David Knight - Voyaging in Strange Seas: The Great Revolution in Science

Copyright 2014 David Knight

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Knight, David M., author.

Voyaging in strange seas: the great revolution in science/David Knight.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-300-17379-6 (cl: alk. paper)

1. ScienceHistory. 2. Discoveries in scienceHistory. 3. Scientific expeditionsHistory. I. Title.

Q125.K578 2014

509dc23

2013041986

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Sarah, with thanks for fifty happy years;
and for Letsopa, Penelope, Laura and Hannah, beginning their lives

I could behold

The antechapel where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850)

The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627)

CONTENTS

1. Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, Concordia astronomiae cum theologia (Augsburg, 1490). An attempt to distinguish false from true astrology. The frontispiece shows astronomy and theology in conversation beneath the planetary spheres.

2. Ptolemy, Geographia (Rome, 1490). World map on a conical projection. The Mediterranean is clear, but for more distant regions he lacked good data: Sri Lanka is enormous, India small, and Scotland distorted.

3. Gerardus Mercator, Atlas (1638). This map shows all the dykes in a part of Mercator's native Netherlands, around Utrecht. His world maps, with straight-line latitudes and longitudes, made navigation easier.

4. Thomas More, Utopia (1516). A map of Utopia, and a page of its language and script.

5. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicorum (Nuremburg,1493). Nuremburg, a medieval walled city, vulnerable to cannon-fire.

6. Robert Record, The Castle of Knowledge (1556). Its splendid title-page says it all; this was a compendium of arts and sciences.

7. Gregor Reisch, Margarita philosophica totius rationale naturalis & moralis principia dialogice duodecim libris cmplectens (Freiburg, 1503). The first edition of what has been called the first encyclopaedia covering the range of medieval knowledge in all fields. The arrangement is systematic rather than alphabetical. With many woodcuts and diagrams, including this one of arithmetic showing Arabic numerals and an abacus in use.

8. Petrus Apianus and Reinerus Gemma, Cosmographia, sive Descriptio universi orbis (Antwerp, 1584). The moveable paper volvelles to make calculations, as on an astrolabe.

9. Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, Instauratio magna (London, 1620). The prospectus for the seventeenth-century revolution in scientific and philosophical method. The ships on the title-page are sailing through the Pillars of Hercules into the ocean of undiscovered truth, and returning freighted with knowledge. The arms of Christopher Columbus, and now of Colombia, have the same picture.

10. Christoph Clavius, Gnomonices libri octo (Rome, 1581). A book on sundials by the Jesuit mathematician chiefly responsible for the Gregorian Calendar, showing elaborate mathematical constructions involving circles.

11. Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius magna, longeque admirabilia spectacula pandens quae sunt observata in lunae facie, fixis innumeris, lacteo circulo, stellis nebulosis, apprime vero in quatuor planetis circa Iovis stellam circumvolutis (Venice, 1610). Galileo's account of his discovery, using his telescope, of the surface of the moon, the nature of the Milky Way, and the satellites of Jupiter (shown in this illustration). This copy, like some others, lacks the separately-inserted illustrations of the moon.

12. Galileo Galilei, Opere, 2 vols (Bologna, 1656). Made up of parts with independent signatures, pagination and title-pages. This set does not include the Discourses condemned by the Inquisition: but its publication shows that others of his works were not censored, and that science did not collapse in Italy on his imprisonment. In the frontispiece Galileo calls the attention of the muses to the heavens.

13. Johannes Kepler, Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627). The frontispiece illustrating the history of astronomy through increasingly elegant columns in the temple. At the top, the Imperial Eagle distributes largesse, and at the base, Tycho's observatory and printing press on Hveen is depicted.