Tag: Astrology

“By the end of the Middle Ages, the common opinion in Europe was that celestial bodies were moved by external intelligences, identified with the angels of revelation. The outermost moving sphere, which moved with the daily motion affecting all subordinate spheres, was moved by an unmoved mover, the Prime Mover, who was identified with God. Each of the lower spheres was moved by a subordinate spiritual mover (a replacement for Aristotle’s multiple divine movers), called an intelligence.”

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_sphere>

Quotes from modern-day scientists:

“What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide on how the universe began. This doesn’t prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.”
-Stephen W. Hawking (Der Spiegel, 1989)

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”
-Stephen Jay Gould (Dinosaur in a Haystack)

Pasted from <http://www.nobeliefs.com/great-quotes.htm>

“The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent — slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.”

H. L. Mencken

“To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them to not see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.”
Galileo Galilei, The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies

As a bonus, here’s a quote attributed to Ferdinand Magellan which is falsely attributed. He DIDN’T say this, and it seems out of character anyway:

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.”

NOT by Ferdinand Magellan. Incorrectly attributed to him by Robert Green Ingersoll in his essay “Individuality” (1873)

The Church reacts to the observations of early astronomy (seventeenth century Galileo Inquisition):

“The first proposition, that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture…the second proposition, that the earth is not the center but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and, from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith.” — 1615 Galileo Inquisition pronouncement.

“The opinion of the earth’s motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than the argument to prove that the earth moves.” — Jesuit Father Melchior Inchofer (1631).

“Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles; the earth has no limbs or muscles, therefore it does not move.

It is angels who make Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun, etc., turn around. If the earth revolves, it must have an angel in the centre to set it in motion; but only devils live there; it would therefore be a devil who would impart motion to the earth.

The planets, the sun, the fixed stars, all belong to one species-namely that of stars – they therefore all move or all stand still. It seems, therefore, to be a grievous wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of impurity, among these heavenly bodies, which are pure and divine things.” — Scipio Chiariamonti, associate of Cardinal Barberini.

In the area of Central Europe, including Germany, the Thirty Years War (between 1618 and 1648) was a brutal conflict over Protestant-Catholic religious and political differences. The number who died in that long war, from all manner of consequences, including famine and the plague, numbered in the millions. The historical Faust, whose fictional legend was popular about 1580, but who had died around 1541 was possibly born within Württemberg.

According to Wikipedia:

“So great was the devastation brought about by the war that estimates put the reduction of population in the German states at about 25 to 40 percent. Some regions were affected much more than others. For example, Württemberg lost three-quarters of its population during the war. In the territory of Brandenburg, the losses had amounted to half, while in some areas an estimated two-thirds of the population died. The male population of the German states was reduced by almost half. The population of the Czech lands declined by a third due to war, disease, famine and the expulsion of Protestant Czechs. Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers. Villages were especially easy prey to the marauding armies. Those that survived, like the small village of Drais near Mainz, would take almost a hundred years to recover. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

From Germanhistorydocs:

A Swabian Cobbler-Farmer Survives the Thirty Years War – Hans Heberle (1597-1677):

The Great Comet and the Start of the War (1618 and 1619)

“In 1618 a great comet appeared in the form of great and terrible rod, which was accorded us by and through God because of our sinful lives, which we have richly earned in the past and continue to earn daily. “

Pasted from <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3709>

“On August 25 [1628], between one and two o’clock in the afternoon, my dear wife brought into this world for me my daughter Catherine, her first child, who was baptized that very evening during the preaching service. On that day, the sun rose at about 5:22 in the morning, and the moon stood in the sign of Scorpio.”

Pasted from <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=4404>

German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany’s political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present.

Pasted from <http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/index.cfm>

[An interesting web site, well worth pursuing]

The study of nature, including observations of the sky, though not a higher calling, was important for practical reasons.

“The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_Middle_Ages>”

Portrait of Nicole Oresme: Miniature from Oresme’s Traité de l’espere, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France, fonds français 565, fol. 1r.

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oresme>

“Nicole Oresme c. 1320–1325 – July 11, 1382) was a significant philosopher of the later Middle Ages. He wrote influential works on economics, mathematics, physics, astrology and astronomy, philosophy, and theology; was Bishop of Lisieux, a translator, a counselor of King Charles V of France, and probably one of the most original thinkers of the 14th century.”
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Oresme>