Ancient Cosmology (in four movements)

 

     Conducting the universe was simple back then, when fancy held its own against fact. It was self-evident that all matter combined four elements, and that these interacted to produce Nature’s symphony:

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I. Prelude

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Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. There you have it. All things had their positions on the scales of hot-to-cold and dry-to-wet, defined by their affinities to these four. Empedocles told us this in 450 B.C. But this was just the opening gambit.

II. Adagio

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     Hippocrates then proclaimed that human health was itself a reflection of these elements, defined by four humors, or fluids: Blood (for Air), Yellow bile (Fire), Black bile (Earth), and Phlegm (Water). These are seasonally aligned, he told us. Air, warm and moist, harkens the spring, fresh with growth. Fire is hot and dry, borne by the heat of summer. Earth, cold and dry, represents morose autumn, and, finally, we find Water (cold and wet) ushering the doldrums of winter.

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III. Scherzo

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     And now it blossoms with human meaning: The Greek physician, Galen, saw in this neat package of terrestrial existence the human life cycle, and our dispositions to boot. In the spring-summer-autumn-winter sequence, we thus have infancy-youth-adulthood-old age! And with it comes temperament: hopeful infancy, hotheaded youth, sullen adulthood, and stoic maturity.

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IV. Finale

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     We now add a cosmic finish to our celestial symphony. Since what happens in the heavens dictates human destiny, the Greeks were driven to attach the zodiac to this Earthbound treatise. After all, the elements, the temperaments, and the humoral balance in each of us emanate from our celestial status at birth, does it not? The gods decree it.

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     Thus, we find that Air, with its confident temperament, affiliates most with a Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius; Fire, passionately hot and dry, associates best with a Leo, Aries, and Sagittarius; if you are a Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn, you are more likely to have a melancholic temperament and be drawn to earth. And he who is a Cancer, Pisces, or Scorpio is prone to be unflappable, in the cold and watery winter of our discontent.

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This was Greek reality: The “music of the spheres” so-named by Pythagoras. A cosmology that is compact, integrated to contain everything, constrained by a meticulous organization, and symbolically orchestrated.

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     But delightfully wrong.

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     This is the elegance of the ancient Greeks: their sophistry is so sophisticated, their catastrophes so classy, their bungles so polished. What a prelude to science!

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Ron Wetherington