The concept of the clockwork universe is invoked in John of Sacrobosco's early 13th-century introduction to astronomy, On the Sphere of the World (c. 1230), which was widely popular in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it was one of the most influential works of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe, as it was required reading for students at all Western European universities for the next four centuries after it was published. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) would certainly have read it, too.
In his book, Sacrobosco spoke of the universe as the machina mundi, or machine of the world. Sacrobosco regarded the universe as having been made in the likeness of an Archetype, or Idea in the Mind of God, Who disposed it to behave in a regular fashion. At the end of his book, Sacrobosco also suggested that the reported eclipse of the Sun at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a disturbance in the order of the machine of the world. Hence it could only have been a miracle.
In the last few centuries, the notion of the clockwork universe has been used to minimize the role of God, but that was not how it was originally understood in the 13th century.
The true origin of the clockwork universe metaphor
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