Cometary theories continued in three different traditions after Aristotle. One tradition, which followed Aristotle and was widely accepted, continued in the Islamic world and then transferred into pre-modern Europe. The second tradition, which was highly developed by the second century A.D., followed an astrological trend and lasted much longer than the first tradition. Both believers in the celestial and meteorological origins of comets were involved in this tradition. The third one, developed by Seneca (ca. 63 A.D.), was the continuation of those theories which assumed comets to be celestial objects. We will discuss Seneca first, and then will focus on the continuation of Aristotle’s cometary theory in the Islamic world and early modern Europe. The astrological tradition is outside the interests of this study.
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References
Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, trans. Thomas H. Corcoran, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971–1972), II: p. 231.
Ibid., II: 273–275.
Ibid., II: p. 275. I have replaced Corocran’s anachronistic ‘orbit’ with the more accurate ‘circle’.
For a survey of Greek and Islamic commentaries on Aristotle’s Meteorology see Lettinck, Aristotle’s Meteorology, pp. vii–ix, 1–31; pages 39–96 contain a detailed account of the commentators’ interpretations of the structure of the atmosphere and phenomena in the upper atmosphere. Also see Schoonheim’s introduction in Pieter L. Schoonheim, Aristotle’s Meteorology in the Arabico-Latin Tradition: A Critical Edition of the Texts, with Introduction and Indices (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
Lettinck, Aristotle’s Meteorology, pp. 72–73.
Ibid., pp. 6–7, 71–74.
Although a majority of Muslim scholars criticized Aristotle’s theory of the Milky Way and accepted the phenomenon as celestial, almost all of them believed that the comets were sub-lunar phenomena. Criticism of Aristotle and Ptolemy, which became a tradition in the Islamic world since Muslims first acquaintance with Greek science, concentrated mainly on those concepts that either intrinsically had problems or were subject to change in the light of new observations and measurements. As the best example for the first group one may refer to Muslim astronomers’ attempts to introduce a new configuration of the spheres for the planets, and for the second group, one may point to debates on the origin of the Milky Way. Many Muslim astronomers and philosophers placed the Milky Way in the celestial region based on the fact that it does not show a parallax. So far, I have not seen any Islamic reference mentioning particular observations designed to measure the parallax of Milky Way or a comet. However, emphasis on the celestial origin of the Milky Way due to lack of parallax is an indication of their attempts to measure it.
In the second half of the twelfth century, Gerard of Cremona translated Books I–III of Aristotle’s Meteorology from Arabic into Latin. Other translations from Greek, as well as translations of the works of the Arab commentators and philosophers, such as Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sīnā, continued criticisms on Aristotle’s meteorological ideas in pre-modern Europe. See Lettinck, Aristotle’s Meteorology, pp. 1–17.
Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning (New York: Dover Publications, 1963), p. 39.
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, al-Tafhīm li-Awāil Sinā’t al-Tanjīm (The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology), trans. Ramsay Wright (London: 1934), p. 69. Aristotle also states that some stars have a tail (cit. n. 33), however, the Islamic astronomers did not relate them to comets. For example, Bīrūnī in his discussion of the number of the fixed stars, refers to those five cloudy stars after giving the number of ‘regular’ fixed stars, and says that “with them [cloudy stars] the number of stars registered is one thousand and twenty-two in all”. (al-Tafhīm, p. 69). Ptolemy’s catalogue contains 1, 028 fixed stars. There is inconsistency between Ptolemy and Bīrūnī in sorting and counting of the stars. See al-Tafhīm, p. 68.
Lettinck, Aristotle’s Meteorology, pp. 81.
Hossein Ma’soumi Hamadani, “La Voie Lactee: Ibn Al-Haytam et Ibn Rušd”, in Proceedings of the Cordoba Colloquium on Ibn Rushd, forthcoming.
al-Bīrūnī’s, al-Tafhīm, p. 87. Wright’s translation of the part that al-Bīrūnī talks about Aristotle’s idea is ambiguous: “it [the Milky Way] is formed by an enormous assemblage of stars screened by smoky vapours in front of them”. But, al-Bīrūnī states that the Milky Way is formed in the atmosphere from fiery exhalation (bukhār dukānī) in front of or opposite to a populated assemblage of stars.
From the meteorological phenomena, only the Milky Way has mentioned in the Almagest without any reference to its origin or any explanation about its nature or location. Ptolemy just defines the boundaries of the Milky Way among the fixed stars. See Ptolemy, Almagest, trans. G. J. Toomer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 400–404.
