For decades, historians have grappled with the origins of modern science in early modern Europe.
By Dr. Oded Rabinovitch
Senior Lecturer in History
Tel Aviv University
Abstract
Historians have long debated the origins of modern science in early modern Europe. Recently, however, scholars pointed to our need to understand how the ‘new philosophy’ became a sustained movement, which did not dissipate over the course of a few generations, as had previous scientific renaissances in other civilizations. This article suggests that the mediations of the printed book allowed a broader public to engage with the astronomical ideas at the core of scientific transformations. This article examines the interactions that the world of the book generated between authors at the ‘core’ of early modern science and ‘amateurs’ who were interested in recent cosmological discussion around the notion of the ‘system of the world’. It argues that this concept served simultaneously to discuss mathematico-physical problems, to make claims for authorship and to provide cultural orientation, which made it amenable to appropriation and dialogue across a range of genres. The new social interactions around the ‘system of the world’ allowed a heavily mathematical science to become a viable and sustainable cultural phenomenon, a veritable building-block of a new scientific culture at the heart of European modernity.
Introduction
For decades, historians have grappled with the origins of modern science in early modern Europe. Recently, Stephen Gaukroger and Floris Cohen have offered a radical reframing of the problem. They pointed to our need to understand not the origins, but how the ‘new philosophy’ became a sustained movement, which did not dissipate over the course of a few generations, as had previous scientific renaissances in other civilizations.1 This article suggests that part of the answer is that the mediations of the printed book allowed a broader public to engage with the ideas at the core of the transformation in seventeenth-century science. Focusing on astronomy as a case study, it shows how interactions in print around the ‘system of the world’ allowed even a heavily mathematical science to become a viable and sustainable cultural phenomenon, a veritable building-block of a new scientific culture at the heart of modern European civilization.
The system of the world, or the fundamental organization of the solar system, serves as a key feature in any story of the rise of early modern science. By the late seventeenth century, a heliocentric system had replaced a geocentric one among the leading savants.2 But if the debate was essentially over, why then did works treating the system of the world continue to issue from European presses, even as late as the 1796 publication of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Exposition du systême du monde? And how can we explain the broad range of authors—artisans, clergymen, judges and high-society women—who, in addition to the savants, wrote, circulated and published texts on the system of the world?
This article shows how, in early modern Europe, the system of the world served as a symbol that circulated within numerous intellectual and social environments. It was indeed an object of debate among great luminaries, but it generated interest because this symbol also came to have other facets. The very idea of the system of the world became an emblem of recent scientific changes, accessible to European audiences that otherwise did not—often could not—keep abreast of the technical details of the astronomical literature. Occasional members of this wider European audience were audacious enough to offer their own interpretation of this symbol. The system of the world became common currency in a wider dialogue that matched specialists at the ‘core’ in constant dialogue with an astronomical ‘penumbra’ of interested amateurs. This article highlights the relationships between and the intersecting concerns of the two sets of practitioners.3
As a symbol, the system of the world came to display three interlinked facets. First, a conceptualization of the world system that allowed for a combination of mathematical considerations, related to calculations of the locations of heavenly bodies, and physical considerations, related to causal accounts of the physical structure of the world. Second, since astronomers sought recognition as authors by publishing systems of the world, articulation of the concept became a much-sought prize in the world of letters, conferring credit on the author and likely to stir into motion other practitioners as well as patrons.4 Third, the system of the world allowed authors to orient themselves vis-à-vis broad cultural categories, from the role of the divine in the making of the world to the sweeping cultural changes of the early modern period. Only by bringing into view all three facets of this symbol can we understand the cultural dynamics of the ‘new science’.
Whereas we possess numerous studies of the transformation of astronomy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, surprisingly few focus on the system of the world as an object in its own right. Most prominently, Michel-Pierre Lerner charted the meaning of the term from antiquity to the early modern period, focusing roughly on the late sixteenth century.5 This intellectual history of the meaning of the term in a longue durée perspective is important, but we still have much to learn about the social and cultural history of a term that evidently served as a form of cultural mediation, which is the subject of this article.
