Changes

Since the Copernican Revolution some three hundred years ago, science has increasingly alienated us from the cosmos. But we can reverse this trend by appreciating modern cosmology as a metaphor for some of our most intimate psychological and spiritual realities. Yes, the modern cosmological metaphor with its invisible matter curving spacetime with its universal Hubble expansion is more abstract then the simpler transition from geocentric to heliocentric astronomy. Even that transition required our ancestors (and some modern urban dwellers) to think in new and disturbing ways that violated their unreflective sense perceptions. Modern cosmology, because of its more abstract nature, requires an even greater effort at re-visioning. However, this effort may restore a little of the wonder and devotion that Dante expressed seven hundred years ago in The Divine Comedy, his magisterial cosmological vision that combined Christianity with the geocentric cosmology of his day. In Paradiso XXIV, 130-147, Dante sings of his overwhelming spiritual-cosmological vision and echoes the theme of the double nature of soul:

Since the Copernican Revolution some three hundred years ago, science has increasingly alienated us from the cosmos. But we can reverse this trend by appreciating modern cosmology as a metaphor for some of our most intimate psychological and spiritual realities. Yes, the modern cosmological metaphor with its invisible matter curving spacetime with its universal Hubble expansion is more abstract then the simpler transition from geocentric to heliocentric astronomy. Even that transition required our ancestors (and some modern urban dwellers) to think in new and disturbing ways that violated their unreflective sense perceptions. Modern cosmology, because of its more abstract nature, requires an even greater effort at re-visioning. However, this effort may restore a little of the wonder and devotion that Dante expressed seven hundred years ago in The Divine Comedy, his magisterial cosmological vision that combined Christianity with the geocentric cosmology of his day. In Paradiso XXIV, 130-147, Dante sings of his overwhelming spiritual-cosmological vision and echoes the theme of the double nature of soul:

    I believe in one God-sole,

*I believe in one God-sole,

    eternal-He who, motionless, moves all

*eternal-He who, motionless, moves all

    the heavens with His love and his desire;

*the heavens with His love and his desire;

     . . . .

     . . . .

    This is the origin, this is the spark

*This is the origin, this is the spark

    that then extends into a vivid flame

*that then extends into a vivid flame

    and, like a star in heaven, glows in me.[15]

*and, like a star in heaven, glows in me.[15]

 

==Acknowledgments==

==Acknowledgments==