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Stargazers the Astronomical Renaissance 1500-1700 Allan Chapman

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Stargazers the Astronomical Renaissance 1500-1700 Allan Chapman STARGAZERS The Astronomical Renaissance 1500-1700 Allan Chapman s Stargazers Copernicus, Galileo, the Telescope and the Church i The Astronomical Renaissance 1500-1700 Text copyright © 2014 Allan Chapman This edition copyright © 2014 Lion Hudson The right of Allan Chapman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by Lion Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com/lion ISBN 978 0 7459 5627 5 e-ISBN 978 0 7459 5787 6 First edition 2014 Acknowledgments Extracts from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover image: © SSPL/Getty Images To Rachel: Wife, Scholar, and Best Friend CONTENTS Acknowledgments XVI Preface XVII 1 New Brightness from Old Light Part 1: The Classical Cosmos 1 Classical cosmology 7 2 New Brightness from Old Light Part 2: Matter, Elements, and Forces 15 The genius of Aristotle 15 Balance, order, and logic 18 Alchemy, astrology, and the manipulation of natural forces 18 Time, calendars, and the beginning of the medieval astronomical enterprise 21 Medieval astronomy 23 Arabic astronomy 24 European astronomy 26 3 Nicholas Copernicus: The Polish Polymath 31 Education and early life 32 Italy, law, and medicine 34 Copernicus the astronomer 36 Copernicus returns to Poland 40 Explaining the planetary “retrograde motions” 42 4 Copernicus Publishes His Theory: De Revolutionibus in Nuremberg 45 Publishing De Revolutionibus 48 De Revolutionibus and its reception 49 Early critics of heliocentricism 51 Astronomy and Scripture 51 Giordano Bruno 54 5 The Great Dane: Tycho Brahe Tests Copernicus 56 Education and marriage 57 Tycho’s “golden nose” 59 Philipp Melanchthon and the Reformation 61 The cosmic forces in Renaissance Europe 64 6 Tycho Brahe: New Stars, Comets, and the “Castle of the Heavens” 68 The new star of 1572 68 The comet of 1577 72 The “Castle of the Heavens” 73 Measuring the heavens 75 Copernicus, Tycho, and the “earth–suncentric” universe of 1584 79 Tycho’s geo-heliocentric cosmology 80 Death in Prague 81 7 Johannes Kepler: Copernican Astronomer of the Reformation 84 Early life 85 The Cosmological Mystery, 1596 86 Imperial Mathematician in Prague 89 Of ellipses 92 8 Johannes Kepler: Magnets, Invisible Forces, and Planetary Laws 95 A magnetic cosmos? 95 Ancient truths questioned 96 Kepler’s Laws of Motion 98 Astronomy, snowflakes, and symmetry 100 Marriage, Linz, and telescopes 101 Kepler the Copernican advocate 103 The Music of the Spheres 106 Kepler’s tables in memory of the Emperor Rudolph 108 Catholics, Protestants, Copernicans, and the Thirty Years War 110 9 Galileo Galilei: In Pursuit of Fame, 1564–1610 Part 1: Early Life 113 Galileo the man and Renaissance Italian 114 Education and early career 117 10 Galileo Galilei: In Pursuit of Fame, 1564-1610 Part 2: Inventions, Publications, and Padua 123 Europe’s love of technology 123 Professor at Padua 126 Middle-aged and discontented 129 Galileo’s first brush with the Holy Office in 1604 – for casting horoscopes 131 11 Galileo Galilei: Fame at Last Part 1: Galileo and the Telescope 135 Light, lenses, and seeing distant things 135 Hans Lippershey: the spectacle-maker of Middelburgh 137 Galileo’s Starry Messenger 138 Venus, Saturn, and further telescopic wonders 143 12 Galileo Galilei: Fame at Last Part 2: New Starry Wonders 147 Theological and philosophical implications 149 Celestial perfection challenged: spots upon the sun 151 Galileo the philosopher-courtier to the Medici 156 13 “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” Part 1: Galileo, the Telescope, and the Church 158 Marina Gamba and her children 158 The Grand Duke’s Philosopher 160 Vatican and wider European politics 162 Galileo’s first encounter with church opposition 165 Galileo’s theology of science 170 14 “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” Part 2: Galileo in Rome, 1616 173 What was Galileo permitted to say after 1616? 174 Of comets, the tides, and The Assayer 176 Trouble, trial, and condemnation: 1633 179 The final years: Galileo at Arcetri 185 The Spanish Inquisition 186 15 Jesuits Galore: The Telescope Goes Global 188 Tycho Brahe and the telescope go to China 190 Jesuits in the Americas 200 16 Galileo and Science in Roman Catholic Europe 203 The calendar and the celestial machinery 203 Christopher Clavius and Galileo 208 Roman Catholic clergy in observational astronomy and experimental physics 209 Father Pierre Gassendi: astronomer, physicist, theologian, and anti-Aristotelian 213 Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ: Copernicanism analysed and found wanting, 1651 217 René Descartes and his disciples: Copernicans by implication 219 From astronomy to medicine to fossil geology: so exactly how was Catholic science suppressed? 222 17 Copernicus, Galileo, and the Protestants of the “Northern Renaissance” 226 Global trade and astronomy 226 Humanism and the hermitic philosophy 228 Philippe van Lansberge and vernacular Dutch Copernicanism 231 Christophorus Wittichus: Copernicus and the Bible in Protestant Holland 236 Ismaël Boulliau: Calvinist turned Catholic Copernican 236 18 Copernicus Comes to England 239 The first English Copernicans 240 Surveyors, cartographers, and instrument-makers 241 Thomas Digges and the origins of English Copernicanism 244 Was there a Tudor telescope? 246 Dr William Gilbert and the motion of the earth 250 Sir Thomas Gresham’s College and Sir Henry Savile’s Professors 251 The Revd William Oughtred 255 19 Thomas Harriot Sends Galileo to Wales 256 Master Harriot of Oxford 256 A Copernican in North America 259 The first science lecture on the North American continent? 260 Thomas Harriot: friends, patrons, and financing research 261 Optics and astronomy 264 Harriot and his “dutch truncke” 266 The telescope, Kepler, and Galileo go to Wales 268 Harriot’s further telescopic research 271 Death by tobacco? 272 20 Sir Francis Bacon: The Experimental Lord Chancellor 275 English Common Law and experimentation 277 Cross-examination and revealing hidden knowledge 280 The making of a Natural Philosopher 281 Bacon the lawyer 282 Bacon’s scientific ideas 284 Science and religion 286 Bacon’s “Great Revival” and his “New Method” 287 Bacon’s death 291 21 The Lancashire “Puritans” and the Catholic Squires: Catholic and Protestant Scientific Friendships in Northern England 292 William Crabtree of Salford and his friends 293 Jeremiah Horrocks: the Bible Clerk of Much Hoole 295 Astronomical research in rural Lancashire and Yorkshire 297 William Gascoigne (1612–44): Yorkshire county gentleman, astronomer, and inventor 299 The Towneleys of Towneley Hall 300 Astronomical research and discoveries, 1635–41 302 Jeremiah Horrocks: the English Kepler 302 William Gascoigne: inventor of the micrometer 306 Jeremy Shakerley and the north-country astronomers’ legacy 310 22 Johannes Hevelius the Dantzig Brewer and the First “Big Telescope” Astronomers 313 Bigger, brighter lenses 314 Hevelius the astronomical brewer 315 Mapping the moon 317 Lutheranism, Catholicism, and astronomy 318 Hevelius’s big telescopes and planetary astronomy 319 The destruction of Hevelius’s observatory 320 Christiaan and Constantijn Huygens of Zuilichem 320 Giovanni Domenico Cassini: an Italian in Paris 322 The big telescope in England 324 Big telescopes and the moving earth 328 23 The Long Death of Astrology 330 Astrology’s rationale, and mounting challenges 331 Astrology’s Renaissance flourishing 332 Astrology for all 334 Astrology and Christian belief 335 Astrological medicine 337 Astrologers and politics 341 Astrology’s swan song 342 Tipping the scales of credibility 344 24 Dr John Wilkins Flies to the Moon – from Oxford 346 John Wilkins: the man and his background 347 A world in the moon, 1638–40 348 Wilkins’s telescopic moon and its possible inhabitants 349 The earth is but a planet 351 Flying to the moon 353 The Jacobean space programme 355 The “Flying Chariot” 357 Moon-voyaging postponed by 300 years 359 25 The Royal Society and the International Fellowship of Science 362 “Gentlemen, Free and Unconfin’d” 363 The Oxford “Philosophical Club”: 1648–60 364 Science and sociability in Cromwellian Oxford 367 King Charles II, Gresham College, and the Royal Society 368 The Fellowship of Science 370 The Royal Society and the new astronomy 371 The Royal Society and scientific journalism 373 Natural theology and the Royal Society 375 26 The Men of Gravity 379 The problem of attraction 380 From magnets to measurements 381 Dr Robert Hooke: the physicist in the cathedral 383 Sir Isaac Newton 389 The force that binds creation 392 Gravity and God 394 New scientific horizons 396 27 So the Earth Actually Does Move: The Revd Dr James Bradley Proves Copernicus Correct in 1728 398 The Revd Dr Bradley and the star 398 The aberration of light and the moving earth 400 George Graham: craftsman and scientist 403 The stellar parallax found 405 God, the heavenly clockwork, and the power of the scientific method 407 Astronomy and scientific progress 408 Notes 410 List of In-text Illustrations 414 List of Plates 415 Further Reading
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