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134-631: The cosmos is studied in cosmology  – a broad discipline covering scientific, religious or philosophical aspects of the cosmos and its nature. Religious and philosophical approaches may include the cosmos among spiritual entities or other matters deemed to exist outside the physical universe. The verb κοσμεῖν ( κοσμεῖν ) meant generally "to dispose, prepare", but especially "to order and arrange (troops for battle), to set (an army) in array"; also "to establish (a government or regime)", "to adorn, dress" (especially of women). Thus kosmos meant "ornaments, decoration" (compare kosmokomes "dressing

268-404: A "historical science" because "when we look out in space, we look back in time" due to the finite nature of the speed of light . Physics and astrophysics have played central roles in shaping our understanding of the universe through scientific observation and experiment. Physical cosmology was shaped through both mathematics and observation in an analysis of the whole universe. The universe

402-546: A 'strongman' was often the best solution. Athens fell under a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century BC. When this tyranny was ended, the Athenians founded the world's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy regaining power. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia ), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco in 621 BC; all citizens were permitted to attend after

536-432: A certain place is seen through an aperture as in a pair of bellows. He also postulated regarding the formation of thunder and lightning, maintaining that they are caused by the wind becoming compressed inside a thick cloud and suddenly breaking through, causing the loud sound to be heard as the cloud is bursting. He claimed the fissure then looked like a spark because of the contrast with the dark cloud. Anaximander's model set

670-500: A coalition of 31 Greek city states, including Athens and Sparta, determined to resist the Persian invaders. At the same time, Greek Sicily was invaded by a Carthaginian force. In 480 BC, the first major battle of the invasion was fought at Thermopylae , where a small rearguard of Greeks, led by three hundred Spartans, held a crucial pass guarding the heart of Greece for several days; at the same time Gelon , tyrant of Syracuse, defeated

804-609: A council of elders (the Gerousia ) and magistrates specifically appointed to watch over the kings (the Ephors ). Only free, land-owning, native born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. In most city-states, unlike the situation in Rome , social prominence did not allow special rights. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in

938-528: A decisive victory, and in 447 lost Boeotia again. Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/5, ending the conflict. Despite the treaty, Athenian relations with Sparta declined again in the 430s, and in 431 BC the Peloponnesian War began. The first phase of the war saw a series of fruitless annual invasions of Attica by Sparta, while Athens successfully fought

1072-436: A group of city-states allied themselves to defend Greece, the vast majority of poleis remained neutral, and after the Persian defeat, the allies quickly returned to infighting. Thus, the major peculiarities of the ancient Greek political system were its fragmented nature (and that this does not particularly seem to have tribal origin), and the particular focus on urban centers within otherwise tiny states. The peculiarities of

1206-461: A largely speculative science into a predictive science with precise agreement between theory and observation. These advances include observations of the microwave background from the COBE , WMAP and Planck satellites, large new galaxy redshift surveys including 2dfGRS and SDSS , and observations of distant supernovae and gravitational lensing . These observations matched the predictions of

1340-412: A more obscure and incomplete version of God. Cosmology is the study of the cosmos, and in its broadest sense covers a variety of very different approaches: scientific, religious and philosophical. All cosmologies have in common an attempt to understand the implicit order within the whole of being. In this way, most religions and philosophical systems have a cosmology. When cosmology is used without

1474-503: A physical mechanism for Kepler's laws and also allowed the anomalies in previous systems, caused by gravitational interaction between the planets, to be resolved. A fundamental difference between Newton's cosmology and those preceding it was the Copernican principle —that the bodies on Earth obey the same physical laws as all celestial bodies. This was a crucial philosophical advance in physical cosmology. Modern scientific cosmology

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1608-445: A precedent for succeeding theories, including Copernicus 's system, with the major change being the shift away from the geocentric model and towards the heliocentric model of the universe. The explained model, although accredited to Anaximander, did necessarily take from ideas originated in foreign cultures, such as the astronomical wheels which are known from Persian cosmology. But even without detailed commentary, these elements of

1742-399: A qualifier, it often signifies physical cosmology, unless the context makes clear that a different meaning is intended. Physical cosmology (often simply described as 'cosmology') is the scientific study of the universe, from the beginning of its physical existence. It includes speculative concepts such as a multiverse, when these are being discussed. In physical cosmology , the term cosmos

1876-465: A refined substance called " quintessence ". This was understood to be a crystalline, completely transparent substance that held all of the superlunary spheres in perfect order. After their creation by God, these spheres did not change except for their rotation above the Earth. Objects below the lunar sphere were subject to constant combination, separation, and recombination. This was because they consisted of

2010-760: A result of Epaminondas ' liberation of Messenia from Spartan rule, the helot system there came to an end and the helots won their freedom. However, it did continue to persist in Laconia until the 2nd century BC. For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. During the Hellenistic period, some city-states established public schools . Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Boys learned how to read, write and quote literature. They also learned to sing and play one musical instrument and were trained as athletes for military service. They studied not for

2144-523: A special type of slaves called helots . Helots were Messenians enslaved en masse during the Messenian Wars by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Helots raised food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on raising strong children while men could devote their time to training as hoplites . Their masters treated them harshly, and helots revolted against their masters several times. In 370/69 BC, as

2278-612: A system created by Mircea Eliade and his colleague Charles Long. Cosmology deals with the world as the totality of space, time and all phenomena. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was found in religion. Some questions about the Universe are beyond the scope of scientific inquiry but may still be interrogated through appeals to other philosophical approaches like dialectics . Some questions that are included in extra-scientific endeavors may include: Charles Kahn, an important historian of philosophy, attributed

