Cosmology in Milton's Paradise Lost

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “cosmos”

as “the world or universe as an ordered and
harmonious system,” from the Greek,
“kosmos,” referring to an ordered and/or
ornamental thing. When God created the world he had this in
mind. To have a harmonious system in the universe where
everything can live in peace and free of all worry. God was on
top and everything was peaceful. Until the angles in
Milton’s Paradise Lost had a fight. After the fight God
banished these bad angels and had the last part of his universe
created, hell. This completed a very complex picture of
Milton’s vision of the universe in the beginning. The
encyclopedic writers of the early Middle Ages communicated a
modest assortment of basic cosmological information, drawn
from a variety of ancient sources, especially Platonic and Stoic.
These writers proclaimed the sphericity of the earth, discussed
its circumference, and defined its climatic zones and division
into continents. They described the celestial sphere and the
circles used to map it; many revealed at least an elementary
understanding of the solar, lunar and other planetary motions.
They discussed the nature and size of the sun and moon, the
cause of eclipses, and a variety of metrological phenomena.
Another novelty was the frequent argument of the twelfth-
century authors that God limited His creative activity to the
moment of creation; thereafter, they held, the natural causes
that He had created directed the course of things. Twelfth-
century cosmologists stressed the unified, organic character of
the cosmos, ruled by a world soul and bound together by
astrological forces and the macrocosm-microcosm relationship.
In an important continuation of early medieval thought,
twelfth-century scholars described a cosmos that was
fundamentally homogeneous, composed of the same elements
from top to bottom: Aristotle’s quintessence or aether
and his radical dichotomy between the celestial and terrestrial
regions had not yet made their presence felt. Cosmology, like
so many other subjects, was transformed by the wholesale
translation of Greek and Arabic sources in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Specifically, the Aristotelian tradition
gained center stage in the thirteenth century and gradually
substituted its conception of the cosmos for that of Plato and
the early Middle Ages. This is not to suggest that Aristotle and
Plato disagreed on all the important issues; on many of the
basics they were in full accord. Aristotelians, like Platonists,
conceived the cosmos to be a great (but unquestionably finite)
sphere, with the havens above and the earth at the center. All
agreed that it had a beginning in time – although some
Aristotelians of the thirteenth century were prepared to argue
that this could not be established by philosophical arguments.
Nobody representing either school of thought doubted that the
cosmos was unique: although nearly everybody acknowledged
that God could have created multiple worlds, it is difficult to
assume that anybody seriously believed He had done so.
However, where Aristotle and Plato disagreed, the Aristotelian
world picture gradually displaced the Platonic. One of the major
differences concerned the issue of homogeneity. Aristotle
divided the cosmic sphere into two distinct regions, made of
different stuff and operating according to different principles.
Below the moon is the terrestrial region, formed out of the four
elements. This region is the scene of generation and
corruption, of birth and death, and of transient (typically
rectilinear) motions. Above the moon are the celestial spheres,
to which the fixed stars, the sun and the remaining planets are
attached. This celestial region, composed of aether or the
quintessence (the fifth element), is characterized by
unchanging perfection and uniform circular motion. Other
Aristotelian contributions to the cosmological picture were his
elaborate system of planetary spheres and the principles of
causation by which the celestial motions produced generation
and corruption in the terrestrial realm. A variety of Aristotelian
features, then, merged with traditional cosmological beliefs to
define the essentials of late medieval cosmology – a
cosmology that became the shared intellectual property of
educated Europeans in the course of the thirteenth century.
