1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910460301003321

Autore

Lattis James M

Titolo

Between Copernicus and Galileo [[electronic resource] ] : Christoph Clavius and the collapse of Ptolemaic cosmology / / James M. Lattis

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 1994

ISBN

1-283-05836-7

9786613058362

0-226-46926-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (316 p.)

Classificazione

UB 2480

Disciplina

523.1

Soggetti

Cosmology, Medieval

Astronomy, Medieval

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-284) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Note on Editions, Quotations, Translations, and Names -- One. Clavius's Astronomical Work and Life -- Two. Jesuit Mathematics and Ptolemaic Astronomy -- Three. The Defense of Ptolemaic Cosmology -- Four. The Rival Cosmologies -- Five. Cosmological Debate and the Rebuttal of Copernicus -- Six. Strains on Ptolemaic Cosmology, Inside and Out -- Seven. Galileo, Tycho, and the Fate of the Celestial Spheres -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Between Copernicus and Galileo is the story of Christoph Clavius, the Jesuit astronomer and teacher whose work helped set the standards by which Galileo's famous claims appeared so radical, and whose teachings guided the intellectual and scientific agenda of the Church in the central years of the Scientific Revolution. Though relatively unknown today, Clavius was enormously influential throughout Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through his astronomy books-the standard texts used in many colleges and universities, and the tools with which Descartes, Gassendi, and Mersenne, among many others, learned their astronomy. James Lattis uses Clavius's own publications as well as archival materials to trace



the central role Clavius played in integrating traditional Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian natural philosophy into an orthodox cosmology. Although Clavius strongly resisted the new cosmologies of Copernicus and Tycho, Galileo's invention of the telescope ultimately eroded the Ptolemaic world view. By tracing Clavius's views from medieval cosmology the seventeenth century, Lattis illuminates the conceptual shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy and the social, intellectual, and theological impact of the Scientific Revolution.