2412-485: A void of atoms as the fundamental elements of physics, while Stoicism postulated a void allowing for the cosmos to expand and contract in volume through its cycles. The Chinese had multiple theories of the processes and components of the cosmos. The most popular of these beliefs was the Xuan Ye theory, the astronomical view of the cosmos as an infinite space with floating pieces of condensed vapor. The Chinese believed that

2546-722: A war with the Roman Republic in the late 3rd century. Although the First Macedonian War was inconclusive, the Romans, in typical fashion, continued to fight Macedon until it was completely absorbed into the Roman Republic (by 149 BC). In the east, the unwieldy Seleucid Empire gradually disintegrated, although a rump survived until 64 BC, whilst the Ptolemaic Kingdom continued in Egypt until 30 BC when it too

2680-684: A year, the Thirty had been overthrown. The first half of the fourth century saw the major Greek states attempt to dominate the mainland; none were successful, and their resulting weakness led to a power vacuum which would eventually be filled by Macedon under Philip II and then Alexander the Great. In the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, Sparta attempted to extend their own power, leading Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes to join against them. Aiming to prevent any single Greek state gaining

2814-614: Is a sub-branch of astronomy that is concerned with the universe as a whole. Modern physical cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang Theory which attempts to bring together observational astronomy and particle physics ; more specifically, a standard parameterization of the Big Bang with dark matter and dark energy , known as the Lambda-CDM model. Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as

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2948-692: Is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe . Physical cosmology is the study of the observable universe 's origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, and the ultimate fate of the universe , including the laws of science that govern these areas. It is investigated by scientists, including astronomers and physicists , as well as philosophers , such as metaphysicians , philosophers of physics , and philosophers of space and time . Because of this shared scope with philosophy , theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions and may depend upon assumptions that cannot be tested . Physical cosmology

3082-465: Is debated. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides , Xenophon , Demosthenes , Plato and Aristotle . Most were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of many other cities. Their scope is further limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. The archaic period, lasting from approximately 800 to 500 BC, saw

3216-474: Is generally understood to have begun with the Big Bang , followed almost instantaneously by cosmic inflation , an expansion of space from which the universe is thought to have emerged 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago. Cosmogony studies the origin of the universe, and cosmography maps the features of the universe. In Diderot 's Encyclopédie , cosmology is broken down into uranology (the science of

3350-421: Is inside and outside. However, finite division of space is where time begins, and the division of time is where all beings were first created. It was believed that there are connections between the physical and the psychological worlds, and an equivalence existed between the outer cosmos and the inner cosmos of the individual. This is expressed in the famous sentence – yat pinḍe tad brahmṇḍe , “as in

3484-522: Is known from much more fragmentary documents such as annals, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy . Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field . Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th century BC historical figures such as Darius I of Persia , Cambyses II and Psamtik III , and alluding to some 8th century BC persons such as Candaules . The accuracy of Herodotus' works

3618-458: Is mountainous, and as a result, ancient Greece consisted of many smaller regions, each with its own dialect, cultural peculiarities, and identity. Regionalism and regional conflicts were prominent features of ancient Greece. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on coastal plains, and dominated a certain area around them. In the south lay the Peloponnese , consisting of

3752-892: Is often used in a technical way, referring to a particular spacetime continuum within a (postulated) multiverse . The particular cosmos in which humans live, the observable universe , is generally capitalized as the Cosmos . In physical cosmology, the uncapitalized term cosmic signifies a subject with a relationship to the universe, such as 'cosmic time' (time since the Big Bang ), ' cosmic rays ' (high energy particles or radiation detected from space ), and ' cosmic microwave background ' (microwave radiation detectable from all directions in space). According to Charles Peter Mason in Sir William Smith Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870, see book screenshot for full quote), Pythagoreans described

3886-479: Is unclear exactly how this change occurred. For instance, in Athens, the kingship had been reduced to a hereditary, lifelong chief magistracy ( archon ) by c. 1050 BC; by 753 BC this had become a decennial, elected archonship; and finally by 683 BC an annually elected archonship. Through each stage, more power would have been transferred to the aristocracy as a whole, and away from a single individual. Inevitably,

4020-550: Is widely considered to have begun in 1917 with Albert Einstein 's publication of his final modification of general relativity in the paper "Cosmological Considerations of the General Theory of Relativity" (although this paper was not widely available outside of Germany until the end of World War I ). General relativity prompted cosmogonists such as Willem de Sitter , Karl Schwarzschild , and Arthur Eddington to explore its astronomical ramifications, which enhanced

4154-580: The University of Bologna in Italy. Copernicus began doubting the knowledge of natural philosophers and their beliefs, claiming that geometrical astronomy instead would result in the true reality of the cosmos. His manuscript, De revolutionibus , pioneered ideas that would change the course of how both the cosmos and astrology were viewed. Most notably, Copernicus claimed that the Sun was the stationary center of

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4288-762: The Archaic period , the Greek population grew beyond the capacity of the limited arable land of Greece proper, resulting in the large-scale establishment of colonies elsewhere: according to one estimate, the population of the widening area of Greek settlement increased roughly tenfold from 800 BC to 400 BC, from 800,000 to as many as 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 -10 million. This was not simply for trade, but also to found settlements. These Greek colonies were not, as Roman colonies were, dependent on their mother-city, but were independent city-states in their own right. Greeks settled outside of Greece in two distinct ways. The first

