Conversing with the Planets: How Science and Myth Invented the Cosmos

Tells how ancient cultures viewed the sky and used it in their mythology, showing that people from the ancient Mayans to the thinkers of the Renaissance had made accurate records of celestial phenomena

Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, seeks here to integrate--in his view, reintegrate--the rational universe with a more comforting model that takes into account "the interrelationship between matter and spirit." Such ancient astronomically inclined peoples as the Babylonians and the Mayans, he argues, made direct connections between events in the night sky and those on earth, and hence between nature and culture. The Mayans, for example, used their observations of the path of Venus to create a culturally useful myth about planting. While attempting "to dispel some of the misconceptions we have about our ancient predecessors," Aveni the anthropologist ( Empires of Time ) leads Aveni the astronomer ( The Sky in Mayan Literature ) into giving these ancient pre-scientists what seems like more credit than is their due. In the end, his thesis spins out of orbit into deep New Age space; for a more balanced work of comparative astronomy, see E. C. Krupp's Beyond the Blue Horizon .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

How ``the common sense of one era becomes the superstition of another,'' by Aveni, astronomer-anthropologist at Cornell and author of Empires of Time (1989). Aveni wants to understand how our ancestors made scientific discoveries, in order to know how we make them. The key is imagination, which ``makes visible that which before was invisible.'' In the minds of ancient Greece and Maya, he contends, nature was not compartmentalized, and humans and nature were intimately linked. Aveni traces this worldview through the history of naked-eye astronomy, focusing on the planets, especially Venus. He shows how ancient astronomers were first-rate observers, able to trace the strange motions of our sister planet through the skies. But unlike modern astronomers, who describe these motions in mechanical terms, the ancients saw them through the lenses of metaphor and analogy. The movements of Venus were those of a goddess, wanton or chaste according to the season, and intimately allied to cycles of human gestations, rainfall, the lives of bees, and so on. In time, this understanding gave rise to the queen of ancient sciences, astrology. Aveni acknowledges that such thinking seems antiquated today (he calls astrology a ``misfit''), but he does lend a sympathetic ear to the Gaia hypothesis, which perceives the earth as a single living being, analogous to an ancient Greek goddess. Aveni suggests that truth, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder, and that modern science may well be yet another mythology. As this troubling conclusion indicates, his is a brilliant effort, bubbling with ideas and showing unusual sympathy for outmoded points of view. (Thirty b&w illustrations--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Aveni, a specialist in the interconnection between anthropology and astronomy who teaches at Colgate University, devotes much of his attention in this book to ancient astrology, especially that of the Mayans and the peoples of the Middle East. He emphasizes that the way they viewed the sky was closely integrated with their religious beliefs and with the structure of their societies. He pleads for an understanding of their astrological systems that takes into account their context and that does not insist upon applying modern criteria for scientific work. Unfortunately, the last few pages of the book contain a superficial pastiche of current antiscientific fads, which does little to support the main thesis of the volume. Recommended with some reservations.
- Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.