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The Moon is at once a face with a thousand
expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history
it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every
walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode
of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized
Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan
van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery
has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon
has been visualized in Western culture through the ages,
revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers,
artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do
this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate
mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance
of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn
of modern science.
Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth
century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features
named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's
Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre
monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and
Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows
how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled
to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon
to a new level in human awareness.
The effect on human imagination has been
cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets,
is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations
played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time.
We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from
a "perfect" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding
changes in verbal and visual expression.
Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept
of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we
know best -- the Earth itself. And when we finally establish
lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's
surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and
mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.
Scott L. Montgomery is a geologist and
independent scholar who has written widely on various topics
related to the history of science, art and science, language
studies, education, and cultural criticism. His most recent
books include The Scientific Voice and Movements
of Knowledge: The Role of Translation in the Making of Modern
Science. He lives in Seattle.
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