4422-699: The Battle of Aegospotami , and began to blockade Athens' harbour; driven by hunger, Athens sued for peace, agreeing to surrender their fleet and join the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. Following the Athenian surrender, Sparta installed an oligarchic regime, the Thirty Tyrants , in Athens, one of a number of Spartan-backed oligarchies which rose to power after the Peloponnesian war. Spartan predominance did not last: after only

4556-576: The Delian League gradually transformed from a defensive alliance of Greek states into an Athenian empire, as Athens' growing naval power intimidated the other league states. Athens ended its campaigns against Persia in 450, after a disastrous defeat in Egypt in 454, and the death of Cimon in action against the Persians on Cyprus in 450. As the Athenian fight against the Persian empire waned, conflict grew between Athens and Sparta. Suspicious of

4690-654: The Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War . The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic Period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when

4824-740: The Paeonians due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians , with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict, to the northwest. Chalcidice was settled early on by southern Greek colonists and was considered part of the Greek world, while from the late 2nd millennium BC substantial Greek settlement also occurred on the eastern shores of the Aegean , in Anatolia . During

4958-639: The Parthenon of Athens. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and finally to the League of Corinth led by Macedon . This period was shaped by the Greco-Persian Wars , the Peloponnesian War , and

5092-671: The Rise of Macedon . Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period (323–146 BC), during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East from the death of Alexander until the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is usually counted from the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC to the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as

5226-403: The afterlife or world to come , although "aion/aeon" is also at times used in a more other-worldly sense as the eternal plane of the divine. Cosmology Cosmology (from Ancient Greek κόσμος (cosmos)  'the universe, the world' and λογία (logia)  'study of') is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe ,

5360-489: The cosmic inflation theory, a modified Big Bang theory, and the specific version known as the Lambda-CDM model. This has led many to refer to modern times as the "golden age of cosmology". In 2014, the BICEP2 collaboration claimed that they had detected the imprint of gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background . However, this result was later found to be spurious: the supposed evidence of gravitational waves

5494-665: The cosmos . The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount 's Glossographia , and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher Christian Wolff in Cosmologia Generalis . Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological , religious , and esoteric literature and traditions of creation myths and eschatology . In the science of astronomy , cosmology

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5628-449: The poleis grouped themselves into leagues, membership of which was in a constant state of flux. Later in the Classical period, the leagues would become fewer and larger, be dominated by one city (particularly Athens , Sparta and Thebes ); and often poleis would be compelled to join under threat of war (or as part of a peace treaty). Even after Philip II of Macedon conquered the heartlands of ancient Greece, he did not attempt to annex

5762-464: The 146 BC conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. Macedonia became a Roman province while southern Greece came under the surveillance of Macedonia's prefect ; however, some Greek poleis managed to maintain a partial independence and avoid taxation. The Aegean Islands were added to this territory in 133 BC. Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88 BC, and the peninsula was crushed by

5896-475: The Anaximander tradition give a strong impression of an original and courageous thinker making conscious efforts towards producing a rational explanation of fundamental physical principles, the nature and motion of heavenly bodies, the shape of Earth, its place in the universe, etc. Eastern and Western thought differed greatly in their understanding of space and the organization of the cosmos. The Chinese saw

6030-583: The Carthaginian invasion at the Battle of Himera . The Persians were decisively defeated at sea by a primarily Athenian naval force at the Battle of Salamis , and on land in 479 BC at the Battle of Plataea . The alliance against Persia continued, initially led by the Spartan Pausanias but from 477 by Athens, and by 460 Persia had been driven out of the Aegean. During this long campaign,

6164-525: The Corinthian empire in northwest Greece and defended its own empire, despite a plague which killed the leading Athenian statesman Pericles . The war turned after Athenian victories led by Cleon at Pylos and Sphakteria , and Sparta sued for peace, but the Athenians rejected the proposal. The Athenian failure to regain control of Boeotia at Delium and Brasidas ' successes in northern Greece in 424 improved Sparta's position after Sphakteria. After

6298-464: The Cosmos as empty, infinite, and intertwined with the Earth. Western ideas, based on the ancient Greeks ' understanding of the cosmos, believed in a multi-planar divided cosmos that was finite and filled with air. Early Europeans viewed the cosmos as a divinely created, spatially finite, bifurcated cosmos, divided into sublunary and superlunary realms. Objects above the lunar disc were believed to be stable, with heavenly bodies believed to be made out of

6432-601: The Dark Ages was the Archaic Period , beginning around the 8th century BC, which saw early developments in Greek culture and society leading to the Classical Period from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC until the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The Classical Period is characterized by a "classical" style, i.e. one which was considered exemplary by later observers, most famously in

6566-450: The Earth consisted of condensed yin and the heavens of yang ; and that these properties coexisted in constant relation to each other, with yin and yang being used together to explain processes on Earth as well of those relating the Earth in conjunction with the heavens. This idea was described by Joseph Needham as a cosmos that functioned similarly to a complex organism, with discernible patterns in an ever-changing structure. There

6700-421: The Earth was at the center of the universe, and that its shape was convex and cylindrical, with life existing on one of the two flat sides. Beyond the Earth, sits the other planets, which Anaximander also details the order of. Next are the fixed stars, which he regarded as wheel-like condensations of air filled with fire, provided at certain places with openings through which flames are discharged. Anaximander places

6834-597: The Euahlayi saw the Milky Way as a river and between the two bright sides represented a Galactic Bulge where the two sons of the creator Baiame and the river made a connection from the earth and the sky. The Yolngu people were one of the first to discover how the tide of the ocean works. They discovered the tide had a direct correlation with the Moon. Their reasoning as to why the ocean did not fill up as much as perhaps when