Universal agreement of such magnitude emerged not because
the educated felt compelled to yield to the authority of
Aristotle, but because his cosmological picture offered a
persuasive and satisfying account of the world as they
perceived it. Nonetheless, certain elements of Aristotelian
cosmology quickly became the objects of criticism and debate,
and it is here, in the attempt to flesh out and fine-tine
Aristotelian cosmology and bring it into harmony with the
opinions of other authorities and with biblical teaching, that
medieval scholars made their cosmological contribution. But the
most interesting point about Milton? s cosmology is this: why,
when he knew of the discoveries Galileo had made with his
telescope-as Book VIII clearly proves-and must have accepted
the validity of the Copernican cosmology, wich our planetary
system revolves, did Milton base his universe upon the
Ptolematic pattern? The answer lies in the literary advantages
of accepting the older though erreoneous concept: it was
known, and Copernicanism was strongly resisted and only
slowly accepted; the Ptolematic system was orderly, it laid
down limits within wich Milton found it easier to work, and it
made God and man the two ends of a chain-man can ascend,
onward and ever upward, to union with the divinity, and this
could never have happened in an open-ended Copernican
universe. From the early through the late Middle Ages,
Europeans moved from a disorganized, almost mystical way of
thinking about the universe to an acceptance of a well-ordered,
geocentric universe based upon the ideas of Greek
philosophers such as Ptolemy and Aristotle. In this universe,
the Earth was at the center and other heavenly bodies rotated
around it in a series of concentric spheres . The entire system
was powered by the primum mobile, or “Prime
Mover,” which was the outermost sphere set in motion
directly by God. This Primum Mobile trasformed the love of God
for mankind into energy and provided the impetus that made
the whole universe rotate; It took some very creative thinking
to make this universe work well. For example, the retrograde
motion of the planets in which they sometimes seemed to be
changing directions and moving backwards was explained by
way of “epicycles” (see the diagram on the
right below). Specifically, it was proposed that the planets
rotated around a center point fixed in place on the sphere of
that planet, causing the apparent change in the direction of
planetary motion. The seven known planets orbited the Earth,
each one? s atmosphere pushing round the one next inside it
by friction ; all of this motion created a beautiful “music
of the spheres” which could not be detected by humans
(at least not until after they died and went to heaven), but
which provided pleasure for angels and other supernatural
beings. The outermost orbit, that of the planet Saturn, was
itself surrounnded by the spere of the fixed stars (Book III,481)
and outside that again was the vast expanse of the waters of
firmament, also called by Milton the Crystalline firmament, as
distinct from the waters on the earth and nder the earth, had
been used by God as an insulating jacket designed to protect
His Chaos through wich Satan flies at the end of Book II. The
whole universe was suspended from Heaven (also frequently
called the Empyrean) by a golden chain. Since medieval
Europeans had no conception of a vacuum, it was believed that
the heavens were filled with a celestial fluid that flowed as the
spheres of the universe rotated, thus sustaining the motion of
the planets. In Heaven, God sits on His throne supported by
four seraphim, the most powerful of the nine orders of angels
wich had remained loyal. he middle Ages believed literally that
it was Divine Love that made the world go round. The rebel
tenth who had revolted under Satan had been hurled down into
another dread realm, Hell, created for them to occupy beyond
the domain of Chaos and Old Night to the outer surface of our
universe. Deceiving Uriel, regent of the sun, he flies down to
Eden. The subsequent movements of both Satan and the
guardians of Paradise are explained in Books IV and IX with det
ailed astronomical references. Just as the physical universe was
thought to be centered around the Earth, the psychological
universe of Medieval Europeans revolved around humans. Any
understanding of the psychology and behavior of individuals at
that time requires a consideration of the person’s
desire for eternal salvation. For Medieval European Christians,
time had essentially two divisions: The brief and insignificant
one in which they lived out their sinful lives, and the cosmically
enduring one in which the suffering or joy of their souls would
occur. In Medieval Europe, there was no room for abnormality
or nonconformity, as ANY deviation was considered to be the
work of the devil. A hierarchy was everywhere in all things.
People accepted their place in the social order no matter how
lowly it might have been, and everything in the world had the
potential for symbolizing something supernatural. People
perceived messages from God in virtually every natural and
human event. However, By the 17th century, the Copernican
and Galilean models gained ground, and replaced this
worldview. It was still an attractive philosophical construction
and one that persisted for a long time in the collective
Renaissance consciousness. Milton, who chose to use the
Ptolemaic cosmology for his Paradise Lost, was not alone in
Renaissance literature to hold on to the Medieval worldview, if
not in scientific earnest, as a poetical conceit (cf.
Donne’s “The First Anniversary” and
“Good Friday, 1613”). Nothing less than the
creation and ordering of the universe defines the scope
of Paradise Lost. The epic explores its cosmological theme in
theoretical discussions between Adam and Raphael and in the
narrator’s descriptions and metaphors. Further, Milton
imagines Satan surveying the universe in an expedition of
discovery through a new world in his fall from Heaven and his
passage through Chaos to Earth. Adam tries to understand the
earth’s physical place in the universe and its associated
ontological and theological value as the home of man. He
wonders aloud about “this Earth a spot, a grain,/ An
Atom, with the Firmament compar’d/ And all her
numbered Starrs, that seem to rowl /Spaces
incomprehensible” (PL8. 17-21). Milton asks us to
imagine the first man struggling with many of the same
questions a Renaissance thinker, contemplating new models of
the universe, must have considered. In response to the theory
that everything revolves around the sun and not the earth,
philosophers were forced to question the importance of
man’s role in the universal order. Raphael, responding
to Adam’s concerns, suggests there is no reason
“bodies bright and greater should not serve / The less
not bright, nor Heav’n such journies run / Earth sitting
still” (PL8. 87-9). Yet, the poem does not answer all
such questions directly, and scholars often find it difficult to
determine Milton’s attitude toward science. In these
debates, it is helpful to remember that Milton was not a
scientist but a theorist. He did not contribute to scientific
knowledge so much as to an understanding of what new
scientific ideas might mean to traditional Christian cosmology.
