Jerzy Dobrzycki

Saturn, Aristotelian astronomy, and Cracow astronomers : An episode from the early years of telescopic astronomy

Les premiers telescopes ont permis de mettre en evidence les taches solaires ainsi que la structure de la surface de la lune. A partir de theses, A. Strazyc, un professeur de mathematiques polonais, cherche a comprendre la science et ses regles

Book Review: Constellations Old and New: The Cambridge Guide to the ConstellationsThe Cambridge Guide to the Constellations. BakichMichael E. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). Pp. 320.

offers an admirable entry into this divided world, and along the way he has much to say on Adelard of Bath (who like Pedro worked on the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi, and who might have been taught Arabic by Pedro) and on the French and Salernitan schools. He casts doubt, however, on the idea that Pedros hand is evident in Adelards works. Josep Casulleras follows with a minutely focused study of Pedros astronomical tables, continuing a tradition that takes in earlier work by Millas, Neugebauer, Sams6, Mercier, and Van Dalen, to name only a few. This new study is effectively a series of glosses on the Neugebauer edition of al-Khwarizmis table (Copenhagen, 1962). Casulleras notes the lamentable runs of copying mistakes, but holds that through the mist it is possible to discern the crude methods of calculation and rounding that were often being used. Inevitably he comes up against the problem of incongruous source materials and difficulties of adaptation to the Christian calendar. In the end, Casulleras resorts to quoting the jaundiced view of Neugebauer, to the effect that most medieval manuscripts, from India to England, owe their existence more to the prestige they gave their owners than to a desire to master their contents. There is a grain of truth in this, of course, but if it had been the whole truth we should all still be copying out Khwarizmis tables.

23.95 (paperback).

In the 15th century mathematical astronomy attained a point, at least in the works of its leading exponents, where it was no longer possible to avoid making an effort to provide an answer to two basic dilemmas. The first of these was the question of the feasibility of astronomical theories, a problem inherited from ancient natural philosophy. The controversy on the conventionality of scientific theory was to continue into modern times although the substance of that controversy was to undergo a certain change. The second problem pertained to the credibility of established authorities and was rooted in the contradiction that lay between old theories and modern data based on observation.