This chapter inquires the significance of objectivity within the democratic epistemological framework, tracing its origins to the dual naturalistic cosmology where Nature is perceived as autonomous and humans as impartial observers. Central to objectivity and “disinterestedness” is the belief that the external world remains impervious to subjective influence. This idea is exemplified in the association of objectivity with technological advancements and human-made machinery. Ezrahi contends that despite being a human creation, science has attained autonomous status as a source of truths, reintegrating Nature into Culture and emphasizing the importance of humility, given that science itself adheres to natural laws. He also underscores the complex position of humanity within the Nature/Culture dichotomy, where the human body is part of Nature, while human creations belong to Culture. Nature embodies necessity and unchangeable laws, constraining human freedom, whereas Culture represents voluntarism, freedom, human interiority, and social behavior. The chapter illustrates how scientists and politicians leverage their scientific authority to project objectivity and disinterest, legitimizing government policies while suppressing dissent and effectively depoliticizing decisions. The text emphasizes that the concept of external Nature linked to objectivity is a product of Western cosmology and not universally applicable.

In this chapter, Ezrahi analyzes the influence of philosophers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Vico, and Rousseau, as well as the Federalists, on the shift from a medieval monistic cosmology based on God to a modern dualistic cosmology, emphasizing dynamic Nature and human agency. These thinkers played a pivotal role in shaping a political order and obedience independent of divine authority, turning to Nature as the source of laws and a check on human actions. This transformation led to the emergence of new concepts, such as the state, freedom, and equality, despite their being imaginative. Hobbes pioneered the use of metaphors and empirical sciences in civic affairs. Spinoza adopted a detached scientific perspective, viewing human emotions and drives as natural phenomena. Locke presented empiricism and probability to inform political decisions through an understanding of human judgment. Vico proclaimed that political systems are based on collective political imagination, facilitating the construction of institutions and political processes rooted in commonsense. Rousseau further developed the dichotomy of Nature/Culture, highlighting its impact on politics, education, and ethics. The American Revolution marked the merging of objective Nature and human agency, giving rise to the idea of employing science to manipulate Nature.

In this chapter, Ezrahi argues that the massive discrediting of claims of objectivity has deeply weakened the social authority of professional communities and institutions – governments, scientists, and economists – which have heavily resorted to professionalism in order to seemingly depoliticize decisions and empower their legitimacy. The dual role of objectivity norms and objectification strategies in depoliticizing decisions while concealing value-political choices is scrutinized. The delicate balance between overpoliticization and over-objectification is examined, emphasizing the challenges faced by governments in navigating transparency and political functionality. The chapter traces the interconnected erosion of the transcendental concept of Nature, democratic culture, and the rule of law. The loss of objectivity in law, exemplified by challenges to the Israeli Supreme Court, underscores the broader decline in civic solidarity. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the cultural and epistemological crises facing modern democracy, raising critical questions about resources available for shaping new imaginaries of self-governance and justice, drawing on historical cosmological transformations.

Blander’s epilogue contextualizes Ezrahi’s current work within his previous research corpus as well as interweaving new concepts: depth skepticism, modest democracy, and the right to dream. Blander describes three spheres of democratic backsliding and the rise of populism: legal-institutional, social, and intellectual freedom. She suggests that Ezrahi introduces a deep explanation of these troubling trends. Blander introduces the concept of “Depth Skepticism,” which applies to philosophers, among them Ezrahi, who searched for deeper layers of the human experience in order to identify the causes of sociopolitical phenomena. The epilogue follows Ezrahi’s intellectual journey, identifying a connecting thread from his early work “The Descent of Icarus,” revealing the interaction between science, enlightenment, and democracy through “Imagined Democracies,” portraying the role of science in creating the epistemological foundations of modern democracy, to the current volume introducing the cosmological shift from Nature/Culture to a blurred “HumaNature” cosmology and how it affects democratic foundations. This shift calls for a “modest democracy” that accommodates reason, emotions, and ambivalence. It views democracy as a constructive utopia, allowing individuals and groups the “right to dream” within nonviolent pursuits. This democracy fosters compromise, balances power, and tolerates contradictions, embodying a constant state of becoming.

This chapter explains how the distinction between physical and metaphysical cosmologies contributed to the rise of modern democracy. Ezrahi argues that the division of Nature from God and Culture has created a space for human agency and democratic practices. This dichotomy has also facilitated the alliance between science and democracy, with science gaining authority in representing Nature in relation to societal norms. The text further discusses the imposition of Western cosmologies on non-Western societies under the guise of modernization. It references the work of anthropologist Philippe Descola, who categorizes cosmologies based on configurations of physicalities and interiorities, identifying four types: totemism, analogism, animism, and naturalism. The chapter also explores how these different cosmologies manifest in various societies globally. It emphasizes the transformative impact of modern science on societal beliefs and commonsense, highlighting the role of encyclopedias and dictionaries in this transformation process. The global influence of Western science and technology is also discussed, particularly their perceived neutrality and universality. It also notes how different cosmologies often borrow elements from each other, often stripped of their original context. Lastly, it touches upon the presence of animism in Western childhood culture.

