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Index
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 New Brightness from Old Light. Part 1: The Classical Cosmos
Classical cosmology
2 New Brightness from Old Light. Part 2: Matter, Elements, and Forces
The genius of Aristotle
Balance, order, and logic
Alchemy, astrology, and the manipulation of natural forces
Time, calendars, and the beginning of the medieval astronomical enterprise
Medieval astronomy
Arabic astronomy
European astronomy
3 Nicholas Copernicus: The Polish Polymath
Education and early life
Italy, law, and medicine
Copernicus the astronomer
Copernicus returns to Poland
Explaining the planetary “retrograde motions”
4 Copernicus Publishes His Theory: De Revolutionibus in Nuremberg
Publishing De Revolutionibus
De Revolutionibus and its reception
Early critics of heliocentricism
Astronomy and Scripture
Giordano Bruno
5 The Great Dane: Tycho Brahe Tests Copernicus
Education and marriage
Tycho’s “golden nose”
Philipp Melanchthon and the Reformation
The cosmic forces in Renaissance Europe
6 Tycho Brahe: New Stars, Comets, and the “Castle of the Heavens”
The new star of 1572
The comet of 1577
The “Castle of the Heavens”
Measuring the heavens
Copernicus, Tycho, and the “earth–suncentric” universe of 1584
Tycho’s geo-heliocentric cosmology
Death in Prague
7 Johannes Kepler: Copernican Astronomer of the Reformation
Early life
The Cosmological Mystery, 1596
Imperial Mathematician in Prague
Of ellipses
8 Johannes Kepler: Magnets, Invisible Forces, and Planetary Laws
A magnetic cosmos?
Ancient truths questioned
Kepler’s Laws of Motion
Astronomy, snowflakes, and symmetry
Marriage, Linz, and telescopes
Kepler the Copernican advocate
The Music of the Spheres
Kepler’s tables in memory of the Emperor Rudolph
Catholics, Protestants, Copernicans, and the Thirty Years War
9 Galileo Galilei: In Pursuit of Fame, 1564–1610. Part 1: Early Life
Galileo the man and Renaissance Italian
Education and early career
10 Galileo Galilei: In Pursuit of Fame, 1564-1610. Part 2: Inventions, Publications, and Padua
Europe’s love of technology
Professor at Padua
Middle-aged and discontented
Galileo’s first brush with the Holy Office in – for casting horoscopes
11 Galileo Galilei: Fame at Last. Part 1: Galileo and the Telescope
Light, lenses, and seeing distant things
Hans Lippershey: the spectacle-maker of Middelburgh
Galileo’s Starry Messenger
Venus, Saturn, and further telescopic wonders
12 Galileo Galilei: Fame at Last. Part 2: New Starry Wonders
Theological and philosophical implications
Celestial perfection challenged: spots upon the sun
Galileo the philosopher-courtier to the Medici
13 “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition”. Part 1: Galileo, the Telescope, and the Church
Marina Gamba and her children
The Grand Duke’s Philosopher
Vatican and wider European politics
Galileo’s first encounter with church opposition
Galileo’s theology of science
14 “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition”. Part 2: Galileo in Rome, 1616
What was Galileo permitted to say after 1616?
Of comets, the tides, and The Assayer
Trouble, trial, and condemnation: 1633
The final years: Galileo at Arcetri
The Spanish Inquisition
15 Jesuits Galore: The Telescope Goes Global
Tycho Brahe and the telescope go to China
Jesuits in the Americas
16 Galileo and Science in Roman Catholic Europe
The calendar and the celestial machinery
Christopher Clavius and Galileo
Roman Catholic clergy in observational astronomy and experimental physics
Father Pierre Gassendi: astronomer, physicist, theologian, and anti-Aristotelian
Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ: Copernicanism analysed and found wanting, 1651
René Descartes and his disciples: Copernicans by implication
From astronomy to medicine to fossil geology: so exactly how was Catholic science suppressed?
