Abstract

This study in intellectual and cultural history argues that the sun and moon, known as the "luminaries," were "desacralized" among natural philosophers in England from 1400 to 1680 and delineates the mechanism by which this occurred. Desacralization was the process in which the luminaries were transformed from peerless bodies that radiated "occult" forces into objects of scientific study that emanated beams explainable by atomism. Additionally, the moon became a place for imaginary exploration with its own geography and inhabitants. However, although desacralization was completed among natural philosophers by 1680, it was a set of ideas that was only partially accepted in larger English society. ;After a historiographic introduction in Chapter I, Chapter II illustrates that from 1400 to 1543, the sun and the moon were conceptualized as "sacral." Based on Aristotelian cosmology and Ptolemaic astronomy, the luminaries were seen as perfect spheres within a divine heavens, moving in circular orbits, and producing emanations that affected the earth in a manner whose cause was "occult." The chapter indicates that this sacrality was due to a disciplinary division between astronomy and cosmology, a segregation that permitted astronomical phenomena irreconcilable with the "reality" of an Aristotelian cosmology of a perfect heavens, such as lunar spots, to be subsumed within an scholastic doctrine of planetary incorruptibility. ;Chapter III explains that the luminaries did not begin to be desacralized until astronomical observation and cosmological theory were woven together in the late 1500s, and the luminaries' imperfections were subsequently noticed. These changes cannot be explained solely by major astronomical theories of the new science such as Copernicanism; hermeticism and applied sciences like navigation and cartography were equally important. Chapter IV delineates the portrayal of the moon as an earth-like world in fictionalized lunar voyages from the 1630s. Chapter V examines the desacralization of the emanations of the luminaries from 1612 to 1680, a process that reflected the need for sociopolitical order as much as developments in natural philosophy. Chapter VI concludes by examining the extent to which solar and lunar desacralization was reflected in works of popularized science from 1680 to 1720