Agnostics is a modern term applied to those who disclaim any knowledge of God or of the origin of the universe, holding that the mind of man is limited to a knowledge of phenomena and of what is relative, and that, therefore, the infinite, the absolute, and the unconditioned being beyond all experience, are consequently beyond its range. Research Agnostics
Anima Mundi was a term applied by some of the older philosophers to the ethereal essence or spirit supposed to be diffused through the universe, organizing and acting throughout the whole and in all its different parts; a theory closely allied to Pantheism. Research Anima Mundi
Cosmogony (from the Greek, kosmos, world, and gone, generation), is a theory of the origin or formation of the universe. Such theories may be comprehended under three classes: 1. The first represents the world as eternal, in form as well as substance. 2. The matter of the world is eternal, but not its form. 3. The matter and form of the universe is ascribed to the direct agency of a spiritual cause; the world had a beginning, and shall have an end.
Aristotle appears to have embraced the first theory; but the theory which considers the matter of the universe eternal, but not its form, was the prevailing one among the ancients, who, starting from the principle that nothing could be made out of nothing, could not admit the creation of matter, yet did not believe that the world had been always in its present state. The prior state of the world, subject to a constant succession of uncertain movements which chance afterwards made regular, they called chaos. The Phoenicians, Babylonians, and also Egyptians, seem to have adhered to this theory. One form of this theory is the atomic theory, as taught by Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. According to it atoms or indivisible particles existed from eternity, moving at hazard, and producing, by their constant meeting, a variety of substances. After having given rise to an immense variety of combinations they produced the present organization of bodies. The third theory of cosmogony makes God, or some deity, the Creator of the world out of nothing. This is an ancient and widely-spread theory, and is that taught in the book of Genesis. Anaxagoras was the first among the Greeks who taught that God created the universe from nothing. Around 1900 the most popular theory for the origin of the universe was the nebular hypothesis, which was strikingly similar to the later big bang theory propagated at the end of the 20th century. Research Cosmogony
Creationism is the doctrine that a soul is specially created for each humanfoetus as soon as it is formed in the womb, as opposed to Traducianism, which teaches that the souls of children as well as their bodies are begotten by the parents; and to Infusionism, which holds that souls are pre-existent, and that a soul is divinely infused into each human fcetus as soon as it is formed by generation.
The term Creationism is also now widely applied to that theory of the origin of the universe which is opposed to Evolution, that is the literal theory put forward in the book of Genesis in the bible. Research Creationism
Deism is a philosophical system which, as opposed to Atheism, recognizes a great First Cause; as opposed to Pantheism, a Supreme Being distinct from nature or the universe; while, as opposed to Theism, it looks upon God as wholly apart from the concerns of this world. It thus implies a disbelief in revelation, scepticism as regards the value of miraculous evidence, and an assumption that the light of nature and reason are the only guides in doctrine and practice. It is thus a phase of nationalism. In the 18th century there were a series of writers who are spoken of distinctively as the English deists. They include Collins, Toland, Tindal, etc. Research Deism
The Eleatic School was a Grecian philosophical sect, so called because it originated in Elea (Latin, Velia), a town of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy, of which also three of its most celebrated teachers, Parmenides, Zeno, and Leucippus, were natives. The founder was Xenophanes of Colophon, who came to Elea late in life, bringing with him the physical theories of the Ionian school, to which he added a metaphysic. The two schools soon drifted widely apart especially in respect of method. Starting from the observation of external nature, the lonians endeavoured to discover some elementary principle, as water, air, fire, or a combination of elements, by the action of which the phenomena they observed might be accounted for. The Eleans made the abstract idea of Being or God, deduced from the contemplation of the universe as a whole, their starting-point; and their reasonings sometimes led them to deny the reality of external phenomena altogether. Research Eleatic School
Freemasonry is a term applied to the organization of a society calling themselves free and accepted masons, and all the mysteries therewith connected. This society, if we can reckon as one a number of societies, many of which are unconnected with each other, though they have the same origin and a great similarity in their constitution, extends over almost all parts of the globe, and is consequently of the greatest service to travellers who are members of the craft. According to its own peculiar language it. is founded on the practice of social and moral virtue. It claims the character of charity in the most extended sense; and brotherly love, relief, and truth are inculcated in it. Fable and imagination have traced back the origin of freemasonry to the Roman Empire, to the Pharaohs, the temple of Solomon, the Tower of Babel, and even to the building of Noah's ark. In reality it took its rise in the middle ages along with other incorporated crafts. Skilled masons moved from place to place to assist in building the magnificentsacred structures - cathedrals, abbeys, etc - which had their origin in these times, and it was essential for them to have some signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.
Freemasonry in its modified and more modern form dates only from the 17th century. The modern ritual is said to have been partly borrowed from the Rosicrucians and knights templars, and partly devised by Elias Ashmole, the founder of the Ashmolean Museum. Freemasonry, thus modified, soon began to spread over the world. In 1725 it was introduced into France by Lord Berwentwater; and in 1733 the first American lodge was established. The United Grand Lodge of England recognizes only two species of Freemasonry - the Craft and the Royal Arch; Scotch, Irish, American, and Continental lodges acknowledge higher degrees; but these, with the exception of the Mark Degree and not universal. In ordinary freemasonry there are three grades - those of apprentice, fellow-craft and master-mason - each of which has its peculiar initiation ceremonies; the last of these grades, however, is necessary to the attainment of the full rights and privileges of brotherhood.
At the end of the 20th century the Freemasonry were linked national organisations open to men and women over 21, united by the possession of a common code of morals and beliefs, and of certain traditional 'secrets'. Apart from requiring a belief in the ' Great Architect of the Universe' and acceptance of its moral code, English Freemasons maintain strict impartiality in politics and religion.
Freemasonry assumed a political and anticlerical character; it has been condemned by the papacy, and in certain countries was suppressed by the State. Both in Britain and the USA the freemasons maintain hospitals and institutions for their sick or aged members, and schools for their orphans. Research Freemasonry
The Heptarchia Mystica was a book written by the Elizabethan astrologer and mysticJohn Dee in 1582. He described the work as documenting the divine laws of creation itself. The book notes supposed appearances of various angels and holy spirits to John Dee, and the information they passed on to him regarding the laws of creation and the universe, including the names and seals of numerous angels and divine spirits, the days of the week they governed and the human actions controlled by them. Research Heptarchia Mystica
The Ptolemaic system was a system of astronomy set forth by the Egyptian astronomer Clausius Ptolemaeus during the 11th century. By the Ptolemaic system the earth is fixed in the centre of the universe and the heaves revolve around the earth from east to west, carrying with them the sun, planets and fixed stars in their respective spheres. The system says that the Moon is next above the earth, then Mercury, then Venus; the Sun is next then Mars, and then after MarsJupiter and Saturn, beyond Saturn are two crystalline spheres.
It was the nonsense of the Ptolemaic system that Copernicus proved wrong and was so persecuted for until his system was adopted in the sixteenth century. Research Ptolemaic System
The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.
The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.
The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.
The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.
One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.
It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at WestminsterAbbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.
The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.
Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.
The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State. Research Renaissance
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Agnostics 
