De Callatay, Godefroid
[UCL]
This book is an examination of how the doctrine of the Annus Platonicus was transmitted from Antiquity to Renaissance. It starts with Plato's astronomical definition of this greatest of world cycles, that is, the return into perfect conjunction of the starry sphere and all the planetary spheres. The study of texts leads to the conclusion that the length of Plato's Greta Year, which is nowhere explicitly mentioned, can nevertheless be inferred, and that the reconstruction of Plato's cycle - with its floods, conflagrations and subdivisions into four ages - is possible. This part emphasizes the metaphysical purport of Plato's theory. The rest of the work is a survey of the various interpretations of this World Year according to the different schools of ANtiquity, as well as of the survival of these interpretations - both through Greek-Latin sources and via Arabic literature - into Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This comprehensive survey reveals the ever-increasing distortion of the original doctrine from the time of Plato to that of Marsilio Ficion and Francesco Piccolomini. In terms of the history of science, it shows how the mathematical problem of the Great Year eventually lost all its intrinsic interest with Nicole Oresme's demonstration that the celestial movements are not commensurable. From a more philosophical point of view, it points out that the meaning attached by Plato to this theory was never really perceived or clearly understood by any of his followers.
Bibliographic reference |
De Callatay, Godefroid. Annus Platonicus. A Study of World Cycles in Greek, Latin and Arabic Sources. Peeters : Louvain (1996) (ISBN:90-6831-876-4) xvi-287 p. pages |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/74332 |