Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
(...) The book is a bit like the endless reflections you get in a hall of mirrors so that everything is real and at the same time nothing is real.(...)I love it that there isn't a clearcut solution to the mystery!
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Too right for the both, Bookpossum.
Questions, questions……….I don't know where I'm at with this story. This book about ideas and existence keeps me thinking about the state of science at that time.
Now I am figuring out what the importance of astrology is here. There seems to an emphasis in this novel on astrology, which was in that age, a seperate science form astronomy. Only from the 18th century they were seen as one science and treated thus.
Under the Islam many important works from Greek astronomy were translated into Arabic and came to Europe only from the 12th century. They were responsible for the development of an independent astronomy in the West; through their experiments. In Samarkand (Uzbekistan) I saw the beautiful 15th century underground observatory of Ulug Bek, the famous astronomer, which was destroyed in the 16th century by fundamentalists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulugh_Beg_Observatory
Also in the West there had been influence and pressure from the Catholic Church on these matters as it touched upon the idea and views on God and the world.
The Venetian in the novel seems to be condescending to Hoja about his astronomical knowledge and I wonder to what extent this is valid, just?
Spoiler:
'Two days later, at midnight, he took up the question again: how could I be so sure that the moon was the closest planet? Perhaps we were letting ourselves be taken in by an optical illusion. It was then I spoke to him for the first time about my studies in astronomy and explained briefly the basic principles of Ptolemaic cosmography. I saw that he listened with interest, but was reluctant to say anything that would reveal his curiosity. A little later, when I stopped talking, he said he too had knowledge of Ptolemy but this did not change his suspicion that there might be a planet nearer than the moon. Towards morning he was talking about that planet as if he had already obtained proofs of its existence.
The next day he thrust a badly translated manuscript into my hand. In spite of my poor Turkish I was able to decipher it: I 'believe it was a second-hand summary of Almageist drawn up not from the original but from another summary; only the Arabic names of the planets interested me, and I was in no mood to get excited about them at that time. When Hoja saw I was unimpressed and soon put the book aside, he was angry. He’d paid seven gold pieces for this volume, it was only right that I should set aside my conceit, turn the pages and take a look at it. Like an obedient student, I opened the book again and while patiently turning its pages came across a primitive diagram. It showed the planets in crudely drawn spheres arranged in relation to the Earth. Although the positions of the spheres were correct the illustrator had no idea of the distances between them. Then my eye was caught by a tiny planet between the moon and the Earth; examining it a little more carefully, I could tell from the relative freshness of the ink that it had been added to the manuscript later. I went over the entire manuscript and gave it back to Hoja. He told me he was going to find that planet'(23)