Did Dante anticipate Einstein?

A recent article has stated that Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy offers a cosmology that closely resembles what Einstein expressed in his general theory of Relativity. Is there any truth in this?

In another post in this blog I summarized the history of cosmology, from the geocentric Greek version formalized by Ptolemy, to the modern version by Copernicus, Kepler and Newton. It is evident that Dante, who wrote the Divine Comedy at the beginning of the fourteenth century, could not know about modern cosmology, but he did know the Ptolemaic system, which he adopted in its entirety, with an important addition.

The relationship between the systems of Dante and Einstein was pointed out in an article published in Scientific American in August 1976, written by J.J. Callahan and entitled The curvature of space in a finite universe. This article compares Newton's universe (finite, non-homogeneous, Euclidean and with one center), Leibnitz's (infinite, homogeneous, Euclidean and without a center) and Einstein's (finite, homogeneous, non-Euclidean and without a center). By adapting to Euclid's plane geometry, the first two can be represented by graphic models as those in the attached figure.

Newton's and Leibnitz's cosmological models

Einstein's, on the other hand, does not conform to Euclid's geometry, but to Riemann's, and cannot be represented by a simple graph, requiring a more complex graph, as in the attached figure, made up of two apparently independent parts, which share a certain number of nodes between one part and the other (those that are numbered), which lets us go from one to the other while traversing it.

Einstein's cosmological model

The nodes of the three graphs could represent, for instance, galaxies, and the arcs the distances separating them. In the case of Newton and Leibnitz, if they had had the idea of proposing models like these, the nodes would probably have represented stars.

Let us now look at Dante's cosmology. On his journey, accompanied by Virgil, Dante first passes through Hell, in the depths of the Earth, and then through Purgatory, located on a mountain at the antipodes of Jerusalem. Finally, accompanied by Beatrice, Dante travels through the heavens. The initial heavenly cosmology is that of Ptolemy: nine concentric spheres corresponding to the seven "planets" of antiquity (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile or Crystalline, a transparent sphere whose movement drives all the others. The nine spheres move around the Earth in such a way that the fastest is the outermost and the slowest is the Moon.

But in the last part of the Divine Comedy, Dante and Beatrice leave Ptolemaic cosmology to enter the Empyrean, the abode of God. This area is also divided into nine spheres, the speed of which grows towards the center, the opposite of that in our universe, as it is God, who is the center, who makes them rotate. The nine spheres are inhabited by the nine kinds of angels, but in the Empyrean we can find the same blessed souls that Dante had already encountered on his journey through the Ptolemaic sky. Dante's cosmology, therefore, is made up of two independent "graphs," connected by the fact that there are people who exist simultaneously in certain places in both graphs.

Dante's cosmology therefore resembles Einstein's a little more than Newton's and Leibnitz's. However, the similarities should not be exaggerated, for the differences are also substantial. Most important is the fact that Dante's is based on Ptolemaic cosmology, with the Earth in the less important of the two centers. The other, the most important, is God.

We can also point out that the Divine Comedy refutes one of the myths that modern man has invented to denigrate the Middle Ages: that they believed that the Earth was the most important object in the universe. It is said that Copernicus's cosmology not only took away the central place of the Earth, but also made it smaller and removed its importance. Let's see what Dante says about this in song 22 of Paradise (verses 133 to 138):

Col viso ritornai per tutte quante

le sette spere, e vidi questo globo

tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;

e quel consiglio per migliore approbo

che l'ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa

chiamar si puote veramente probo.

Which can be translated thus:

I looked back through the seven spheres

and thus saw this globe (the Earth)

that I smiled at its vile countenance;

and I think it is better advised

who thinks it inferior; and who prefers the other (world)

can be called truly upright.

And as for the size of the Earth, Ptolemy himself had said in chapter 5 of book I of his work, He Mathematike Syntaxis, whose Arabic name is Almagest, and was used as a textbook during the Middle Ages:

The Earth, in relation to the distance of fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be considered as a mathematical point.

In other words, the Earth is the vilest thing in the universe, as well as the smallest. And the cultured people of the Middle Ages knew this perfectly well. 

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread on Literature and Cinema: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca