The Sleepwalkers (36 page)

Authors: Arthur Koestler

BOOK: The Sleepwalkers

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In
looking
back
at
the
part
of
the
road
travelled
so
far,
we
may
well
wonder
at
the
shortness
of
those
stretches
where
the
progress
of
science
was
guided
by
rational
thought.
There
are
tunnels
on
the
road,
whose
length
in
time
is
measured
in
miles,
alternating
with
stretches
in
full
sunlight
of
no
more
than
a
few
yards.
Up
to
the
sixth
century
B.C.,
the
tunnel
is
filled
with
mythological
figures;
then
for
three
centuries
there
is
a
shrill
light;
then
we
plunge
into
another
tunnel,
filled
with
different
dreams.

CHRONOLOGICAL
TABLE
TO
PART
ONE*

600 B.C.
O rphic Mystery cult
I onian Philosophers
500 “		P ythagorean Brotherhood (c. 530–450)
P hilolaus (5 ^thcent.)
400 “	Herakleides (c. 375–310)	Plato (c. 428–348) Eudoxus and Calippus (4 ^thcent.) A ristotle (384–322)
300 “
Aristarchus (c. 310–230)	A pollonius (250–220)
200 “	END OF GREEK HELIOCENTRIC COSMOLOGY
H ipparchus (c. 125)
0
A.D. 100
Ptolemy (c. 150)
“ 200	[GEOCENTRIC COSMOLOGY BROUGHT TO PERFECTION]
Compilers Pliny the Elder (c. 23–79)
Plutarch (c. 46–120) Theon of Smyrna (2 ^ndcent.)
Macrobius (c. 400)
C halcidius Martianus Capella	(5 ^thcent.)
Simplicius (c. 535) [SOURCES FOR THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES]
^*	Only the main lines of development of cosmological systems are represented.