In the 22nd Canto of Paradiso Dante, elevated to the sphere of the fixed stars looks back at our solar system and is rewarded with a detailed understanding of planetary motions: "e tutti e sette mi si dimostraro / quanto son grandi e quanto son veloci / e come sono in distante riparo." ["and all seven [planets] showed me what is their magnitude and what their speed and at what distances their stations." Tr. Sinclair] If this is an expression of the purely intellectual illumination received at this advanced stage of his mystical vision it would explain why the many complex astronomical references throughout the poem are so detailed and seem so effortless - as if he could from now on intuitively comprehend the space-time relations of his universe in terms of a geometry that in fact, being four-dimensional, went beyond even the science of his time. But the truth that has become self-evident to him is one that we cannot reconcile with our own historically far more advanced knowledge. Does this not relate to the question of how it is that a higher consciousness can have direct and valid insight into scientific and mathematical truths without being able to translate these into terms that would effectively advance the contemporary state of scientific knowledge? This is almost like the Heideggerian suggestion that the cosmic reality that Dante encountered actually was as he described it, that Being itself changes ('change' being not the right word here) according to the epoch in which it is apprehended. Or better, it may just be a principle that excludes anachronism. You might say that Dante was shown the universe with its billions of galaxies in infinte space, but could not interpret in any way that exceded his scientific knowledge by more than a small fraction: "la mente mia così, tra quelle dape / fatta più grande, di sé stessa uscìo, / e che si fesse rimembrar non sape" (Canto 23). ["so my mind, grown greater at that feast, was transported from itself and of what it became has no remembrance".]