| Renaissance Astronomy
exclusive slide set by Owen Gingerich
Harvard historian of astronomy
These are the actual pages that changed minds and made history, from the first
editions. Here, Copernicus put the Sun in the middle, Kepler introduced elliptical orbits,
Galileo showed Moon craters, and Newton declared his laws. 20 slides plus extensive
authoritative commentary, $16.95.
Slides in the set:
- Hartman Schedel, Liber chronicum, 1493. Woodblock showing Aristotelian spheres of earth, water, air, and fire, surrounded by the crystalline planetary spheres and the multiple levels of heaven.
- Oronce Fine, Le Sphere du Monde, 1549. Splendid illuminated manuscript showing the spheres surrounding the Earth.
- Peter Apian, Astronomicum Caesareum, 1540. Colorful volvelle showing the Ptolemaic mechanism for the geocentric longitude of Mars.
- Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543. Copernicus places the Sun in the center, displacing Earth to mere planethood.
- Thomas Digges, A Perfit Description of the Coelestiall Orbes, 1596. Copernican system with stars spread out toward infinity.
- Tycho Brahe, De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis, 1588. The great observer had the Sun revolve around the Earth, carrying the other planets around it.
- Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae instauratae mechanica, 1598. With the largest, most precise instruments yet, such as this huge mural quadrant, as well as superior techniques, Tycho pinpointed positions of celestial objects with unprecedented precision.
- Johannes Bayer, Uranometria, 1603. The first substantial atlas of the heavens, breathtakingly beautiful, introduced the Greek-letter designations still used. Here is Cassiopeia, including Tycho's supernova of 1572.
- Johannes Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum, 1597. Kepler's first book tried to explain the spacing of the planets by a beautiful nesting of spheres and regular solids.
- Johannes Kepler, Astronomia nova, 1609. Kepler introduces his laws of ellipses and areas, overthrowing the ancient demand for "perfect circles".
- Johannes Kepler, Harmonice mundi, 1619. Ever searching for mathematical relationships in planet orbits, Kepler represented orbital eccentricities with a range of musical notes for each planet.
- Johannes Kepler, Tabulae Rudolphinae, 1627. Glorious frontispiece showing Kepler, Tycho, Copernicus, their instruments and predecessors, in a Temple of Urania.
- Christoph Scheiner, Rosa ursina, 1630. Scheiner shows how he projected the Sun's image with a telescope, independently discovering sunspots, and also describing faculae.
- Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius, 1610. With his new telescope, Galileo showed that the Moon had these mountains and craters, contradicting ancient beliefs.
- Galileo Galilei, Dialogo ... sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Tolemaico, e Copernicano, 1632. This frontispiece labels the participants Ptolemy, Aristotle, and Copernicus, though the dialog in the text is among the Aristotelian Simplicius; Salviati, who voices Galileo's Copernican views; and the open-minded Sagredo.
- Rene Descartes, Principia philosophiae, 1644. This theory of vortices reigned supreme until Newton (slides 18-19).
- Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Almagestum novum, 1651. Defending the Church's Earth-centered view against Copernicus's Sun-centered system, Riccioli has Urania weigh them in a balance.
- Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687. Here are the laws of motion in Newton's original Latin.
- Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1726. The third edition included this elegant portrait of the venerable and illustrious Newton.
- Thomas Wright, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, 1750. Wright illustrated the Sun within a flat layer of stars, the Milky Way, envisioning this as a small part of a larger shell centered on the eye of God.
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