model, based on Aristotle’s theories, asserted that the earth was at the center of the universe and that the sun and planets revolved around the earth in concentric circles (See Appendix A). The outermost sphere was the domain of the Prime Mover, whose agency progressively caused motion in all of the inner spheres. This scheme was modified in order to account for certain observed phenomena—retrograde motion (planets appearing to move backwards in the sky when they should consistently move forward) and inconsistent planetary brightness—by placing the sun and other planets in epicycles (orbits around an imaginary point) that revolved within their respective sphere (See Appendix B). Later refinements included epicycles around epicycles in order to accommodate for other, similar aberrant celestial motion. Over time, this conceptualization of the universe gradually became integrated with Christian theology resulting in “the conviction of an order in the universe, sustained by God in the pattern of a Chain of Being whose links formed a graded hierarchy of all things” (Rattansi 202; “The Universe”).
The universe of Paradise Lost often fits this Ptolemaic
model. During Raphael’s recounting of creation he explains that “Now heav’n in
all her glory shone and rolled / Her motions as the great First Mover’s hand /
First wheeled their course” (7:499-501). In many ways, this short passage seems
supersaturated with Ptolemaic ideas: use of the words “rolled” and “wheeled”
both connote circular motion, and using two such terms hints at the epicycles
used to explain observed planetary motion. Additionally, by employing “First Mover”
as an epithet for God, Milton both adheres to the Aristotelian model of the
universe and highlights the confluence of scientific ideas and religious
theology; Milton essentially replaces Aristotle’s religiously ambiguous Prime
Mover with the Christian God.
At odds
with this Ptolemaic, geocentric paradigm for the universe was the Copernican,
or heliocentric, model. By Milton’s time, new technology and new observations
about the universe had brought about the need for a radical redefinition of the
structure of the cosmos. The invention of the telescope allowed the human eye
to see known celestial objects in much greater detail and observe previously
unseen elements of the universe as well. The most prominent figure associated
with the telescope is Galileo Galilei, whom Milton probably met in 1638 and the
only contemporary personage Milton mentions by name in Paradise Lost. While Galileo made many notable discoveries about
the universe, some of his central discoveries chipped away at the legitimacy of
the geocentric model: moons orbiting Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the topography
of the moon, and the occurrence of sunspots. More specifically, if all the
planets orbited the earth, the fact that moons orbited Jupiter implied there
were at least two centers to the universe: the earth and Jupiter; Venus could
not show phases if it orbited the earth along with the sun; and the observation
of imperfections on the moon and sun undermined the classical belief in a
strict dichotomy between the imperfect terrestrial, sublunary, and perfect
celestial, superlunary (Rattansi, Rivers, Danielson).
Milton
engages with the heliocentric model in many places throughout Paradise Lost, particularly in Book
Eight. Raphael poses the question “What if the sun / be center to the world”
and analyzes the implications of that question (8:122-123). He first explains
that earth would “save the sun his labor” by rotating on its own axis and
causing “that swift / Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb… the wheel / of day and night”
(8:133, 133-136). Raphael then mentions the “spots thou seest / As clouds,” a
reference to the imperfections of the moon and sun (8:145-136). He also alludes
to the much larger size of the universe and faster speed of planetary motion
necessary in the Copernican model by referencing “heav’n’s wide circuit” and
“the swiftness of those circles” (8:100, 107).
Milton
incorporates another one of Galileo’s discoveries into Paradise Lost as well. Because Galileo learned that “observed
through the telescope, the milky or cloudy texture of the galaxy could now be
resolved into stars,” the number of stars was increased incomprehensively
compared to the older, Ptolemaic model of the universe (Danielson 217). In
fact, without the aid of a magnifying lens, a person could actually count the
number of stars in the sky, but with the telescope and greater advances in
magnification, counting the stars became practically impossible. Milton alludes
to this in several places: Raphael explains that “Seen in the galaxy, that
Milky Way / Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest / Powdered with stars,”
and describes how the moon “With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, / With
thousand thousand stars that then appeared / Spangling the hemisphere” (7:579-581,
7:382-384).
