عنوان

Copernican Cosmotheism:

LA108312

انگلیسی

Copernican Cosmotheism:

[Article]

Johann Jacob Zimmermann and the Mystical Light

Mike A. Zuber

Leiden

Brill

Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1642-1693) is a forgotten proponent of heliocentrism in seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany. In Scriptura Sacra Copernizans (1690), he located himself within an unusual genealogy of Copernicanism, in which the usual heroes of the scientific revolution were missing. And in a pseudonymous work, Exercitatio theoricorum Copernico-coelestium (1689), there was no holding back for theological speculations. Zimmermann's cosmology carried metaphysical and especially religious significance. Always interpreted morally and spiritually as well, light and darkness were responsible for the matter and fundamental physical forces of his world. In spite of Zimmermann's appeal to Italian philosophers of the Renaissance, he was much more influenced by Johann Arndt and Jacob Boehme. Their contemplation of nature, and the sun in particular, was taken up by Zimmermann and carried further. According to him, light had Trinitarian properties because of which it was even identified with God. This latent cosmotheism can be placed in the context of contemporary debates on Boehme's orthodoxy and Pietist enthusiasm. Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1642-1693) is a forgotten proponent of heliocentrism in seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany. In Scriptura Sacra Copernizans (1690), he located himself within an unusual genealogy of Copernicanism, in which the usual heroes of the scientific revolution were missing. And in a pseudonymous work, Exercitatio theoricorum Copernico-coelestium (1689), there was no holding back for theological speculations. Zimmermann's cosmology carried metaphysical and especially religious significance. Always interpreted morally and spiritually as well, light and darkness were responsible for the matter and fundamental physical forces of his world. In spite of Zimmermann's appeal to Italian philosophers of the Renaissance, he was much more influenced by Johann Arndt and Jacob Boehme. Their contemplation of nature, and the sun in particular, was taken up by Zimmermann and carried further. According to him, light had Trinitarian properties because of which it was even identified with God. This latent cosmotheism can be placed in the context of contemporary debates on Boehme's orthodoxy and Pietist enthusiasm.

2014

215-245

Aries

14/2

1570-0593

Copernicanism

cosmotheism

Jacob Boehme

Johann Arndt

Johann Jacob Zimmermann

mysticism

radical Pietism

Mike A. Zuber

10.1163/15700593-01402004

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y