From: The Travels of John Mandeville, ca. 1360 In that land, ne in many other beyond that, no man may see the Star Transmontane, that is clept the Star of the Sea, that is unmovable and that is toward the north, that we clepe the Lode-star. But men see another star, the contrary to him, that is toward the south, that is clept Antartic. And right as the ship-men take their advice here and govern them by the Lode-star, right so do ship-men beyond those parts by the star of the south, the which star appeareth not to us. And this star that is toward the north, that we clepe the Lode-star, ne appeareth not to them. For which cause men may well perceive, that the land and the sea be of round shape and form; for the part of the firmament sheweth in one country that sheweth not in another country. And men may well prove by experience and subtle compassment of wit, that if a man found passages by ships that would go to search the world, men might go by ship all about the world and above and beneath. And therefore hath it befallen many times of one thing that I have heard counted when I was young, how a worthy man departed some-time from our countries for to go search the world. And so he passed Ind and the isles beyond Ind, where be more than 5000 isles. And so long he went by sea and land, and so environed the world by many seasons, that he found an isle where he heard speak his own language, calling on oxen in the plough, such words as men speak to beasts in his own country whereof he had great marvel, for he knew not how it might be. But I say, that he had gone so long by land and by sea, that he had environed all the earth; that he was come again environing, that is to say, going about, unto his own marches, and if he would have passed further, till he had found his country and his own knowledge.

1. Astrology and Astronomy in the Renaissance

4. From: The Travels of John Mandeville, ca. 1360
In that land, ne in many other beyond that, no man may see the Star
Transmontane, that is clept the Star of the Sea, that is unmovable and that is
toward the north, that we clepe the Lode-star. But men see another star, the
contrary to him, that is toward the south, that is clept Antartic. And right as the
ship-men take their advice here and govern them by the Lode-star, right so do
ship-men beyond those parts by the star of the south, the which star appeareth
not to us. And this star that is toward the north, that we clepe the Lode-star, ne
appeareth not to them. For which cause men may well perceive, that the land
and the sea be of round shape and form; for the part of the firmament sheweth
in one country that sheweth not in another country. And men may well prove by
experience and subtle compassment of wit, that if a man found passages by ships
that would go to search the world, men might go by ship all about the world and
above and beneath.

5. And therefore hath it befallen many times of one thing that I have heard
counted when I was young, how a worthy man departed some-time from our
countries for to go search the world. And so he passed Ind and the isles
beyond Ind, where be more than 5000 isles. And so long he went by sea and
land, and so environed the world by many seasons, that he found an isle
where he heard speak his own language, calling on oxen in the plough, such
words as men speak to beasts in his own country whereof he had great
marvel, for he knew not how it might be. But I say, that he had gone so long
by land and by sea, that he had environed all the earth; that he was come
again environing, that is to say, going about, unto his own marches, and if he
would have passed further, till he had found his country and his own
knowledge.

6. But he turned again from thence, from whence he was come from. And so he
lost much painful labour, as himself said a great while after that he was come
home. For it befell after, that he went into Norway. And there tempest of the
sea took him, and he arrived in an isle. And, when he was in that isle, he knew
well that it was the isle, where he had heard speak his own language before
and the calling of oxen at the plough; and that was a possible thing.

7. Stephen Jay Gould , “The Late Birth of the Flat Earth”. Dinosaur in a
Haystack (1996)
Jeffrey Burton Russell: Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern
Historians (1991).

8. John Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science
(1876)
Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology in Christendom (1896)

9. Ptolemy
~ 100 AD

10. The Ptolemaic model accounted
for the apparent motions of the
planets in a very direct way, by
assuming that each planet moved
on a small sphere or circle, called
an epicycle, that moved on a
larger sphere or circle, called a
deferent. The stars, it was
assumed, moved on a celestial
sphere around the outside of the
planetary spheres.
http://www.polaris.iastate.edu/EveningStar/Unit2/
unit2_sub1.htm

11. Cycles and
epicycles

12. Nicolai Copernicus
(1473-1543)
De Revolutionibus Orbium
Coelestium (On the Revolutions
of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543)
The planets in such a system naturally vary in brightness because they are not always the same distance from the Earth.
The retrograde motion could be explained in terms of geometry and a faster motion for planets with smaller orbits, as
illustrated in the following animation.
Epicycles are still part of the model because Copernicus assumed that the planets moved in perfect circles instead of ellipses.
https://www.pas.rochester.edu/~blackman/ast104/copernican9.html

13. From Tycho Brahe’s De mundi aetherei
recentioribus phaenomenis (1588)
http://copernicus.torun.pl/en/revolution/
reception/3/1/?view=gallery&file=1

14. http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~jeffery/astro/tycho/tychonic_system.html

15. The Emerald Tablet
1) Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
2) That wch is below is like that wch is above & that
wch is above is like yt wch is below to do ye miracles
of one only thing.
3) And as all things have been & arose from one by ye
mediation of one: so all things have their birth from
this one thing by adaptation.
4) The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
5) the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its
nourse.

16. The Emerald Tablet
1) Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
2) That wch is below is like that wch is above & that
wch is above is like yt wch is below to do ye miracles
of one only thing.
3) And as all things have been & arose from one by ye
mediation of one: so all things have their birth from
this one thing by adaptation.
4) The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
5) the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its
nourse.
(translation by Isaac Newton ca. 1680)

17. Monday Montag Lundi Moon
Tuesday Dienstag Mardi Mars (Tyr)
Wednesday Mittwoch Mercredi Mercure (Wodan)
Thursday Donnerstag Jeudi Jupiter (Thor)
Friday Freitag Vendredi Venus (Freya)
Saturday Samstag Samedi Saturn
Sunday Sonntag Dimanche Sun

18. If you do but consider the whole universe as one
united body, and man an epitome of this body, it will
seem strange to none but madmen and fools that the
stars have influence upon the body of man,
considering he, be[ing] an epitome of Creation must
needs have a celestial world within himself.
(Nicholas Culpepper, Pharmacopoeia Londoniensis: or
the London Dispensatory [1654])

19. Choleric Sanguine
Fire Air
Hot and dry Warm and moist
Fiery and quick Jovial
Yellow Bile Blood
Phlegmatic Melancholy
Water Earth
Cold and moist Cold and dry
Heavy Dull
Phlegm Black Bile

20. Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great
Tamburlaine
Tel me, what think you of my sicknes now?
Phisitian
I view'd your urine, and the Hipostasis
Thick and obscure doth make your danger great,
Your vaines are full of accidentall heat,
Whereby the moisture of your blood is dried,
The Humidum and Calor, which some holde
Is not a parcell of the Elements,
But of a substance more divine and pure,
Is almost cleane extinguished and spent,
Which being the cause of life, imports your death.
Besides my Lord, this day is Criticall,
Dangerous to those, whose chrisis is as yours:
Your Artiers which alongst the vaines convey
The lively spirits which the heart ingenders
Are partcht and void of spirit, that the soule
Wanting those Organnons by which it mooves,
Can not indure by argument of art.
Yet if your majesty may escape this day,
No doubt, but you shal soone recover all.

21. The blood motion we may be allowed to call circular, in the same way
as Aristotle says that the air and the rain emulate the circular motion
of the superior bodies.
(William Harvey)

22. "A World in an Eare-Ring" [1653]:
An Eare-ring round may well a Zodiacke bee,
Wherein a Sun goeth round, and we not see.
And Planets seven about that Sun may move,
And Hee stand still, as some wise men would
prove.
And fixed Stars, like twinkling Diamonds, plac'd
About this Eare-ring, which a World is vast. (Margaret
Cavendish)

23. "Of Many Worlds In This World" [1653]:
Just like unto a Nest of Boxes round,
Degrees of sizes within each Boxe are found.
So in this World may many Worlds more be,
Thinner, and lesse, and lesse still by degree;
Although they are not subject to our Sense,
A World may not be bigger than two-pence.
(Cavendish)

24. "On Poetry: A Rhapsody"
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
(Jonathan Swift, ll.337-40)

25. In 1573, Digges tried to measure the parallax of Tycho’s star

26. Earth
Star

27. Sun
Earth Summer
Earth
Winter
Star

28. As Digges was not able to
measure any parallax, the
logical conclusion was
that the new star had to
be outside the lunar
sphere and immensely far
away.
According to doctrine, no
new fixed stars were
possible.
http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~jeffery/astro/aristotle/aristotle_stellar_parallax.html

29. This orb of stars fixed infinitely up extendeth it self in altitude
spherically and therefore immovable; the palace of felicity
garnished with perpetual shining glorious lights innumerable,
far excelling our sun both in quantity and quality; the very
court of celestial angels, devoid of grief and replenished with
perfect endless joy; the habitacle [habitation] of the elect.
Digges went further than Copernicus: he suggested that there was no outer sphere for the fixed stars, but rather that
the universe was infinite.
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/new%20knowledge/copernicus.html
Thomas Digges (1546-1595)
A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most
aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by
Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved (1576).
Added to a revision of his father’s (Leonard Digges)
A Prognostication everlasting

30. Giordano Bruno
The Ash Wednesday Supper (1984)
On the Cause, the Principle and the One (1584)
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1584)

31. I hold that there is an infinite universe, which is the effect of the infinite
Divine power ; for I esteem it to be a thing unworthy of the Divine
goodness and power that, being able to produce another world than
this, and an infinite number of others, it should produce a finite world,
so that I have declared there are infinite individual worlds such as this
earth, which I hold with Pythagoras to be a planet similar to which is the
moon, with other planets and other stars, which are infinite.
(Giordano Bruno, From the documents of his trial 1592)