By
including so many details about the universe, incorporating different
theoretical models, referencing Galileo by name, and dedicating such a large
portion of his poem to contemplating the structure of the cosmos, it is clear
that Milton is engaging in the contemporary scientific debates of his time, and
he may be weighing in on which model is best. Adam wonders “How Nature wise and
frugal could commit / Such disproportions with superfluous hand” by having all
the planets and stars revolving around the “sedentary earth” (8:26-27, 32). His
contemplation of purpose and efficacy reads as a simple, innocent observation,
but it deftly subverts the geocentric model’s insistence on the centrality of
the earth. Later, Raphael takes an interesting tone when describing how God
will be moved to laughter
…at their
quaint opinions wide
Hereafter
when they come to model heav’n
And
calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty
frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save
appearances, how gird the sphere
With
centric and eccentric scribbled o’er
Cycle and
epicycle, orb in orb. (8:78-84)
In a way, Raphael seems to be undermining the notion of
pursuing cosmological knowledge altogether, but the vocabulary he chooses is
heavily Ptolemaic: “mighty frame,” “sphere,” “centric,” “cycle,” “epicycle,”
and “orb.” This would seem to indicate that “their” refers to advocates of the
geocentric system rather than anyone pursuing a greater understanding of the
universe. Additionally, Gordon Teskey’s note on “save appearances” in his
edition of Paradise Lost explains
that it is a “technical term from ancient Greek science to reconcile new
observations with an existing theoretical model,” which again suggests that it
is the methodology of Ptolemaic astronomers trying to force new observed
phenomenon into old, outdated models that causes God to laugh (179).
Paradise
Lost, then, seems to be promoting the concept of a heliocentric universe;
however, while there is certainly a great deal of evidence to support the idea
that Milton was in favor of the heliocentric model, attempting to definitively
label him as an advocate of the Copernican system results in some difficulties.
At one point, Satan looks upon earth and explains that “As God in Heav’n / Is
center yet extends to all, so thou / Cent’ring receiv’st from all those orbs”
(9:107-109). Later, God orders certain changes to be made in the universe after
the Fall, and “The sun / Had first his precept so to move, so shine / As might
affect the earth with cold and heat” (10:651-653). These lines suggest that
rather than tilting the Earth’s axis to allow for seasons, as would be done to
adhere to the heliocentric model, God orders the sun to be moved farther away
from earth to produce the seasons, a clearly Ptolemaic idea. In direct
opposition to this, Milton then states that “Some say He bid his angels turn
askance / The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more / From the sun’s axle”
(10:668-671). Here, barely ten lines after definitively saying God ordered the
sun to be moved, Milton explains that the earth’s axis had been altered to
create the seasons. Prefacing this idea with “some say,” however, might suggest
it is just an unsubstantiated theory, but afterwards he also prefaces the
notion that the “sun / Was bid turn reins from th’ equinoctal road” with “Some
say” (10:671-672).
This equivocation about the
relevance or appropriateness of a particular model of the universe perhaps
reveals a deeper purpose in Paradise Lost.
Rather than weighing in on whether the geocentric or heliocentric model is a
better descriptor of God’s design, Milton is joining the debate from an oblique
angle. While contemporary scientists are busying themselves with observing and
modeling the universe trying to find its true structure, Milton is trying to help
people understand a greater truth:
Whether thus these things or
whether not,
Whether the sun predominant in
heav’n
Rise on the earth or the earth rise
on the sun…
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters
hid.
Leave them to God above. Him serve
and fear!