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6968-668: The Greek city-states. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks and led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious to the new Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan , where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until

7102-460: The Greek colonies Syracusae ( Συράκουσαι ), Neapolis ( Νεάπολις ), Massalia ( Μασσαλία ) and Byzantion ( Βυζάντιον ). These colonies played an important role in the spread of Greek influence throughout Europe and also aided in the establishment of long-distance trading networks between the Greek city-states, boosting the economy of ancient Greece . Ancient Greece consisted of several hundred relatively independent city-states ( poleis ). This

7236-578: The Greek colony Sybaris in southern Italy, its allies, and the Serdaioi. In 499 BC, the Ionian city states under Persian rule rebelled against their Persian-supported tyrant rulers. Supported by troops sent from Athens and Eretria , they advanced as far as Sardis and burnt the city before being driven back by a Persian counterattack. The revolt continued until 494, when the rebelling Ionians were defeated. Darius did not forget that Athens had assisted

7370-483: The Greek system are further evidenced by the colonies that they set up throughout the Mediterranean , which, though they might count a certain Greek polis as their 'mother' (and remain sympathetic to her), were completely independent of the founding city. Inevitably smaller poleis might be dominated by larger neighbors, but conquest or direct rule by another city-state appears to have been quite rare. Instead

7504-815: The Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. To the east, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by Cyprus and the coasts of Thrace , the Sea of Marmara and south coast of the Black Sea . Eventually, Greek colonization reached as far northeast as present-day Ukraine and Russia ( Taganrog ). To the west the coasts of Illyria , Southern Italy (called " Magna Graecia ") were settled, followed by Southern France , Corsica , and even eastern Spain . Greek colonies were also founded in Egypt and Libya . Modern Syracuse , Naples , Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as

7638-423: The Greeks were very aware of their tribal origins; Herodotus was able to extensively categorise the city-states by tribe. Yet, although these higher-level relationships existed, they seem to have rarely had a major role in Greek politics. The independence of the poleis was fiercely defended; unification was something rarely contemplated by the ancient Greeks. Even when, during the second Persian invasion of Greece,

7772-535: The Ionian revolt, and in 490 he assembled an armada to retaliate. Though heavily outnumbered, the Athenians—supported by their Plataean allies—defeated the Persian hordes at the Battle of Marathon , and the Persian fleet turned tail. Ten years later, a second invasion was launched by Darius' son Xerxes . The city-states of northern and central Greece submitted to the Persian forces without resistance, but

7906-483: The League of Corinth following the death of Philip, Alexander began his campaign against Persia in 334 BC. He conquered Persia, defeating Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, and after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC proclaimed himself king of Asia. From 329 BC he led expeditions to Bactria and then India; further plans to invade Arabia and North Africa were halted by his death in 323 BC. The period from

8040-523: The Mediterranean region is commonly considered to have begun in the 8th century BC (around the time of the earliest recorded poetry of Homer) and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages ( c.  1200 – c.  800 BC ), archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following

8174-426: The Moon beyond these stars, and assumed it to also be wheel-like in shape, being nineteen times the size of Earth. Finally, on the top of the universe is the Sun, which interacts with the Moon, and the relationship between them is described in terms of aperture , in which a stoppage in would lead to eclipses. In this model, the Sun is a ring, 28 times the size of the Earth, with a hollow rim, filled with fire, which at

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8308-481: The Moon was full versus a crescent moon is because the Moon was not as full either. This contradicts the father of science, Galileo, who said that the tides correlated with the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Multiple indigenous tribes described winter by the Seven Sisters , a group of stars in the sky that provided hunter-gatherers a sort of calendar to indicate whether they should be hunting or gathering, based on

8442-646: The Moon, stars, and the Sun, this enabled them to create a sense of time. This also allowed them to navigate across the continent, create calendars, and predict the weather. One of the most important constellations in Australia for the Aboriginal people is the Emu. The Emu constellation represents the connection between the earth and the sky, and stories and representations of their constellations were written on some cave walls in Australia. Another indigenous tribe known as

8576-471: The Roman general Sulla . The Roman civil wars devastated the land even further, until Augustus organized the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC. Greece was a key eastern province of the Roman Empire, as the Roman culture had long been in fact Greco-Roman . The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the East and in Italy , and many Greek intellectuals such as Galen would perform most of their work in Rome . The territory of Greece

8710-437: The Sun was a star. While Aristarchus was later an influence on Copernicus and his groundbreaking work, prior to the 17th century Aristarchus' findings were obstructed by the more established theories of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus was appointed by the Catholic Church as an official, as his uncle was a bishop in the church. He used his income to further his studies, eventually studying at

8844-425: The Vedantic text called the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (YV), which at 32,000 shlokas is one of the longest books in world literature. Australian cosmology has a vast and varied history. Australian cosmology beliefs were based around the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's ideas, also known as Indigenous astronomy, and it was around before the Babylonians, Greeks, and the Renaissance period. They found ways to observe

8978-619: The ability of astronomers to study very distant objects. Physicists began changing the assumption that the universe was static and unchanging. In 1922, Alexander Friedmann introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter. In parallel to this dynamic approach to cosmology, one long-standing debate about the structure of the cosmos was coming to a climax – the Great Debate (1917 to 1922) – with early cosmologists such as Heber Curtis and Ernst Öpik determining that some nebulae seen in telescopes were separate galaxies far distant from our own. While Heber Curtis argued for

