Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 314 pages
• Published by: University Of Chicago Press December 12, 1995
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0226469298
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0226469294
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

Product Description
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.

Reader Reviews
Lattis' biography of Christoph Clavius tells the story of a man once well-known and influential in science, although virtually unknown today. It tells about the birth of modern mathematics and astronomy. And it tells about how medieval and modern attitutes collided in around the time of the birth of the scientific revolution. The book appears well-researched, it has numerous footnotes, and I felt that it gave a good description of an interesting period, an attitude and an environment. I recommend it for those who what to know more about the period of the birth of modern science, and in particular to those who want to know more about the views of those that opposed Copericus, Kepler and Galileo.