17 Copernicus, Galileo, and the Protestants of the “Northern Renaissance”
Global trade and astronomy
Humanism and the hermitic philosophy
Philippe van Lansberge and vernacular Dutch Copernicanism
Christophorus Wittichus: Copernicus and the Bible in Protestant Holland
Ismaël Boulliau: Calvinist turned Catholic Copernican
18 Copernicus Comes to England
The first English Copernicans
Surveyors, cartographers, and instrument-makers
Thomas Digges and the origins of English Copernicanism
Was there a Tudor telescope?
Dr William Gilbert and the motion of the earth
Sir Thomas Gresham’s College and Sir Henry Savile’s Professors
The Revd William Oughtred
19 Thomas Harriot Sends Galileo to Wales
Master Harriot of Oxford
A Copernican in North America
The first science lecture on the North American continent?
Thomas Harriot: friends, patrons, and financing research
Optics and astronomy
Harriot and his “dutch truncke”
The telescope, Kepler, and Galileo go to Wales
Harriot’s further telescopic research
Death by tobacco?
20 Sir Francis Bacon: The Experimental Lord Chancellor
English Common Law and experimentation
Cross-examination and revealing hidden knowledge
The making of a Natural Philosopher
Bacon the lawyer
Bacon’s scientific ideas
Science and religion
Bacon’s “Great Revival” and his “New Method”
Bacon’s death
21 The Lancashire “Puritans” and the Catholic Squires: Catholic and Protestant Scientific Friendships in Northern England
William Crabtree of Salford and his friends
Jeremiah Horrocks: the Bible Clerk of Much Hoole
Astronomical research in rural Lancashire and Yorkshire
William Gascoigne (1612–44): Yorkshire county gentleman, astronomer, and inventor
The Towneleys of Towneley Hall
Astronomical research and discoveries, 1635–41
Jeremiah Horrocks: the English Kepler
William Gascoigne: inventor of the micrometer
Jeremy Shakerley and the north-country astronomers’ legacy
22 Johannes Hevelius the Dantzig Brewer and the First “Big Telescope” Astronomers
Bigger, brighter lenses
Hevelius the astronomical brewer
Mapping the moon
Lutheranism, Catholicism, and astronomy
Hevelius’s big telescopes and planetary astronomy
The destruction of Hevelius’s observatory
Christiaan and Constantijn Huygens of Zuilichem
Giovanni Domenico Cassini: an Italian in Paris
The big telescope in England
Big telescopes and the moving earth
23 The Long Death of Astrology
Astrology’s rationale, and mounting challenges
Astrology’s Renaissance flourishing
Astrology for all
Astrology and Christian belief
Astrological medicine
Astrologers and politics
Astrology’s swan song
Tipping the scales of credibility
24 Dr John Wilkins Flies to the Moon – from Oxford
John Wilkins: the man and his background
A world in the moon, 1638–40
Wilkins’s telescopic moon and its possible inhabitants
The earth is but a planet
Flying to the moon
The Jacobean space programme
The “Flying Chariot”
Moon-voyaging postponed by 300 years
25 The Royal Society and the International Fellowship of Science
“Gentlemen, Free and Unconfin’d”
The Oxford “Philosophical Club”: 1648–60
Science and sociability in Cromwellian Oxford
King Charles II, Gresham College, and the Royal Society
The Fellowship of Science
The Royal Society and the new astronomy
The Royal Society and scientific journalism
Natural theology and the Royal Society
26 The Men of Gravity
The problem of attraction
From magnets to measurements
Dr Robert Hooke: the physicist in the cathedral
Sir Isaac Newton
The force that binds creation
Gravity and God
New scientific horizons
27 So the Earth Actually Does Move: The Revd Dr James Bradley Proves Copernicus Correct in 1728
The Revd Dr Bradley and the star
The aberration of light and the moving earth
George Graham: craftsman and scientist
The stellar parallax found
God, the heavenly clockwork, and the power of the scientific method
Astronomy and scientific progress
Notes
List of In-text Illustrations
List of Plates
Further Reading
Photo Credit
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