Maciej Jasiński

Karen ní Mheallaigh, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination. Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020 (Greek Culture in the Roman World), DOI 10.1017/9781108685726, ss. 322

Karen ní Mheallaigh’s study The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination (Cambridge 2020) aims to discuss how the Moon was present in ancient Greek culture, literature, and science. The subject is examined through the lens of literary studies, yet the author remains open to the perspectives offered by the history of science. The book analyzes the motif of the Moon in Greek literature and natural philosophy: myths, various opinions about its physical nature, deliberations about its inhabitants, and imaginary lunar journeys. The subjects addressed in the book are thoroughly examined in the context of the era. The author, however, does not define the scope of the book precisely and tacitly omits the Moon in Roman literature and the history of astronomy unless it relates to natural philosophy. She also makes groundless guesses about scientific instruments in antiquity and compares ancient literary fiction to modern scientific knowledge.

The correspondence with Stanisław Lubieniecki (1623–1675) is the fourth most voluminous in the corpus of letters of Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) – there are over ninety letters they wrote to each other between 1664 and 1673. Their positions in the learned world, however, were very unequal. Hevelius was a reputed astronomer and a fellow of the Royal Society, while Lubieniecki was an amateur interested in comets and astronomy. In this paper, I present the goals they have in this correspondence and the ways in which they tried to achieve them, and I try to explain why their correspondence was so numerous and long-lasting.