9112-528: The ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race . Most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers, and even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome, freedmen did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed into the population of metics , which included people from foreign countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in

9246-452: The body so in the universe”. The ancient Indians mapped out the outer world or the universe at an altar where Yajurveda listed multiples of ten that reached ten million. The numbers used to count to ten million was used as a reference to show the relation of the planets in the universe to Earth, it was not a relevant scale to the entire universe, therefore backing that they believed the universe to be infinite and endless. The Indians calculated

9380-446: The capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD. Finally, Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the later 4th to early 6th centuries AD, consummated by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in comprehensive, narrative historiography , while earlier ancient history or protohistory

9514-483: The center, while in the east lay Boeotia , Attica , and Megaris . Northeast lay Thessaly , while Epirus lay to the northwest. Epirus stretched from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the Ceraunian Mountains and the Aoos river in the north, and consisted of Chaonia (north), Molossia (center), and Thesprotia (south). In the northeast corner was Macedonia , originally consisting Lower Macedonia and its regions, such as Elimeia , Pieria , and Orestis . Around

9648-482: The chaotic elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The idea of celestial spheres was developed in the cosmological models of Plato , Eudoxus , Aristotle , Ptolemy , Copernicus , and others. They believed in a stable cosmos created by God, where distinct realms were subject to different kinds of order. Some Europeans maintained the Aristotelian view that infinity could only be seen as an attribute of God, with

9782-471: The cosmos being finite. Furthermore, following the Aristotelian view that "nature abhors a vacuum", some Europeans believed that the space between the spheres were filled with air. This theory persisted until the Scientific Revolution , when the discovery that the Sun was in the center of the planetary system rocked cosmological understanding to its core. Other theories such as Atomism posited

9916-563: The cosmos is the created heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, wandering stars, and fixed stars ). The concept of cosmos as the created universe and its arrangement has been important in Christendom since its very inception, as it is heavily used in the New Testament and occurs over 180 times. In Christian theology , the word is sometimes used synonymously with aion to refer to "worldly life" or "this world" or "this age" as opposed to

10050-422: The cosmos. This is relatively consistent with the modern understanding of the congregation of matter through gravitational fields. The Chinese held a belief associated with the Xuan Ye theory, which held space as both empty and infinite. This was inconsistent with the Aristotelian concepts that nature would not contain a vacuum, and that infinity could only be a divine attribute. The idea of the nothingness of space

10184-455: The course of the archaic period. Already in the seventh century, the right of all citizen men to attend the assembly appears to have been established. After a failed coup led by Cylon of Athens around 636 BC, Draco was appointed to establish a code of laws in 621. This failed to reduce the political tension between the poor and the elites, and in 594 Solon was given the authority to enact another set of reforms, which attempted to balance

10318-473: The course of the eighth and seventh century. According to Spartan tradition, this constitution was established by the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus . Over the course of the first and second Messenian wars , Sparta subjugated the neighbouring region of Messenia , enserfing the population. In the sixth century, Greek city-states began to develop formal relationships with one another, where previously individual rulers had relied on personal relationships with

10452-574: The culmination of political and social developments which had begun in the Greek dark age, with the polis (city-state) becoming the most important unit of political organisation in Greece. The absence of powerful states in Greece after the collapse of Mycenaean power, and the geography of Greece, where many settlements were separated from their neighbours by mountainous terrain, encouraged the development of small independent city-states. Several Greek states saw tyrants rise to power in this period, most famously at Corinth from 657 BC. The period also saw

10586-461: The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC until the death of Cleopatra , the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is known as the Hellenistic period. In the early part of this period, a new form of kingship developed based on Macedonian and Near Eastern traditions. The first Hellenistic kings were previously Alexander's generals, and took power in the period following his death, though they were not part of existing royal lineages and lacked historic claims to

10720-423: The deaths of Cleon and Brasidas, the strongest proponents of war on each side, a peace treaty was negoitiated in 421 by the Athenian general Nicias . The peace did not last, however. In 418 BC allied forces of Athens and Argos were defeated by Sparta at Mantinea . In 415 Athens launched an ambitious naval expedition to dominate Sicily; the expedition ended in disaster at the harbor of Syracuse , with almost

10854-674: The dominance that would allow it to challenge Persia, the Persian king initially joined the alliance against Sparta, before imposing the Peace of Antalcidas ("King's Peace") which restored Persia's control over the Anatolian Greeks. By 371 BC, Thebes was in the ascendancy, defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra , killing the Spartan king Cleombrotus I , and invading Laconia. Further Theban successes against Sparta in 369 led to Messenia gaining independence; Sparta never recovered from

10988-409: The domination of politics and concomitant aggregation of wealth by small groups of families was apt to cause social unrest in many poleis . In many cities a tyrant (not in the modern sense of repressive autocracies), would at some point seize control and govern according to their own will; often a populist agenda would help sustain them in power. In a system wracked with class conflict , government by

11122-726: The east to the Indian king Chandragupta Maurya in exchange for war elephants, and later lost large parts of Persia to the Parthian Empire . By the mid-third century, the kingdoms of Alexander's successors was mostly stable, though there continued to be disputes over border areas. The great capitals of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Antioch in the Seleucid Empire . The conquests of Alexander had numerous consequences for

11256-552: The elites of other cities. Towards the end of the archaic period, Sparta began to build a series of alliances, the Peloponnesian League , with cities including Corinth , Elis , and Megara , isolating Messenia and reinforcing Sparta's position against Argos , the other major power in the Peloponnese. Other alliances in the sixth century included those between Elis and Heraea in the Peloponnese; and between