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. F. E. Robins (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 193, 217.
Aristotle, Meteorology, 344b 20–30.
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, pp. 193–194.
It should be mentioned that in Aristotle’s meteorology, wind is not moving ‘air’, it is moving ‘dry exhalation’. See Aristotle, Meteorology, I, 13 and II, 4.
Two major figures in the development of astrology before Ptolemy are Seneca and Pliny the Elder (23–79 A.D.). Pliny did not have a specific theory of comets and mostly followed Aristotle. He described nine different types of comets and used the color, orientation of tail and location of the comet as criteria to predict natural or civil disasters. He explained these ideas in section 22 and 23 of book II of his Natural History. See Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz, 10 vols. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969–1986). For Pliny’s cometary prognostication see: Schechner Genuth, Comets, Popular Culture, pp. 20–26, and Donald K. Yeomans, Comets, pp. 10–14.
The Almagest was translated into Arabic several times in the ninth century. At the same time, Muslim astronomers had access to some Persian and Indian astronomical sources which influenced Islamic astronomy, especially in mathematical aspects. See F. Jamil Ragep, “Arabic/Islamic Astronomy”, in J. Lankford, ed., History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 17–21.
For a recent reference on the Zījes see: David A. King, J. Samsó and B. R. Goldstein, “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900): an Interim Report”, Suhayl, 2 (2001), 12–105. For a comprehensive discussion see E.S. Kennedy, “A survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 42:2 (1956), 123–177.
W. Hartner, “al- Kayd”, The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., 10 vols. to date (Leiden: 1960 to present), vol. IV, pp. 809–811.
Ibid., p. 810.
E. S. Kennedy, “Comets in Islamic Astronomy and Astrology”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 16 (1956), 44–51.
L. Thorndike, “Albumasar in Sadan”, Isis 45 (1954), p. 23. Albumasar (Abū Ma’shar Ja’far ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Umar al-Balkhī), died in 886, was one of the most eminent figures in Islamic astrology. Most of his works were translated into Latin from the twelfth century and some of them printed in incunabula. The treatise discussed here, which was published by Thorndike using two manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was not printed in Europe. See Thorndike, op. cit., p. 22.
For the probable influence of Abū Ma’shar on Tycho Brahe see W. Hartner, “Tycho Brahe et Albumasar”, La science au seizième siècle (Paris, 1960), pp. 137–150. Westman discussed the influence of Abū Ma’shar on Mästlin and Brahe in: Robert S. Westman, “The Comet and the Cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin and the Copernicus Hypothesis”, Studia Copernicana 5 (1972), 20.
Kennedy, “Comets in Islamic Astronomy”, p. 51. The tradition, amazingly, continued even until the sixteenth century.
Hartner, “al- Kayd”, p. 809.
Ptolemy, Almagest, trans. and annotated by G. J. Toomer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 44–45.
F. J. Ragep, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī’s Memoir on Astronomy, 2 vols. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 383–385; idem, “Tūsī and Copernicus: The Earth’s Motion in Context”, in Mohammad Abattouy, Jurgen Renn, Paul Weinig, eds., Transmission as Transformation. Special Issue. Science in Context, 14 (2001), 145–163.
Ghiyāth al-Dīn ibn Humām al-Dīn al- Husainī, Tārikh Habīb al-Siyar, 4 vols. (Tehran: Khayyām Publications, 1974), vol. 4, p. 55.
David Cook, “A Survey of Muslim Material on Comets and Meteors”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 30 (1999), 131–160.
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (ed.), Osmanli Astronomi Literatürü Tarihi (History of Astronomy Literature During the Ottoman Period), 2 vols. (Istanbul: 1997), vol. 1, p. CIX. The number of the cometary writings is not in the statistics worked out by the editors (pp. XCIX–CXII). With a careful survey of the “Index of the Titles in Arabic Characters” (vol. 2, pp. 1076–1111), I found only two titles on comets among all titles written in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Obviously, comets were discussed within astrological or history texts, but there have been quite a small number of treatises totally devoted to comets.
Umberto Dall’Olmo, “Latin Terminology Relating to Aurorae, Comets, Meteors and Novae”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 11 (1980), 10–27.
