Harmony of the Spheres

Ken Parry is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (1996), editor of several books including The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (2015), and founding editor (2012) of the Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity series. Dean Rickles is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and a co-director of The Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is editor of The Routledge Series on Philosophy of Physics and Mathematics and author of many books, including Life is Short: An Appropriately Brief Guide to Making it More Meaningful (2022), Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning (co-authored with Harald Atmanspacher, 2022), and Covered with Deep Mist: The Development of Quantum Gravity (2020).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsEditors' IntroductionI. Early, Medieval, and Renaissance1. The Harmony of the Spheres in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period in the EastKen Parry (Macquarie University, Australia)2. Music and Theoretic Awakening from Plato to AugustineEva Anagnostou-Laoutides (Macquarie University, Australia)3. Apollo, The Sirens, and The Pregnant Weaver. Marsilio Ficino on Heavenly Music and Human FateAnna Corrias (Ralston College, Georgia)II. Harmony, Disharmony, and the Demonic4. Musicriminology: Disharmony, Dissent, and DissonanceMurray Lee (University of Sydney, Australia)5. Music as Harmony of Ontological Spheres: The Demonic in the Age of Artificial IntelligenceGoetz Richter (University of Sydney, Australia)III. Health and Well-being6. Music and Health: Embracing the Ineffability of Sound and Why It MattersAnge Weinrabe (University of Sydney, Australia) & Eran Asoulin (Independent Scholar, Australia)7. Disciplining Harmony: a transdisciplinary historical interrogation of the ‘disciplining’ of music in education, and its impact on music participation in societyGeorgia Pike-Rowney (Australian National University, Australia)IV. Perspectives on Space and Spheres8. Bach and the PlanetsMadeleine Easton (Bach Akademie Australia, Australia)9. Reimagining the Music of the Spheres: An Art–Science CollaborationKim Cunio (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Nigel Meredith (British Antarctic Survey, UK), & Diana Scarborough (Independent Scholar,UK)10. Celestial Harmonies of Sky Country in Australia and OceaniaDuane Hamacher (University of Melbourne, Australia), Rachel Morgain (University of Melbourne, Australia), & Gerhard Wiesenfeldt (University of Melbourne, Australia)V. Esoteric Aspects11. Music and the Sphere in Persian Unified Creative PracticeMalek Mohammadi Nejad Charghouyeh (Australian National University, Australia)12. Trinity and Quaternity from Kepler-Fludd to Pauli-JungHarald Atmanspacher (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)13. Music, Immortality, and the SoulDean Rickles (University of Sydney, Australia)List of ContributorsIndex

In this rich and wide-ranging book, historians, musicians, philosophers and scientists explore the inspirational power of the idea of the harmony of the spheres through the ages, from the Greek Pythagoreans to today, in Eastern and Western cultures, as a vision of the universe and of how humans can better live in it.