He sees specific influences in Alhazen's physical optical theory, Chinese mechanical technologies leading to the perception of the world as a machine, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which carried implicitly a new mode of mathematical atomic thinking, and the heliocentrism rooted in in ancient Egyptian religious ideas associated with Hermeticism.
This book explains Kepler's cosmological theory, based on the Copernican system, in which the five Pythagorean regular polyhedra dictate the structure of the universe and reflect God's plan through geometry.
The three noblemen and their associates, like Sir Walter Raleigh, John Dee and Thomas Harriot among others, have been interpreted as members of a clique of advanced thinkers called The School of Night, who were interested in promoting new ideas like the Copernican and Galilean view of a heliocentric solar system, and the spirit of open inquiry that underlay it.