The Harmony of the Spheres
The planets sing — but we have heard it since birth, and so, like the smith beside his hammer, we no longer hear it at all.
The Pythagoreans noticed that musical intervals correspond to simple whole-number ratios of string lengths, and concluded that the same ratios must govern the spacing and speed of the heavenly bodies. If number rules both the lyre and the cosmos, then the planets, sweeping through the heavens, must produce tones — a vast, perpetual chord. We do not hear this music, they said, only because it has sounded ceaselessly since our birth. Plato dressed the doctrine in myth, seating a Siren on each whirling sphere, while Aristotle reported the idea respectfully and then rejected it as physically impossible.
How it traveled
- TimaeusAthens · -360explains
- De animae procreatione in TimaeoChaeronea · 120explains
Key passages(19)
Guide for the Perplexed · Moses ben Maimon (Rambam) · 1190 CE
קולות השמיםהמולת הגלגלים1 מן הדעות העתיקות הנפוצות אצל הפילוסופים וכלל בני האדם, היא שתנועת הגלגלים גורמת לקולות מבהילים מאוד ואדירים. ראייתם לכך היתה שהם אמרו: כשהגרמים הקטנים הנמצאים אצלנו נעים תנוע
Tap to expand
De animae procreatione in Timaeo · Plutarch
De animae procreatione in Timaeo · Plutarch
De animae procreatione in Timaeo · Plutarch
De animae procreatione in Timaeo · Plutarch
De animae procreatione in Timaeo · Plutarch