A comet is called Kawkab dū du’āba, dū danab and mudannab in Arabic, setāre-ye gisūdār and setāre-ye donbāleh dār in Persian, and Kuyruklu yildiz in Turkish. In Arabic and Persian literature, there are also a few rarely used names as fāris, ‘usīy, and wardī to denote a comet with a tail like horse mane, a comet with a straight tail, and a comet like rose, respectively. See Ali Akbar Dehkhoda, Loghatnāmeh [Dictionary], 30 vols. (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1964–1981).
A Persian poet named ‘Alā al-Dīn Mansour Shirāzī illustrated the whole story in a long poem written in 1581. He explains the type of instruments and gives information about the number of Taqī al-Din’s assistants and their observations. In one part he describes the comet under the title of ‘Appearance of a Fiery Stellar Body’. The following is Sayili’s translation of the poem. See Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1988), pp. 289–292. A still more remarkable thing is that through the ignition of vapor, And as an occurrence pertaining to the fiery phenomena of the high regions, A strong flame, one of those stellar bodies referred to as the seven sinister objects* Which is quick in vengence and is called “the one with the forelock”, Like a turban sash over the Ursa Minor stars, It soared like the sun for many nights. Through it the night of the Moslems became blessed And its light was world-pervading like that of the full-moon. In the apogee of the firmament it remained for forty days, And sent a gush of light from the east to the west. As its appearance was in the house of Sagittarius, Its arrow promptly fell upon the enemies of the Religion At the end its longitude and latitude were in Aquarius, And its descent and disappearance coincided with that watery sign. As its tail extended in the direction of the east.… *refers to the types of al-kaid ‘Alā al-Dīn Mansour’s description of the comet of 1577 and several other evidence indicate that, despite extensive contact between Turks and Europeans, Turkish scholars were not aware of the antisolarity of comet’s tail forty years after its discovery.
C. Doris Hellman, “The Role of Measurement in the Downfall of a System: Some Examples from Sixteenth Century Comet and Nova Observations”, Vistas in Astronomy, 11 (1967) 43–52, and Jervis, Cometary Theory, pp. 29–31.
Based on its design, a torquetum can make measurements in the three astronomical coordinates, horizontal (alt-azimuthal), equatorial, and ecliptic.
Ibid., pp. 30–31.
Ibid., pp. 31–32.
Cook, “Muslim Material”, pp. 148, 149–150.
Peter Dear, Revolutionizing the Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 25.
Jervis, Cometary Theory, pp. 43–69; Hellman, “The Role of Measurement”, p. 44.
Jervis, Cometary Theory, pp. 86–92. It was Levi Ben Gerson (1288–1344) who, for the first time, worked out the theoretical basis for determination of the distance of a comet by parallax. See Bernard R. Goldstein, Astronomy of Levi Ben Gerson (New York: Springer Verlag, 1985), pp. 179–181.
There are trigonometric formulas to perform conversion between all three sets of coordinates. However, in astronomical tables there were tables that correlated degrees on the ecliptic to the correspondent point on the celestial equator.
Jervis, Cometary Theory, pp. 95–114.
Ibid., pp. 117–120.
For the optical theory of comets see: Peter Barker, “The Optical Theory of Comets from Apian to Kepler”, Physis, 30 (1993), 1–25.
Ibid., pp. 11–13.
Jervis, Cometary Theory, p. 122.
Hellman, “The Role of Measurement”, p. 45.
Allan Chapman, “The Accuracy of Angular Measuring Instruments Used in Astronomy Between 1500 and 1850”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 14 (1983), 136.
Brahe brought three major innovations to observational astronomy: (1) He used diagonal scales at the reading limbs of the instruments which let him measure fractions of a degree without increasing the size of the instrument, (2) He improved the sighting parts (the parts with slit on the alidade) of the sextant or quadrant and decreased the alignment errors, and (3) He improved the data gathering method by repeating observations and obtaining more data for each observational element. See Victor E. Thoren, “New Light on Tycho’s Instruments”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 4 (1973), 25–45, Walter G. Wesley, “The Accuracy of Tycho Brahe’s Instruments”, Journal of the History of Astronomy, 9 (1978), 42–53.
Victor Thoren, “Tycho Brahe”. in The General History of Astronomy: Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, vol. 2A: Tycho Brahe to Newton. Edited by R. Taton and C. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 6.
J. R. Christianson, “Tycho Brahe’s German treatise on the comet of 1577: A study in science and politics”, Isis, 70 (1979), 133.
A. Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), p. 208.
