Paradigms for a metaphorology.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

Metaphorized Cosmology 107
pernicus: on the one hand, the dreaded dethronement of man through the demise
of geocentrism; on the other, the welcomed liberation from anthropocentric teleology
through the same process. What was overlooked, however, is that Copernicus
sacrificed the ballast of a cosmology whose effectiveness was purely metaphorical
precisely in order to salvage for man his theoretical determination as contemplator
coeli, a being fit for the truth and rationally equal to the cosmos. He thereby set out
to redeem at a higher level the principle of omnia hominum causa as well, reprised
in the ‘world made for us’ (mundus propter nos conditus) of the dedicatory preface to
the “Revolutiones.” 21 Copernicus preferred to discard the image for the sake of the
matter to which it referred; yet as we have seen, what prevailed in the reception history
of Copernicanism was the eye-catching superficiality of the metaphor instead.
Metaphorical realism is a factor of the first importance in the formation of
historical life. No paradigm is better suited to demonstrating this than the one
discussed here. Subtle idealizations, such as those undertaken by Copernicus on
the model of teleological anthropocentrism, fail to take hold and revert to their
metaphorical quality. The replacement of the central position by a central function
proved unable to establish itself as a legitimate ‘transition’, even if it was wrested
as an ‘achievement’ from man’s metaphorical eccentricity; this much has already
emerged from our discussion of truth metaphorics. Indeed, the direction in which
the metaphorization of the Copernican cosmology unfolded was by no means so
rigidly predetermined as Nietzsche, for one, would have us believe. An important
role—albeit one we can no longer adequately comprehend today, although its effects
continue to be felt in the axiomatic foundation of astromomy—was played by
the ‘stellarization’ of the earth, its classification among the other heavenly bodies.
Theoretically, this had the sobering consequence (first put into practice by Galileo)
that the earth could now be taken as the starting point for physical extrapolations,
and thus utilized as a cosmological paradigm. But Copernican pathos sought and
found food for metaphor in this: Galileo prides himself on having raised the earth
to the rank of a star, and he lets the foolish Simplicio (in the “Dialogo”) give vent to
his violent antipathy on just this point. Many specific interests of Galilean research
and speculation can only be understood against the metaphorical background of
the earth’s stellar ‘elevation’. Aristotle had been able to defend himself against the
worldview of the Pythagoreans by drawing attention to the logical consequence
that would arise from their construction, namely, that the earth would be one of
the stars (ἓν τῶν ἄστρων) 22 —a consequence whose absurdity he took entirely for
granted, probably due to the unquestioned and unattainable divinity in which the
stars still stood for him. Notwithstanding the altered theological premises, the
Middle Ages proved reluctant to challenge Aristotle’s authority on this point, in-
21. [Copernicus, On the Revolutions, trans. Edward Rosen (Cracow: Polish Scientific Publishers,
1978), 4.]
22. De caelo II 13; 293a21–23; 296a25. [Aristotle, On the Heavens, trans. Guthrie, 217.]