Pillars of Creation in Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) Devotion! daughter of astronomy! An undevout astronomer is mad. ~ Edward Young (Night Thoughts, Night 9, l.769) WE previously posted comments by Scottish theologian and astronomer Thomas Dick (1774−1857) on the Religious Benefits of Astronomy from the Introduction he wrote to Elijah Burritt’s Geography of the Heavens. […]| Christian Platonism
Robert Fludd, Jacob’s Ladder AUGUSTINE famously distinguished between two powers or levels of human reason, which he called lower reason (ratio inferior) and higher reason (ratio superior). These refer, respectively, to discursive reasoning (ratiocination) and intellection (immediate grasp), and correspond to what in the Platonic/Neoplatonic tradition are called dianoia and nous. Augustine’s views, of course, […]| Christian Platonism
SENECA the Younger was, in philosophical orientation, a Roman Stoic. But it seems fair to say his was an eclectic Stoicism. (For example, one of the philosophers he quotes most often was Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism.) This letter to his friend Lucilius discusses a divine spirit within us, functioning as some combination of Higher […]| Christian Platonism