Cosmography
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Cosmography is the science that maps the general features of the universe; describes both heaven and Earth (but without encroaching on geography or astronomy).
The 14th century book 'Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara'ib al-mawjudat by Persian physician Zakariya al-Qazwini is considered to be an early work of cosmography.
In 1551, Martín Cortés de Albacar, from Zaragoza, Spain, published Breve compendio de la esfera y del arte de navegar, translated into English and reprinted several times and of great influence in Britain for many years. He proposed the spherical charts and mentioned the magnetic deviation an existence of magnetic poles.
Peter Heylyn's 1652 book "Cosmographie" (enlarged from his "Microcosmos" of 1621) was one of the earliest attempts to describe the complete world in English being the first known description of Australia and among the first of California. The book comprises 4 sections, examining the geography, politics, and cultures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with an addendum on Terra Incognita, including Australia, and extending to Utopia, Fairyland, and the "Land of Chivalrie".
In 1659, Thomas Porter published a smaller but extensive "Compendious Description of the Whole World" which also included a Chronology of world events from Creation forward. These were all part of a major trend in the European Renaissance to explore (and perhaps comprehend) the known world.
The word was commonly used by Buckminster Fuller in his lectures.
In astrophysics, the term "cosmography" is beginning to be used to describe attempts to determine the large-scale geometry and kinematics of the observable universe, independent of any specific cosmological theory or model.[1][2]
[edit] References
- ^ Weinberg, Steven (1972). Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity. Wiley. pp. 407-463. ISBN 0471925675.
- ^ Visser, Matt (2005). "Cosmography: Cosmology without the Einstein equations". General Relativity and gravitation 37 (9): 1541-1548. doi:. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0411131.
[edit] See also
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