… Heav’n is for thee too high
To know what passes there. Be lowly
wise:
Think only what concerns thee and
thy being. (8:159-161,
167-168,173-175)
This is what differentiates Adam from Galileo. Where Adam
discovers a way to create fire with a lens, ensuring his survival in the
unknown, inhospitable world outside the garden of Eden, Galileo stuffs lenses
into tubes and squints up into the night sky trying to “calculate the stars”
(8:80). While Adam may be “doubtfully answered” by Raphael as far as knowledge
is concerned (177), he realizes that he has been
…taught to live
The easiest way nor with perplexing
thoughts
To interrupt the sweet life from
which
God hath bid dwell far off all
anxious cares
And not molest us, unless we
ourselves
Seek them with wand’ring thoughts
and notions vain. (8:182-187)
Despite
this dictum to “Think only what concerns thee and thy being,” Milton is
certainly not advocating a complete abandonment of learning or seeking knowledge
of the cosmos. Adam and Eve are both invested with a capacity for learning and
reasoning, “growth, sense, reason: all summed up in Man,” which allows them to
contemplate things beyond their immediate experience (9:113), and Milton
continually depicts Adam and Eve using reason and inquiring about things
outside of their day-to-day routine. While some of his ideas may seem a bit
silly to readers, Adam’s reasoning leads him to create hypotheses and then affirm
them by speaking with angels or observing nature. For example, Adam wonders
about the purpose of the rainbow shown to him in a vision of the future:
But say,
what mean those colored streaks in heav’n
Distended
as the brow of God appeased,
Or serve
they as flow’ry verge to bind
The fluid
skirts of that same wat’ry cloud
Lest it
again dissolve and show’r the Earth? (11:879-883)
It is not directly pertinent to his current situation, but Adam
is curious about something, in this case the image of the rainbow, and employing
a rudimentary form of the scientific method to discover its purpose. This small
moment in Paradise Lost illuminates an
important facet of Milton’s view of pursuing knowledge: attributing purpose to
observations. Adam assumes that everything, including the rainbow, works for a
purpose, and Michael tells him how “dexterously thou aim’st” (11:884). Adam is
not chided for pursuing knowledge beyond what is immediately important to his
existence, and in fact, Michael appears to encourage his theorizing because it
implies there is a purpose for God’s works in nature.
In the same way, Milton sets out
from the beginning of his poem to “justify the ways of God to men” (1:26). While
the word “justify” is usually taken to mean “To make good (an argument,
statement, or opinion); to confirm or support by attestation or evidence,” in
Milton’s time the word could have also meant “To make exact; to fit or arrange
exactly,” which corresponds to the word’s Latin origin, justificare, “to act justly towards, do justice to” (OED). While it
seems clear that Milton is attempting to justify the ways of God to men, prove
that God’s ways are righteous, he also seems to be attempting to do justice to
God’s works, describe them as exactly as possible, by providing such an
elaborate and detailed discussion of the cosmos from different perspectives.
Both meanings of “justify” run together in Milton’s description of the universe
because he is not just describing things – he is ascribing purpose to the
structure of the cosmos.
One of Michael’s final exhortations
to Adam and Eve before they leave the garden sums up Milton’s perspective on
the relationship between purpose and knowledge:
This having learned thou hast
attained the sum
Of wisdom. Hope no higher, though
all the stars
Thou knew’st by name and all th’
ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all
nature’s works…
…Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable,
add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance,
add love…
…Then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise but shalt
possess
A paradise within thee, happier
far… (12:575-578, 581-583, 585-587)
These lines do not condemn knowing “all the stars… by name”
or “All secrets of the deep, all nature’s works,” but they do imply that there
is a responsibility to go beyond just knowing something and adding “Deeds to
the knowledge answerable.” Any knowledge gained should be applied to life and
reaffirm God’s purpose for creation. What if everything is faster and larger
than the Ptolemaic system imagined? “The swiftness of those circles attribute, /
Though numberless, to His omnipotence” (8:107-108),
And for the
heav’n’s wide circuit: let it speak
The Maker’s
high magnificence who built
So spacious
and His line stretched out so far
That many
may know he dwells not in his own,
An edifice
too large for him to fill,
Lodged in a
small partition and the rest
Ordained
for uses to his Lord best known. (8:100-106)
Whether the universe is structured one way or the other, the
fundamental principle is that God organized and created the universe with a
purpose, and every new piece of knowledge gained should be employed to reveal
that. In a geocentric cosmos, everything serves to aid man: “not to earth are
those bright luminaries / Officious but to thee earth’s habitant” (8:98-99),
and in a heliocentric universe, everything exists to show man humility: man
lives in “An edifice too large for him to fill, / Lodged in a small partition.”