He meditates on this in conditional modes, as does Raphael in
his description of the universe: “What if the Sun/ Be
Centre to the World” (PL 8. 122-3). In the mid-
sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus and his followers, most
notably Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, disturbed the
entire Christian world by proposing a heliocentric model of the
universe that displaced the earth, and by extension humanity,
from the center. As the Reformation progressed, resulting
theological debates acquired political importance and Milton, as
a politically conscious theologian, addressed these issues
in Paradise Lost. Critics debate the extent of Milton’s
interest in the advancement of science. Catherine Gimelli
Martin notes that many find “his cosmology stands on
the wrong side of the great scientific revolution initiated by
Copernicus, furthered by Galileo, and completed
by Newton” (“What If the Sun Be
Centre” 233). However, Martin argues that classifying
Milton as scientifically backward is a mistake resulting from our
modern society: “we too easily forget that during this
formative period, no ‘advancement of
learning,’ scientific or otherwise, could yet be
conceived as succeeding apart from the requisite disclaimers
about the folly of seeking superhuman knowledge and the
proper assurances of humility before heights of Divine
Wisdom” (Martin 231-2). Modern readers tend to treat
scientific knowledge as inevitably progressive and therefore
expect in Milton an appreciation of our modern scientific values
and knowledge. As a rationalist, Milton must have admired the
new sciences but, as a classicist and a Christian theologian, he
had not yet placed scientific knowledge ahead of piety or
biblical knowledge. William Poole notes the danger of seeing in
Milton an advanced scientific philosopher and warns:
“we should be extremely wary forcing Milton into
clothes he does not fit” (“Milton and Science: A
Caveat” 18). However, within the middle ground,
scholars agree with Martin that Milton appreciated the value of
scientific thought and development, although he may have
doubted the reach of this branch of human knowledge.
Cosmology appears in Paradise Lost through direct scientific
references, incorporation of new scientific theories into various
characters’ worldviews, and warnings against seeking
beyond the limits of human knowledge. Martin observes:
“Galileo or his telescope is approvingly cited on five
separate occasions in Milton’s epic (the only
contemporary reference to appear at all)” (Martin 238).
These instances illustrate that such scientific discovery can be a
means of comprehending God’s glory and
“Almightie works” (PL 7. 12), as Raphael says
to Adam: “what thou canst attain, which best may
serve / To glorifie the Maker, and inferr / Thee also happier,
shall not be withheld” (PL 7. 115-7). Other scholars
note that Milton’s theories of social order in Paradise
Lost echo scientific thought. In The Matter of Revolution, John
Rogers contends that Milton’s work explores the extent
of the vitalist scientific movement that argued for “the
infusion of all material substance with the power of
reason” (The Matter of Revolution 1). Rogers finds this
theory at work in Milton’s understanding of creation
and his ordering of the universe, as well as in human systems
of society and government. Rather than relegating humanity to
the periphery with the earth in the heliocentric model, Rogers
suggests “Milton decentralizes divinity, representing an
action logically prior to the decentralizations of the
state” (The Matter of Revolution 113). Thus, Milton
uses new scientific theories of order to inform his consideration
of issues such as politics and free will in his epic poem. While
scientific arguments, such as a heliocentric universe, offer
positive contributions to his revolutionary political theory,
Milton hesitates before the theological ramifications. A
decentralized universe—or one centered on something other
than man, created in God’s image—requires each
object to behave predictably and suitably within the larger
scheme, “each in thir several active Sphears
assign’d” (PL 5. 478). If this pattern fails,
chaos will result. As Rogers notes: “Satan, in Book
Two, promises Chaos that he will work to return to its original
chaotic state the belated imposition of creation. . . The
possibility of a chaotic resurgence has no meaningful role in the
poem’s cosmology, but its expression voices
Milton’s fear, perhaps not so unsound, of an ever-
encroaching political chaos” (The Matter of
Revolution 142). In the wake of the English Civil War, anarchy
was too tangibly the political counterpart of this return to
chaos. Thus, Milton depicts the anxiety resulting from new and
often unwelcome discoveries and theories, as Raphael
cautions: “God to remove his wayes from human
sense,/ Plac’d Heav’n from Earth so farr, that
earthly sight, / If it presume, might err in things too high,/ and
no advantage gain” (PL 8. 19-22). Scholars currently
seem to be in agreement that Milton was aware of scientific
developments and their implications. Whether we can
understand Milton’s philosophy in terms of scientific
theory, or even know Milton’s conception of the extent
of appropriate human knowledge, has yet to be determined.
Although Adam may be “led on, yet sinless, with desire
to know/ What neerer might concern him” (PL 7. 61-2),
Raphael’s warning to him concludes: “Sollicit
not thy thoughts with matters hid, / Leave them to God above,
him serve and feare . . Heav’n is for thee too high / To
know what passes there; be lowlie wise” (PL 8. 167-
173). What knowledge glorifies God and what knowledge—too
great for human understanding—threatens the very systems it
seeks to explain? Milton was likely still uncertain about this
issue as he sent Adam and Eve forth from Eden: “High
in Front advanc’t, / the brandisht Sword of God before
them blaz’d/ Fierce as a Comet” (PL 12. 632-
4).