11390-619: The end of the first century BC. The city-states within Greece formed themselves into two leagues; the Achaean League (including Corinth and Argos) and the Aetolian League (including Sparta and Athens). For much of the period until the Roman conquest, these leagues were at war, often participating in the conflicts between the Diadochi (the successor states to Alexander's empire). The Antigonid Kingdom became involved in

11524-609: The entire army killed, and the ships destroyed. Soon after the Athenian defeat in Syracuse, Athens' Ionian allies began to rebel against the Delian league, while Persia began to once again involve itself in Greek affairs on the Spartan side. Initially the Athenian position continued relatively strong, with important victories at Cyzicus in 410 and Arginusae in 406. However, in 405 the Spartan Lysander defeated Athens in

11658-666: The era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age Collapse , Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece , from

11792-540: The exact borders of the Hellenistic kingdoms were not settled. Antigonus attempted to expand his territory by attacking the other successor kingdoms until they joined against him, and he was killed at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. His son Demetrius spent many years in Seleucid captivity, and his son, Antigonus II , only reclaimed the Macedonian throne around 276. Meanwhile, the Seleucid kingdom gave up territory in

11926-563: The foundation of modern astronomy, the common universal view of the cosmos shifted as Nicolaus Copernicus positioned the Sun as the center of the Universe. Prior to the Copernican Revolution, the Ptolemaic system, also known as the geocentric model, was widely accepted. This put the Earth at the center of the universe, with the Sun and other planets revolving around the Earth in an epicyclic orbit. Aristotle's geocentric model

12060-469: The founding of Greek colonies around the Mediterranean, with Euboean settlements at Al-Mina in the east as early as 800 BC, and Ischia in the west by 775. Increasing contact with non-Greek peoples in this period, especially in the Near East, inspired developments in art and architecture, the adoption of coinage, and the development of the Greek alphabet. Athens developed its democratic system over

12194-576: The government. In Athens, the population was divided into four social classes based on wealth. People could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens were called homoioi , meaning "peers". However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military and religious leaders, came from two families. Women in Ancient Greece appear to have primarily performed domestic tasks, managed households, and borne and reared children. Slaves had no power or status. Slaves had

12328-434: The hair," and cosmetic). The philosopher Pythagoras used the term kosmos ( Ancient Greek : κόσμος , Latinized kósmos ) for the order of the universe. Anaxagoras further introduced the concept of a Cosmic Mind ( Nous ) ordering all things. The modern Greek κόσμος "order, good order, orderly arrangement" is a word with several main senses rooted in those notions. κόσμος has developed, along with primary "the universe,

12462-463: The heavens), aerology (the science of the air), geology (the science of the continents), and hydrology (the science of waters). Metaphysical cosmology has also been described as the placing of humans in the universe in relationship to all other entities. This is exemplified by Marcus Aurelius 's observation that a man's place in that relationship: "He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose

12596-519: The idea that spiral nebulae were star systems in their own right as island universes, Mount Wilson astronomer Harlow Shapley championed the model of a cosmos made up of the Milky Way star system only. This difference of ideas came to a climax with the organization of the Great Debate on 26 April 1920 at the meeting of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. The debate

12730-547: The increasing Athenian power funded by the Delian League, Sparta offered aid to reluctant members of the League to rebel against Athenian domination. These tensions were exacerbated in 462 BC when Athens sent a force to aid Sparta in overcoming a helot revolt, but this aid was rejected by the Spartans. In the 450s, Athens took control of Boeotia, and won victories over Aegina and Corinth. However, Athens failed to win

12864-591: The last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt , was annexed by the Roman Republic . Classical Greek culture , especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome , which carried a version of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization , the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art. Classical antiquity in

12998-514: The loss of Messenia's fertile land and the helot workforce it provided. The rising power of Thebes led Sparta and Athens to join forces; in 362 they were defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Mantinea . In the aftermath of Mantinea, none of the major Greek states were able to dominate. Though Thebes had won the battle, their general Epaminondas was killed, and they spent the following decades embroiled in wars with their neighbours; Athens, meanwhile, saw its second naval alliance, formed in 377, collapse in

13132-495: The mid-350s. The power vacuum in Greece after the Battle of Mantinea was filled by Macedon, under Philip II . In 338 BC, he defeated a Greek alliance at the Battle of Chaeronea , and subsequently formed the League of Corinth . Philip planned to lead the League to invade Persia, but was murdered in 336 BC. His son Alexander the Great was left to fulfil his father's ambitions. After campaigns against Macedon's western and northern enemies, and those Greek states that had broken from

13266-407: The nature of the universe, a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. The basic definition of Cosmology is the science of the origin and development of the universe. In modern astronomy, the Big Bang theory is the dominant postulation. Philosophy of cosmology is an expanding discipline, directed to the conceptual foundations of cosmology and the philosophical contemplation of

13400-421: The origin and makeup of the physical universe. He is regarded as the most important of the Ionian philosophers, and was a pupil of Thales . Traditionally, details of his life and opinions are perpetuated not only by Aristotle and Theophrastos , but also by a great number of secondary authors. He lived throughout the fifth and fourth centuries, BCE, and was most likely the first philosopher to try to rationalize

13534-540: The origins of ancient Greek cosmology to Anaximander . Steady state. Λ > 0 Expands then recollapses . Spatially closed (finite). k = 0 ; Λ = 0 Critical density Λ > 0 ; Λ > |Gravity| William H. McCrea 1930s Table notes: the term "static" simply means not expanding and not contracting. Symbol G represents Newton's gravitational constant ; Λ (Lambda) is the cosmological constant . Ancient Greeks Ancient Greece ( Ancient Greek : Ἑλλάς , romanized :  Hellás )