In light of Milton’s aim to
“justify” the works of God and his preoccupation with the conflicting views of
the cosmos, it is tempting to see Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden as a
metaphor for the changing cosmological views in Milton’s time. Where Adam and
Eve lived in the small, perfectly stable, theologically unambiguous garden and
were expelled into a much larger, unknown world because of the Fall, so earth
resided in the small, perfectly stable, theologically unambiguous geocentric
universe and was thrust into a much larger, unknown heliocentric cosmos by new
scientific discoveries. It is no small wonder, then, that the forbidden fruit
is called the “Mother of science” and that one of Eve’s first thoughts after
eating the fruit and gaining more knowledge is that “Heav’n is high, / High and
remote to see from thence distinct / Each thing on Earth” (9:680, 811-813). In
the Copernican universe, informed by new scientific knowledge and orders of
magnitude larger than Ptolemy’s, the “First Mover” is pushed further and further
away until he cannot see man at all, and it is a short logical step to infer
that more discoveries will eventually push God out of the universe altogether.
“Man’s first disobedience,” then,
is perhaps not simply an aspiration for greater knowledge, but an aspiration for
knowledge forgetful of purpose. Eating the fruit is an act of reckless forgetfulness,
a forgetting of the deliberate design of all things, a forgetting of the “First
Mover” that “first wheeled” the course of the cosmos. When every new discovery
should be an affirmation of God’s omnipotence and creativity, Milton instead
depicts mankind slowly removing God’s presence from everything. First Eve
imagines that God is so far away he will not see her eating the forbidden fruit.
Later, Adam expresses anxiety about not being able to actually see God after he
is expelled from Paradise: “This most afflicts me: that departing hence / As
from His face I shall be hid, deprived / His blessed countenance” (11:315-317).
Finally,
Some natural tears they dropped but
wiped them soon.
The world was all before them,
where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence
their guide.
They hand in hand with wand’ring
steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary
way. (12:645-649)
Providence may be their guide, but they are left “solitary”
in an enormous world, traveling “with wand’ring steps and slow,” unsure of
their direction and purpose, banished from the presence of their creator, just
as Milton sees the scientists of his day unnecessarily burdened by “anxious
cares” with “wand’ring thoughts and notions vain” about the structure of a
universe more and more bereft of God’s presence (8:185, 187). For Milton, the
way science was pushing God further and further out of the context of people’s
day-to-day experience may have seemed ill-advised or even dangerous. And yet
even today, while his religious dogma may feel heavy-handed for modern readers,
there is something deeply compelling and valuable in Milton’s idea that people
should make “deeds,” whether spiritual or secular, “to thy knowledge
answerable.”
Appendix A: A Simplified Model of the Ptolemaic Universe [Back to text]
Appendix B: A Visual Representation of Epicycles [Back to text]
Works Cited
Danielson,
Dennis. “Astronomy.” Milton in Context.
Ed. Stephen Dobranski. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 213-225.
Print.
“justify, v.” The
Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online. Web. 14 November 2010.
<http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.gvsu.edu/cgi/entry/50124898?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=justify&first=1&max_to_show=10>.
Kramer, Jack.
“Oldest Optical Device? The Nimrud Lens.” NightTimes.
September 2002. Lake County
Astronomical Society. 12 November 2010. Web. 13 November 2010. <http://www.lcas-astronomy.org/Articles/nimrud.htm>.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. A Norton Critical
Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. 1-303.
Print.
Rattansi, P.M.
“The Scientific Background.” The Age of
Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century Literature. Eds. C.A. Patrides
and Raymond B. Waddington. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1980.
197-240. Print.
Rivers, Isabel.
“Cosmology.” Classical and Christian
Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Students’ Guide. London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1981. 73-92. Print.
“The Universe of
Aristotle and Ptolemy.” University of Tennessee Department of Physics &
Astronomy. Web. 13 November 2010. <http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/
retrograde/aristotle.html>.
Works Consulted
Martin, Catherine
Gimelli. “‘What If the Sun Be Centre to the World?’: Milton’s Epistemology,
Cosmology, and Paradise of Fools Reconsidered.” Modern Philology 99.2 (2001).
231-265. Print
Smith, Nigel.
“Paradise Lost and Heresy.” The Oxford
Handbook of Milton. Ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009. 510-524. Print.
Kerrigan,
William. “Milton’s Place in Intellectual History.” The Cambridge Companion to Milton. 2nd ed. Ed. Dennis
Danielson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 253-267. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment