Robert S. Westman

Reappraisals of the scientific revolution

List of contributors Acknowledgments Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg 1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg 2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin 3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield 4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicuss preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman 5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne 6. Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver 7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr. 8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon 9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski 10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook 11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter 12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney 13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey Index.

The Comet and the Cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin and the Copernican Hypothesis

Of all the initial factors involved in Kepler’s decision to become an advocate of the Copernican system, there is no doubt among historians that a paramount weight must be assigned to the role of his teacher of astronomy at the University of Tubingen, Michael Mastlin (1550–1631)2. There are no sceptics here simply because Kepler himself tells us, with typical candor, that it was Mastlin who first acquainted him with the difficulties inherent in the usual opinion of the world and that, subsequently, he was stimulated to pursue and defend the views of Copernicus on mathematical and“Physical or, if you prefer, Metaphysical” grounds3. But beyond a few well-known statements by Kepler to this effect, little has come to light on the precise nature of Mastlin’s influence nor on his attitude toward the Copernican theory4. Did Mastlin then do no more than familiarize Kepler with the fundamentals of the new astronomy? Not at all Although the evidence is incomplete, enough of it is available to enable us to reconstruct an important discovery by Mastlin that was to affect both his own and Kepler’s acceptance of the Copernican hypothesis. That discovery concerned the orbit of the Comet of 1577.

The Copernican Question Revisited: A Reply to Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron

The Copernican Question advances a radical reinterpretation of a classic episode in the history of science. Copernicuss turn to the heliocentric planetary arrangement occurred in the context of a late-fifteenth century political/religious controversy about the credibility of astrology triggered in 1496 by Giovanni Pico della Mirandolas attack on the science of the stars. This controversy about the principles of astrological prognostication continued to drive debates about the heavens from the late-fifteenth to the early seventeenth century. The reviewers conceal their defense of the historiographical status quo ante by focusing on matters of translation. The rebuttal demonstrates that the real disagreements are over method and interpretation.

2.7. Continuities in Kepler scholarship: the European Kepler symposia in historiographical perspective

BETWEEN August and October 1971 many conferences in honor of Kepler were held across Europe? Several of these symposia (reviewed in this paper) took place in a number of cities where Kepler lived and worked and where many others have since labored to uncover the significance of his writings: in Weil der Stadt, Keplers birthplace; in Linz, where he was district mathematician from 1612 to 1626; in Leningrad, where Keplers manuscripts were brought in the eighteenth century by Catherine the Great; in London, at a meeting of the British Society for the History of Science held at the Warburg Institute; and in Zag~in, where Kepler spent the last two years of his life in great loneliness before his death in Regensburg. Special displays of Kepleriana could be seen not only at the various symposia, but also in Prague, where Kepler succeeded Tycho Brahe as Court Astronomer to the Emperor Rudolph II and where he composed his great Astronomiae pars opticae (1604) and the Astronomia Nova (1609); and in Tiibingen, the site of Keplers university training, his work with Michael M/istlin and his adoption of the Copernican theory. A series of lectures on Keplers life were given at Graz, location of the young astronomers

A Copernican Renaissance

Copernicus continues to attract an unusual level of historiographical interest. Since 2009, to choose an arbitrary date, at least nine books have appeared, including Dava Sobel’s play about Copernicus and his disciple Georg Joachim Rheticus, in addition to the two books here under review.1 In November 2015 a much-anticipated French edition of Copernicus’s works was published under the editorship of a distinguished team of French scholars led by MichelPierre Lerner, Alain-Philippe Segonds, and Jean-Pierre Verdet, adding still another layer of significant, fine-grained commentary and textual analysis to the English, Polish, German, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish editions already available.2 With such a welcome stream of scholarship, it is hardly surprising that our students’ textbooks cannot possibly keep up with all the late-breaking discoveries, attractive hypotheses, rival narratives, and subtle conceptual distinctions generated in the specialist literature. And these highlights do not even include the immense volume of writings devoted to well-known figures like Galileo, Bruno, Kepler, and Newton that commonly figure in Copernican narratives. In one sense, this intense focus reflects nothing more surprising than an advanced stage in the maturation of a historiography that once absorbed the energies of much of our discipline.

Reply to Michael Shank

“A strology,” as Thomas Kuhn stated in 1957, “provided the principal motive for wrestling with the problem of the planets”; but “Copernicus,” he went on to say, “belonged to the minority group of Renaissance astronomers who did not cast horoscopes.”1 This standard view of Copernicus’s exceptional status, immune from the supposedly banal practices and debates of his contemporaries, lives on in Michael Shank’s review of The Copernican Question.2 Unfortunately, it is often difficult to recognize my own claims and arguments in this strange and frequently inaccurate review.3 In the limited space the editors have kindly made available, I will confine myself to the main points at issue. The Epistemic Map. Classifications of knowledge change over time, and historical work is required to excavate the operative categories, their logical relations and varied nomenclature. In Copernicus’s lifetime, celestial practitioners regarded the “science of the stars” as one of the mixed or middle sciences (combining mathematics and physics), and the term commonly referred to a disciplinary couple that consisted of astronomy and astrology, each subdivided into theoretical and practical parts.4 (See Figure 1.) Fifteenthand