Astronomical Myths: Based on Flammarions's "History of the Heavens"

In our former chapters we have gained some idea of the general structure of the heavens as represented by ancient philosophers, and we no longer require to know what was thought...

When we look upon the multitude of heavenly bodies with which the celestial vault is strewed, our attention is naturally arrested by certain groupings of brilliant stars, appare...

After the writers mentioned in the last chapter a long interval elapsed without any progress being made in the knowledge of the shape or configuration of the earth. From the fal...

The opinions of thinkers on the nature of time have been very varied. Some have considered time as an absolute reality, which is exactly measured by hours, days, and years, and...

We have seen in the earlier chapters on the systems of the ancients and their ideas of the world how everything was once supposed to have exclusive reference to man, and how he...

The legends that were for so many ages prevalent in Europe had their foundation in the attempt to make the accounts of Scripture and the ideas and dogmas of the Fathers of the C...

Among the most remarkable of the constellations is a group of seven stars arranged in a kind of triangular cluster, and known as the Pleiades. It is not, strictly speaking, one...

Astronomy is an ancient science; and though of late it has made a fresh start in new regions, and we are opening on the era of fresh and unlooked-for discoveries which will soon...

Our study of the opinions of the ancients on the various phenomena of astronomy, leads us inevitably to the discussion of their astrology, which has in every age and among every...

With respect to the shape and position of the earth itself in the material universe, and the question of its motion or immobility, we cannot go so far back as in the case of the...

Many and various have been the ideas entertained by reflecting men in former times on the nature and construction of the heavenly vault, wherein appeared those stars and constel...

The zodiac, as already stated, is the course in the heavens apparently pursued by the sun in his annual journey through the stars. Let us consider for a moment, however, the ser...

The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to many controversies as to their ori...

Nature presents herself to us under various aspects. At times, it may be, she presents to us the appearance of discord, and we fail to perceive the unity that pervades the whole...

Perhaps the most anxious question that has been asked of the astronomer is when the world is to come to an end. It is a question which, of course, he has no power to answer with...