Chapter 1 will examine the ontological and epistemological questions surrounding music in the knowledge system of the medieval Islamic world by exploring the philosophical system of Ibn Sina and his later followers, all of whose works laid the foundations for scholars of music in the centuries to come. In particular, I will address how mathematics was conceptualized vis-à-vis the cosmology of the falsafa tradition as the discipline that examined the existents whose existence was dependent on physical matter but could be conceptualized without the said matter. Through this conceptualization of music and mathematics, scholars of music were able to broaden their subject matter to cover topics from the melodic modes in vogue in their time to the poetics of music. At the same time, since everything in the universe was connected to one another, music was linked with many other scientific disciplines such as astronomy and medicine.

Having finished her law degree, Louise takes up work at a Boston law firm; they are not returning to Berkeley after all, so Weinberg resigns his professorship there. At MIT, he continues teaching graduate courses on general relativity, with an emphasis on cosmology. He spends the spring of 1971 in Paris, making comparisons between the academic characters of Paris and Boston. Gerard ’t Hooft and Martinus Veltman renormalize Weinberg’s theory of leptons, showing an experimental route to proving the theory. Weinberg starts to consider the extension of the electroweak theory to strongly interacting theories. Electroweak theory starts to receive a lot more attention from theorists. His first book, Gravitation and Cosmology, is published in 1972. Weinberg is offered the Higgins Professorship at Harvard, and accepts.

Hegel has commonly been ridiculed for views expressed in his 1801 dissertation, On the Orbits of the Planets, in the final pages of which he had adopted a series of numbers from Plato’s Timaeus – a cosmological text earlier taken seriously by Kepler – to account for the ratios of the distances from the sun of the then known six planets of the solar system. While defenders of Hegel have usually toned down the extent of these claims, this chapter argues that Hegel’s reference to Plato’s Pythagorean cosmology must be taken seriously – not as cosmology, however, but as instantiating the logic appropriate for empirically based science. Hegel’s allusion to Plato’s mythologically expressed “syllogism” is consistent with his idea that logic as Plato conceived it allowed its application to the empirical world but that this applicability had been compromised by Aristotle adaptation of it. With the proper grasp of logic’s utilization of the category of “singularity” in its difference to “particularity” – available to Plato but not Aristotle – we can appreciate how, while Kepler’s Laws were empirically based, Newton’s were not as they relied on abstract entities that could not be justified empirically.

Focusing on Menippus’ description of his celestial journey and the great cosmic distances he has travelled, I argue that Icaromenippus is a playful point of reception for mathematical astronomy. Through his acerbic satire, Lucian intervenes in the traditions of cosmology and astronomy to expose how the authority of the most technical of scientific hypotheses can be every bit as precarious as the assertions of philosophy, historiography, or even fiction itself. Provocatively, he draws mathematical astronomy – the work of practitioners such as Archimedes and Aristarchus – into the realm of discourse analysis and pits the authority of science against myth. Icaromenippus therefore warrants a place alongside Plutarch’s On the Face of the Moon and the Aetna poem, other works of the imperial era that explore scientific and mythical explanations in differing ways, and Apuleius’ Apology, which examines the relationship between science and magic. More particularly, Icaromenippus reveals how astronomy could ignite the literary imagination, and how literary works can, in turn, enrich our understanding of scientific thought, inviting us to think about scientific method and communication, the scientific viewpoint, and the role of the body in the domain of perhaps the most incorporeal of the natural sciences, astronomy itself.

Greek hybrids cannot be read in isolation. To understand them requires an examination of the Near Eastern antecedents. The Greek imagination was powerfully influenced by a creative engagement with other cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean. These engagements were characterized by bilingualism, intermarriage and the movement of artisans, traders, poets and itinerant religious practitioners. Such a pattern of cultural exchange can be seen in the so-called International Style of the Late Bronze Age, which relied heavily on hybrid motifs to fashion a shared visual language for the elites of Egypt and the Near East. In this context, the significance of hybrids varied depending on audience or market. Taweret in Egypt was utterly transformed when taken up on Crete. Greek and Near Eastern cosmogonies shared many characteristics, but Greek speakers freely adapted old motifs. Wherever we find traces of cultural exchange, ideas and objects always take on new forms in Greek settings. Each instance of a hybrid emerging in a Greek context it is testimony to the flexibility of hybrids to convey new meanings in new settings. Hybrids gave a face to the shock of the new.