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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
2 occurrences of Ancients and Moderns in the Eighteenth Century
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2 occurrences of Ancients and Moderns in the Eighteenth Century
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5. With Newton's system assuring the classical unity
of explanation, there were also minds for whom the
spatial unity of the architecture of the universe re-
mained such a desideratum that they went ahead and
worked at reconstructing the centralized universe of
the ancients.

The desire among these minds for a regular arrange-
ment of the stars on the celestial vault was at the base
of their reconstruction. If from the earth the skies
appear so irregular (a fact which Descartes found
shocking), it was because our vortex could not be the
center of the world; but there should exist a center
from which the celestial vault would appear in a per-
fect harmony. The first astronomical observations on
the displacement of the fixed stars (by E. Halley in
1718) favored the idea of the rotation of the whole
of our galaxy (perhaps around Sirius, which would be
its great sun) and of the entire universe around a central
star. Thus appeared the system of Thomas Wright (An
Original Theory of the Universe,
1750), which despite
its mediocre mathematical value impressed important
thinkers like Kant. In Wright's system there reappeared
the old cult of the Circle and Sphere and the vast
rotation of the whole starry vault, which had been at
a standstill since Copernicus. But the original creation
of this visionary cosmology was the fabulous “central
body,” the only stationary body, balancing by itself the
Universe; the “central body” was not a sun of fire, but
a habitable globe around which the stars appeared
juxtaposed, forming a continuous vault of fire. It was
the “First Mover,” seat of the forces which move the
universe, God's throne, and the “Abode of Recom-
pense.”

The central body and the great vortex appeared
again among serious astronomers at the end of the
eighteenth century; and among imaginative cosmolo-
gists like J. A. Lambert (Kosmologische Briefe, 1761)
and J. E. Bode (Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten
Himmels,
1768), whose influence on the Sturm und
Drang
dreamers was great.

Nevertheless these minds shared the then dominant
yearning for infinite diversity. Wright established it in
both space and time: he envisaged an unlimited plenum
of creations, each with its central body, and conceived
the blessedness of the elect to consist in the contem-
plation of the wonderful variety of the world. Bode
insisted not only on the multiplicity of forms but also
on their perpetually changing variety in which an
inexhaustible creative power was displayed.