Well, now we have finally come full circle. To create solid and stable convictions in the minds of the masses, there must be something which appeals to the eye; a popular science, sustained only on theoretical math models, will never be anything but feeble and vacillating. In other words science, in the absence of philosophy, art and culture, is a lame cripple that limps and is ultimately doomed to a wheelchair to all those but the specialists.
I previously said that we come from a beginning
that's called the Big Bang and an evolution that science has been able to delineate with ever greater precision, etc. This so called the Big Bang is really a scientific catch phrase,
which recognizes that just as the universe is in progressive expansion, so it began in a state of infinite contraction, absolute concentration of mass, energy, form and the formless that unexpectedly was thrown around in an immense explosion. Out of this total chaos the mass condensed into stars, which filled the void with the galaxies, which, in turn, begot satellites called planets that encircled stars in a complex and multitude array of solar systems, including ours with planet earth, which under the sway of evolution gave way to an efflorescence of life, including yours and my own.
Now what science has theorized and developed mathematical models to prove, the ancient Greeks in their fertile imaginations, posited, effectively, in an alternative mythology: the world is created out of Chaos. A tale like no other, that moves ever further backwards in time, searching for the beginning, the beginning of time which never was. In that distant age there lived, as there had always lived, a god named Chaos. He was alone, and around him there was nothing but utter emptiness. In those times there was neither sun, nor light, nor earth, nor sky. There was nothing but the formless void and thick darkness stretching to infinity. Untold centuries rolled by like this until, at last, Chaos grew tired of being alone and so, reaching out over the entire void decided to bring the goddess Earth into being. She was lovely beyond description; filled with strength and life, she grew and spread and enfolded huge expanses with her embrace. On her our world was created. Then Chaos created fearsome Tartarus and black Night, and straight after that the lovely and radiant Day.
I can think of no better, nor more elegant, metaphor for the Big Bang than this.
Much later we see Pythagoras elucidating his tetractys, a diagram showing how X is the sum of I, II, III, IIII, which the Neoplatonists attached
enormous significance to this simple fact, having to do with geometric projection and the mapping of space and correspondences between man's earthly works and the cosmos: about which Pythagoras, Euclid, Ptolemy, Zoroaster, and Plato interpreted as a
harmonious complex of concentric spheres and other "perfect" shapes and values, moved by number-based music. Art, especially the arts of poetry, architecture, sculpture and painting reflect cosmic perfection by imitating nature's number-structure.
In light of such myth and esoteric thinking the image of Vitruvian man immediately comes to mind, which is not only concerned with geometric figures, especially the circle and the square, but with the power these shapes have to generate others - shapes that were miniatures of the "parent" form. This concept of the generation of one form by another had a curious aspect: the male human body, in line with suggestions made by Vitruvius, was seen as the generator of squares and circles. In Leonardo's interpretation of Vitruvius, for example, the circle was the "mother" of the man, since his umbilicus is at the center of the circle mapped through the man's outstretched arms, slightly raised, and legs planted apart. Alternatively, when the man puts his feet together and extends his arms at right angles to his body, the gesture generates a square centered on the man's penis. Thus the man born of the circle (cosmos) "fathers" the square (earth). One imitation of Leonardo's Vitruvian man, by the Milanese theorist Cesare Cesarino, even shows the figure with an erection. The square is thus shown at the very moment of "conception."
Now under the sway of Italian civic humanism and ancient Greek geometry, XVI century architects devised building plans to interface such Neoplatonic thought, with Euclidian-Pythagorean postulates and Vitruvian design to render the very conception of a building laden with symbolic intentions:
micro and macrocosm, earth and cosmos, human and divine. Thus it was with Bamante's plan for New St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, who was influenced by the basic Leonardsque arrangement of a Vitruvian inspired centrally planned church. Yet Bramante was interested in generating and multiplying shapes. Looked at in more detail his general scheme consists of a Greek cross with four equilateral branches or arms, within which are symmetrically clustered chapels and miniature Greek crosses that, together, make up the basic cube of the church's body. The arms of these smaller crosses consist of further miniatures. And
their corners, in turn, are filled in with yet smaller chapels and niches. the principle is that of Chinese boxes - or, for that matter, fractals. So we can speak of a single macrochapel formed by the main circular dome, four sets of what I will call maxichaples, sixteen minichapels, and thirty-two microchapels. The two later groups, however, the minis and the micros, consist of half-domes rather than complete ones. Also, the minis and the macros that face toward the central piers are broken through to provide access to the macrochapel. Each new "generation" of chapels is thus precisely four times the frequency of its predecessor.
I don’t know how or if such esoteric schemes can lend themselves over to science today, however they are useful in helping us appreciate the flights of the mind that, over the centuries, had been the very driving forces that eventually gave rise to scientific empirical thought. Collectively and cross-culturally then, in a temporal continuum, they represent a kind of
prisca scientifica (primordial science), which has been of great contribution to civilization and human development.