We promised ourselves we would hold off as long as we could, but it's time for a lesson in medieval cosmology. Though there was a lively debate among intellectuals of the time, the prevailing belief was the old Ptolemaic model of the earth at the center of the universe. Then everything else in the sky rotated around the earth in its own sphere. The bigger the sphere, the higher and more important it is in the chain of being, and has control over the smaller spheres. It was also all mixed up with religious beliefs, so that stars and planets were seen as holy, or at least closer to God, the "prime mover" who set everything into motion. That's a lot of explanation for the use of the word "reverend" in line 11 to describe sunbeams, but it will keep coming up, so we thought we might as well.
Donne shows his knowledge of recent scientific discovery in talking of the sun's beams. It was a recent idea that humans saw objects because of the light cast on them. You can see in other poems by Donne references to "eye beams," the metaphorical light our eyes cast on objects.
We promised ourselves we would hold off as long as we could, but it's time for a lesson in medieval cosmology. Though there was a lively debate among intellectuals of the time, the prevailing belief was the old Ptolemaic model of the earth at the center of the universe. Then everything else in the sky rotated around the earth in its own sphere. The bigger the sphere, the higher and more important it is in the chain of being, and has control over the smaller spheres. It was also all mixed up with religious beliefs, so that stars and planets were seen as holy, or at least closer to God, the "prime mover" who set everything into motion. That's a lot of explanation for the use of the word "reverend" in line 11 to describe sunbeams, but it will keep coming up, so we thought we might as well.Donne shows his knowledge of recent scientific discovery in talking of the sun's beams. It was a recent idea that humans saw objects because of the light cast on them. You can see in other poems by Donne references to "eye beams," the metaphorical light our eyes cast on objects.
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