32. From William Shakespeare: Hamlet
Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia (2.2.114-117)
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

33. My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

34. What is love???

35. From Marsilio Ficino. On the Nature of Love (Commentarium in Convivium Platonis, 1469)
When we say Love, we mean by that term the desire for beauty, for this is the definition of Love among
the philosophers. […]
The doors of the soul seem to be the eyes and the ears, for though these many things are carried into the
soul, and the desires of the soul and its nature clearly shine out through the eyes. A lover spends most of
his time looking at the face of the loved one and listening to his voice. Rarely does his mind withdraw
into itself.
All love begins with sight. But the love of the contemplative man ascends from sight into the mind; that
of the voluptuous man descends from sight into touch, and that of the practical man remains in the form
of sight.
Just as this vapor of blood, which is called spirit, since it is created from the blood, is like blood, so it
sends rays like itself through the eyes as though through glass windows. And as the sun, which is the
heart of the universe, sends out from its orbit its light, and through its light its own strength to lower
things; so the heart of our body, by its own kind of perpetual motion stirring the blood nearest to it, from
it pours spirits throughout the whole body, and through them sparks of light through the various single
parts, but especially through the eyes. Of course the spirit flies out to the highest part of the body, since it
is very light; moreover, its light shines more richly through the eyes (than through the other parts)
because the eyes themselves are for seeing and are above the rest of the parts and the most transparent
and clear of all the parts.

36. From Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
Other causes of Love-Melancholy, Sight, Being from the Face, Eyes, other parts,
and how it pierceth
But the most familiar and usual cause of love is that which comes by sight, which
conveys those admirable rays of beauty and pleasing graces to the heart. Plotinus
derives love from sight, ερως (eros) quasi ορασις (orasis) . Si nescis, oculi sunt in
amore duces, "the eyes are the harbingers of love," and the first step of love is sight,
as Lilius Giraldus proves at large, hist. deor. syntag. 13. they as two sluices let in the
influences of that divine, powerful, soul-ravishing, and captivating beauty, which, as
one saith, "is sharper than any dart or needle, wounds deeper into the heart; and
opens a gap through our eyes to that lovely wound, which pierceth the soul itself"
(Ecclus. 18.) Through it love is kindled like a fire. […]

37. Symptoms or signs of Love Melancholy, in Body, Mind, good, bad, &c. (abbreviated)
Symptoms are either of body or mind; of body, paleness, leanness, dryness, &c.
Avicenna de Ilishi, c. 33. "makes hollow eyes, dryness, symptoms of this disease, to go
smiling to themselves, or acting as if they saw or heard some delectable object." "And
eyes that once rivalled the locks of Phœbus, lose the patrial and paternal lustre." With
groans, griefs, sadness, dullness, want of appetite, &c. A reason of all this, Jason
Pratensis gives, "because of the distraction of the spirits the liver doth not perform his
part, nor turns the aliment into blood as it ought, and for that cause the members are
weak for want of sustenance, they are lean and pine, as the herbs of my garden do this
month of May, for want of rain." The green sickness therefore often happeneth to young
women, a cachexia or an evil habit to men, besides their ordinary sighs, complaints, and
lamentations, which are too frequent. As drops from a still doth Cupid's fire provoke
tears from a true lover's eyes, with many such like passions. When Chariclia was
enamoured of Theagines, as Heliodorus sets her out, "she was half distracted, and spake
she knew not what, sighed to herself, lay much awake, and was lean upon a sudden:"
and when she was besotted on her son-in-law, she had ugly paleness, hollow eyes,
restless thoughts, short wind, &c.

38. From Richard III. 1.2.120-152
GLOUCESTER. Is not the causer of the timeless deaths
Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner?
ANNE. Thou wast the cause and most accurs'd effect.
GLOUCESTER. Your beauty was the cause of that effect-
Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.
ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,
These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.
GLOUCESTER. These eyes could not endure that beauty's wreck;
You should not blemish it if I stood by.
As all the world is cheered by the sun,
So I by that; it is my day, my life.
ANNE. Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life!
GLOUCESTER. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.

39. ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable,
To be reveng'd on him that kill'd my husband.
GLOUCESTER. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband
Did it to help thee to a better husband.
ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth.
GLOUCESTER. He lives that loves thee better than he could.
ANNE. Name him.
GLOUCESTER. Plantagenet.
ANNE. Why, that was he.
GLOUCESTER. The self-same name, but one of better nature.
ANNE. Where is he?
GLOUCESTER. Here. [She spits at him] Why dost thou spit at me?
ANNE. Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake!
GLOUCESTER. Never came poison from so sweet a place.
ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.
GLOUCESTER. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.