1.
Astronomy may be broadly defined as any attempt
at a logical
explanation of celestial motions. For a long
time this science was based
essentially on calculation.
Indeed, the distance of objects at first
confined obser-
vation within certain
limits; the positive data acquired
were limited to the study of positions
and displace-
ments. However, this
descriptive knowledge was ex-
tended naturally
by scientific hypotheses. With the use
of Galileo's telescope (1610)
observation leaped for-
ward as did speculation
about the constitution of
heavenly bodies. But astrophysics really began
only
with spectrum analysis (1859). Despite constant
progress, our
knowledge of astrophysics will probably
remain, even in our time, indirect
and limited; specu-
lation and imagination
will both probably continue to
enjoy more or less an open field.
Imagination—the ability to elicit, forge, and connect
a chain of
images—is necessarily oriented and main-
tained by preferences of taste and sensibility. We shall
here
consider imagination as a comprehensive faculty
which involves the whole of
our psychical life from
the most intellectualized level to the depths of
the
unconscious. Now the field of astronomy makes a pow-
erful appeal to this faculty or power of imagination.
Nothing is more important to man than to have a view
of the universe as a
whole, because all life on earth
depends on cosmic cycles and because the
celestial
world surrounding us seems to exert a compelling
influence
on man's destiny. The idea of a corre-
spondence between Macrocosm and Microcosm
strengthens the bonds
between the mind of man and
the Universe. In the view of philosophers, the
cosmos,
the whole of God's creation, is the very archetype of
any
harmonious construction of the mind and the
pattern of any work of art.
From the time when the
Earth is no longer the fixed center of a closed
world,
the proportions in the mind's picture of the universe
change;
but as the Earth shrinks the importance of the
Universe grows. The idea that man makes of the world,
therefore, affects on all levels that power of imagina-
tion which we have said engages his whole mental life.
