The Copernican Revolution From Below

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

The Copernican Revolution From Below This project seeks to turn upside down the traditional account of the "Copernican Revolution" by examining the work of a wide variety of mathematical practitioners from across Europe that has remained essentially unstudied by previous historians. These printers, physicians, surgeons, astrologers, instrument makers, city officials, and "lovers of astronomy" (as they called themselves) produced hundreds of editions of annual calendars, prognostications and practica in the century following Copernicus. To prepare these periodica, the authors had to decide whether to compute planetary positions from the medieval Alfonsine Tables or from more recent tables derived from Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, or Kepler. Many of them explicitly discussed the choices they faced. From this vantage point, the Copernican Revolution becomes less a matter of natural philosophy, religion or realism debated at universities and more a matter of numeracy, empirical evaluation of astronomical predictions, medical practice, clock-making and the competitive business of printing in the everyday bustle of towns from London to Vienna. Intellectual Merit With its approach to mathematical astronomy from below, the monograph resulting from this project will provide yet another story of how ordinary people helped make the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Extending the work of historians like William Eamon, Harold Cook, Paula Findlen, Pamela Smith, William Newman and Mario Biagioli, my book will investigate the lives of more than 400 rather marginal practitioners of astronomy who gained authority and legitimacy not by their elite (Latin) learning, place at courts or noble birth but rather by their computational skills and the perceived reliability of their annual prognostications. This project will thus expand our view of the origins of modern science by considering users as well as makers of astronomical knowledge, and by viewing the content of astronomical knowledge as comprised by computational practice as well as theory. Broader Impacts By writing a monograph of modest length, in non-technical language, the PI hopes to produce a book that will appeal not only to historians of science but also to the general public and (as a textbook) to graduate and undergraduate students. And by taking a perspective from below, the PI hopes to foster an awareness of science as an activity in which both lay and learned people have shaped the content, values and social legitimacy of the enterprise.