13668-499: The overall current view of the universe , in the form of the Standard Model of Cosmology , based on the latest James Webb Space Telescope studies. In October 2023, astronomers proposed a new, more comprehensive, view of the cosmos, and which includes all objects in the universe, and suggested that the universe may have begun with instantons , and may be a black hole . Cosmology is a branch of metaphysics that deals with

13802-472: The planetary orbits, and Muhammad al-Battani recalculated the parameters. However, both still agreed with the geocentric model. One of the first known astronomers that supported the Heliocentric theory was Aristarchus of Samos . After observing a lunar eclipse , he came to the conclusion that the Sun was farther away from Earth than the Moon and that the Sun was much larger than Earth. He also claimed

13936-410: The power of the rich and the poor. In the middle of the sixth century, Pisistratus established himself as a tyrant, and after his death in 527 his son Hippias inherited his position; by the end of the sixth century he had been overthrown and Cleisthenes carried out further democratising reforms. In Sparta, a political system with two kings, a council of elders , and five ephors developed over

14070-617: The reforms of Solon (early 6th century), but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. With the establishment of the democracy, the assembly became the de jure mechanism of government; all citizens had equal privileges in the assembly. However, non-citizens, such as metics (foreigners living in Athens) or slaves , had no political rights at all. After the rise of democracy in Athens, other city-states founded democracies. However, many retained more traditional forms of government. As so often in other matters, Sparta

14204-420: The regions of Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), Elis (west), Achaia (north), Korinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), and Arcadia (center). These names survive to the present day as regional units of modern Greece , though with somewhat different boundaries. Mainland Greece to the north, nowadays known as Central Greece , consisted of Aetolia and Acarnania in the west, Locris , Doris , and Phocis in

14338-518: The right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. By 600 BC, chattel slavery had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC, slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Between 40–80% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves. Slaves outside of Sparta almost never revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were too scattered to organize. However, unlike later Western culture ,

14472-527: The season. There is one way that both the Chinese and the Europeans, along with countless other ancient societies, related to the cosmos. This was through meaning, placed on celestial bodies, that were observed moving above the Earth. The Chinese had a very complex astronomical understanding of the stars and the cosmos that influenced everything from their art and architecture to their myths and science. This

14606-472: The speed of light to be four thousand four hundred and four (4,404) yojanas per nimesa, or about one hundred eighty six thousand (186,000) miles per second. Ancient Indian beliefs also included the belief that the Earth was created after certain stars, these stars include the Sun, Gemini, Aja, and Kurma. Evidence from the Etymological considerations prove this belief and also points towards the discovery of

14740-448: The state. City-states legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage , while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity and Scythian slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions. Sparta had

14874-419: The system of the Earth, Sun, and Moon by the use of geometry and mathematics. Anaximander was also said to have created the first map of the world, however, like much of the rest of his works, this has been lost since his time. There is, however, documentation of Anaximander being responsible for the conception of the first mechanical model of the world, which is outlined by a geocentric model . He postulated that

15008-695: The territories they controlled. The most important of these rulers in the decades after Alexander's death were Antigonus I and his son Demetrius in Macedonia and the rest of Greece, Ptolemy in Egypt, and Seleucus I in Syria and the former Persian empire; smaller Hellenistic kingdoms included the Attalids in Anatolia and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom . In the early part of the Hellenistic period,

15142-515: The territory or unify it into a new province, but compelled most of the poleis to join his own Corinthian League . Initially many Greek city-states seem to have been petty kingdoms; there was often a city official carrying some residual, ceremonial functions of the king ( basileus ), e.g., the archon basileus in Athens. However, by the Archaic period and the first historical consciousness, most had already become aristocratic oligarchies . It

15276-626: The time of Alexander I of Macedon , the Argead kings of Macedon started to expand into Upper Macedonia , lands inhabited by independent Macedonian tribes like the Lyncestae , Orestae and the Elimiotae and to the west, beyond the Axius river , into Eordaia , Bottiaea , Mygdonia , and Almopia , regions settled by Thracian tribes. To the north of Macedonia lay various non-Greek peoples such as

15410-609: The twin asses, which in western astrology can be found next to the Cancer constellation as Asellus, Borealis, and Asellus Australis. The Indian cyclic model assumes the existence of countless island universes, which go through their own periods of development and destruction. The conception of cyclicity is taken to be recursive. For an early exposition of these astronomical and cosmological ideas, one may read al-Bīrūnī's classic history of Indian science, composed in 1030 AD, and for an even earlier, popular, view of Indian ideas, one may consult

15544-400: The universe as a totality. It draws on the fundamental theories of physics – thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and special and general relativity – and on several branches of philosophy – philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and epistemology. In theology ,

15678-479: The universe. It appears, in fact, from this, as well as from the extant fragments, that the first book (from Philolaus ) of the work contained a general account of the origin and arrangement of the universe. The second book appears to have been an exposition of the nature of numbers, which in the Pythagorean theory are the essence and source of all things. (p. 305) In September 2023, astrophysicists questioned

15812-407: The universe. His work also included calculations on the motions of the Moon, and the motions in latitude and longitude of the planets, all which orbit the Sun. Copernicus' work was not immediately published as it disagreed with Biblical teachings, and he feared his work would be rejected by Catholic officials. Copernicus' work was not entirely mathematical conviction. There is evidence that Copernicus

