a
A01=Scott L. Montgomery
Almagestum novum
antiquity
archetypal planet
Author_Scott L. Montgomery
Category=PGS
Cyrano de Bergerac
divine forces
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Francis Godwin
Galileo
Giambattista Riccioli
Greeks
heavenly bodies
human imagination
Jan van Eyck
L'autre monde
lunar orb
lunar portrait
Man in the Moone
Michael Van Langren
modern era
modern science
Moon
nature
philosophers
Renaissance
rtists
scientists
significance
Western culture
writers
Product details
- ISBN 9780816519897
- Weight: 415g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jan 2001
- Publisher: University of Arizona Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science. Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon to a new level in human awareness. The effect on human imagination has been cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets, is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time. We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from a ""perfect"" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding changes in verbal and visual expression. Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we know best the Earth itself. And when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.
