The Moon and the Western Imagination

The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate changing concepts of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science.

Ultimately, when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon’s surface, we will not be conquering a New World but a much older one, ripe with history.