Christianson, “Tycho Brahe’s German Treatise”, p. 134. Contrary to his account of the origin of the nova, Brahe does not mention any dark space in the Milky Way as the detachment place of the comet.
Ibid., p. 135.
Ibid., p. 137.
Schenchner Genuth. Comets, Popular Culture, pp. 47–50.
Data for sizes and distances of the planets is adopted from: Albert Van Helden, Measuring the Universe, Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985).
In the history of astronomy, there have been a few moments like this that an accurate observation caused a radical change in our understanding of the physical world. As another example, one can refer to Harlow Shapley’s measurement of the size of our galaxy in 1917, which increased its size by a factor of 10.
Ruffner. “The Background”, p. 62, originally in Tycho Brahe, De Mundi Aetherii Recentioribus Phaenomenis (Uraniborg, 1588), pp. 191–194, quoted from Marie Boas and A. Rupert Hall, “Tycho Brahe’s System of the World”, Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, 3/21 (1959), 263.
Ibid., p. 62.
Ibid., p. 63.
Brahe believed in three elements. For him fire was not “other than an ignition of the uppermost air by the rapid motion of the heavens”. See Christianson, “Tycho Brahe’s German treatise”, pp. 128, 132. [Did Brahe try to make symmetry between the three sub-lunar elements and three suprālunar celestial matters?].
Barker, “The Optical Theory of Comets”, p. 17.
For Brahe’s role in the establishment of modern astronomy see: Peter Barker, Bernard R. Goldstein, “The Role of Comets in the Copernican Revolution”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 19 (1988) 299–319.
Thoren, “Tycho Brahe”, p. 6.
Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolution, trans. Edward Rosen (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 16.
For Mästlin’s measurements of cometary motions see Robert S. Westman, “The Comet and the Cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin and the Copernicus Hypothesis”, Studia Copernicana 5 (1972), 7–30; Ruffner. “The Background”, 49–57.
Not all astronomers agreed with Tycho’s results on the nova. For example, John Dee (1527–1608), Thomas Digges (ca. 1543–1575) and the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (1527–1608) assumed that the decrease of the nova’s brightness must be completely apparent and argued that it was dimming out due to change in its altitude. Some other astronomers, including Digges, related it to comets and obviously many Aristotelians denied its suprālunar origin. See Thoren, “Tycho Brahe”, p. 5; Marie Boas Hall, The Sientific Renaissance 1450–1630 (New York: Dover Publications, 1994), pp. 110–111.
From 1577 to Brahe’s death in 1601, five more comets (in 1580, 1582, 1590, 1593, and 1596) were observable in Europe and Brahe, as well as many other astronomers, reached the same results he had obtained in 1577.
The second half of the sixteenth century also has been called a period of consolidation and transition: “consolidation of the mathematical techniques of Copernicus and transition from the purely mathematical account of planetary motions to a wider discussion of the actual nature of the universe”. See Richard A. Jarrel, “The Contemporaries of Tycho Brahe”. in The General History of Astronomy: Planetary astronomy from the Renaissance to the rise of astrophysics, vol. 2A: Tycho Brahe to Newton. Edited by R. Taton and C. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 22. For a study on the nature of the astronomical theories in the sixteenth century see Peter Barker, Bernard R. Goldstein, “Realism and Instrumentalism in Sixteenth Century Astronomy: A reappraisal”, Perspectives on Science 6 (1998), 208–227.
Islamic historians reported the appearance of the 1264 and 1265 comets, which might have been seen by astronomers of the Marāgha observatory (established 1259 and active after 1274). Also, there are reports of the 1430, 1433 and 1456 comets, which were appeared when Samarqand observatory was active (from 1420–1449). The observatory was abandoned after the death of its founder Ulugh Beg in 1449, but several astronomers were still active in Samarqand schools. No reports of cometary observation from neither observatory have been found. See Cook, “Muslim Material”, pp. 147, 150.
The role of cometary theories of the late sixteenth century on the Copernican revolution has been a subject of debate, notably after the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s Copernican Revolution. In Kuhn’s account, the role of cometary discoveries, especially Brahe’s achievements, was misunderstood and underestimated. See Barker and Goldstein, “The Role of Comets in the Copernican Revolution”.
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(2008). After Aristotle. In: A History of Physical Theories of Comets, From Aristotle to Whipple. Archimedes: New Studies In The History And Philosophy Of Science And Technology, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8323-5_2
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