15946-536: The world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is." Physical cosmology is the branch of physics and astrophysics that deals with the study of the physical origins and evolution of the universe. It also includes the study of the nature of the universe on a large scale. In its earliest form, it was what is now known as " celestial mechanics ," the study of the heavens . Greek philosophers Aristarchus of Samos , Aristotle , and Ptolemy proposed different cosmological theories. The geocentric Ptolemaic system

16080-424: The world", the meaning of "people" (collectively). The 1870 book Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology noted The book The Works of Aristotle (1908, p. 80 Fragments ) mentioned Bertrand Russell (1947) noted Anaximander was a pre- Socratic Greek philosopher who is widely referred to as the "father of astronomy" and even as the "father of cosmology" as a result of his works to explain

16214-545: Was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( c.  600 AD ), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Prior to the Roman period , most of these regions were officially unified once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history ,

16348-539: Was a notable exception to the rest of Greece, ruled through the whole period by not one, but two hereditary monarchs. This was a form of diarchy . The Kings of Sparta belonged to the Agiads and the Eurypontids, descendants respectively of Eurysthenes and Procles . Both dynasties' founders were believed to be twin sons of Aristodemus , a Heraclid ruler. However, the powers of these kings were held in check by both

16482-460: Was a situation unlike that in most other contemporary societies, which were either tribal or kingdoms ruling over relatively large territories. Undoubtedly, the geography of Greece —divided and sub-divided by hills, mountains, and rivers—contributed to the fragmentary nature of ancient Greece. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks had no doubt that they were "one people"; they had the same religion , same basic culture, and same language. Furthermore,

16616-468: Was also broadly acknowledged, along with his claim that the planets rotated but did not orbit. The reasoning behind this was due to the belief that all objects outside of the lunar sphere were celestial bodies, and therefore could not change, as they were made of quintessence. There were notable critiques of this model prior to Copernicus. In the Islamic world, Ibn al-Haytham doubted Ptolemy's notion of

16750-446: Was also true of the Greeks and Romans, whose 48 constellations, including the zodiac signs and the constellation of Orion, have been passed down to modern Western cultures. These were likely passed down to them from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers. Copernicus is said to have been inspired by the fecund sun deity of neoplatonic thought, which may have initially inspired his vision of a heliocentric universe. Commonly regarded as

16884-411: Was both a pattern and a randomness to the cosmos. Because of this, the Chinese believed that earthly phenomena could affect heavenly bodies. The Chinese believed that qi was the substance of all things in the cosmos and Earth, including inanimate matter, humans, ideas, emotions, celestial bodies and everything that exists or has existed; and that it was qi condensing that created all the matter within

17018-752: Was conquered by the Romans. The Aetolian league grew wary of Roman involvement in Greece, and sided with the Seleucids in the Roman–Seleucid War ; when the Romans were victorious, the league was effectively absorbed into the Republic. Although the Achaean league outlasted both the Aetolian league and Macedon, it was also soon defeated and absorbed by the Romans in 146 BC, bringing Greek independence to an end. The Greek peninsula came under Roman rule during

17152-659: Was in fact due to interstellar dust. On 1 December 2014, at the Planck 2014 meeting in Ferrara , Italy , astronomers reported that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and composed of 4.9% atomic matter , 26.6% dark matter and 68.5% dark energy . Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological , religious , and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology . Creation myths are found in most religions, and are typically split into five different classifications, based on

17286-417: Was in permanent settlements founded by Greeks, which formed as independent poleis. The second form was in what historians refer to as emporia ; trading posts which were occupied by both Greeks and non-Greeks and which were primarily concerned with the manufacture and sale of goods. Examples of this latter type of settlement are found at Al Mina in the east and Pithekoussai in the west. From about 750 BC

17420-444: Was influenced by neoplatonism . Founded by philosopher Plotinus , neoplatonism believes that the Sun is the symbol of The One, or The Universal Soul . It would make sense then that Copernicus would place the god-like figure at the center of the universe. Neoplatonist Nicholas of Cusa claimed the universe was infinite, containing multiple earths and suns. This changed the belief of a finite universe to an infinite one, which emphasized

17554-533: Was later recognized as one of the most important discoveries of modern science. The Indians believed in a cyclic universe related to three other beliefs: (i), time is endless and space has infinite extension; (ii), earth is not the center of the universe; and (iii), laws govern all development, including the creation and destruction of the universe. The Indians believed that there were three types of space, physiological, physical, and infinite space. The infinite space consists of undivided consciousness and everything that

17688-587: Was proposed by the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître in 1927 which was subsequently corroborated by Edwin Hubble 's discovery of the redshift in 1929 and later by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1964. These findings were a first step to rule out some of many alternative cosmologies . Since around 1990, several dramatic advances in observational cosmology have transformed cosmology from

17822-540: Was resolved when Edwin Hubble detected Cepheid Variables in the Andromeda Galaxy in 1923 and 1924. Their distance established spiral nebulae well beyond the edge of the Milky Way. Subsequent modelling of the universe explored the possibility that the cosmological constant , introduced by Einstein in his 1917 paper, may result in an expanding universe , depending on its value. Thus the Big Bang model

17956-402: Was the prevailing theory until the 16th century when Nicolaus Copernicus , and subsequently Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei , proposed a heliocentric system. This is one of the most famous examples of epistemological rupture in physical cosmology. Isaac Newton 's Principia Mathematica , published in 1687, was the first description of the law of universal gravitation . It provided

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