At a broader level, the contribution of the printed book to the development of early modern science has been much debated. Elizabeth Eisenstein, in particular, stressed how the proliferation of printed books and visual images facilitated communication among scholars and led to the upheavals in natural knowledge known as the ‘Scientific Revolution’. Her work has not gone unchallenged, particularly by Adrian Johns, who argued that the printing press did not create a typographic culture ensuring stable texts. Scientific authorship itself depended on the conventions of the craft community who produced the books, for better or worse: ‘Theirs was the culture; theirs was the world.’6 This article indeed argues for the importance of changes introduced by the printing press. But instead of focusing on ‘print culture’, its existence and its qualities, such as ‘fixity’, the argument here highlights new forms of interactions enabled by the book. It underscores the importance of putatively obscure authors who—unlike more recognized and oft-studied ‘popularizers’ such as Fontenelle—were not members of formal scientific institutions, for our understanding of scientific changes. These authors provide more direct evidence for the circulation of astronomical innovations outside of formal institutions and enable us to observe scientific changes not in terms of a theoretical paradigm shift, but as a growing presence of innovative cultural forms—here, examined through the system of the world—in elite society.
This article examines the emergence of a scientific culture by tracing one clearly defined symbol, the system of the world, as it moved between texts, genres and social environments. It pays particular attention to Louis XIV’s France as a case study, since it allows one to observe a range of authors using this symbol in one concrete social and cultural milieu. It would be presumptuous to claim to contextualize each of them in depth within the scope of a single article. Indeed, the focus here is on the movement, use and reuse of this symbol by a range of actors. Only by tracing its movements between a core and a penumbra can we start to grasp how a non-professional elite began to engage with a very learned debate that stood at the centre of scientific change. As we shall see, members of the elite had numerous seemingly practical reasons to develop an interest in what we perceive as ‘science’, from medicine to astrology. It is the ‘theoretical’ nature of the system of the world that makes it therefore especially revealing about how difficult and technical aspects of the ‘new philosophy’ could make their way among different audiences. By understanding their interests, we can start to see how European science gained a foothold in elite society, one which would help make it sustainable, in contrast to previous scientific renaissances.
Astronomers as Scientific Authors
Early modern astronomers revived the concept of the system of the world. In ancient Greek, the term sustêma commonly referred to a whole composed of several parts, such as military units, political bodies or artistic assemblages (from musical chords to poems composed of strophes and verses). In astronomy, however, its usage was limited to the Stoic philosophers, the only school to use the term sustêma to designate a world system. During the Middle Ages the term fell into neglect, recovered only during the Renaissance. In early modern usage, the revived term designated a combination of two elements: one astronomical, describing the locations and motions of celestial bodies, the other cosmological, describing the real structure of the world, as constituted by its component parts.7 As we shall see, authors put different emphases on these two elements: whereas authors such as Copernicus or Kepler emphasized astronomical and mathematical elements, others, for example Descartes, emphasized physical properties.
The term appeared in early publications promoting a heliocentric system, but its usage remained quite rare until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first to use it was Rheticus, Copernicus’s only student, in the Narratio prima, his advertisement of Copernican ideas published in 1540, and reprinted in 1541, 1566, 1596 and 1621. In discussing Rheticus’s text, other astronomers, such as Michael Maestlin, circulated the term in the context of professional debates on heliocentrism. However, use of the term remained rare among other innovators in sixteenth-century astronomy. Copernicus himself did not use the term ‘system’ at all in his massive De revolutionibus (1543), though he clearly thought of his cosmological propositions in terms that combined astronomical prediction with a realistic understanding of the cosmos.8
In fact, the term first appeared in texts aimed at a very narrow audience, even while a priority debate on the authorship of a new system of the world was raging. The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe published his geo-heliocentric system of the world in 1588 only when he grew concerned that other astronomers, most notably Paul Wittich and Nicolas Reymers Baer (Ursus), had plagiarized his ideas and methods.9 In response, he inserted a brief description of his system into a long and technical publication in Latin, whose main feature was the detailed treatment of the observations of a bright comet that had crossed the European skies in 1577.10 Close to half a century after the publication of Copernicus’s massive masterpiece, discussion of the system of the world thus mostly remained confined to this professional crowd of astronomers, active predominantly in the Holy Roman Empire, who communicated among themselves in Latin and did not seek to address a broader public. Probably the most salient example is Tycho’s subsequent sally in the priority debate: publication of the correspondence he exchanged with other astronomers, in Latin. Tycho was addressing a narrow community, and as such representing that community to itself by means of its own preferred, epistolary method of exchanging information and establishing relations.11
Things changed in the early seventeenth century. From this point the major luminaries who worked on the cutting edge of cosmological debate were intent on addressing new reading publics, and they experimented with a range of formats accordingly. Galileo played a key role here. Starting with the publication of Sidereus nuncius in the spring of 1610, he addressed members of the Florentine court as well as professional astronomers in the Holy Roman Empire.12 Indeed, he promised to discuss his discovery of the rugged surface of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter and numerous new stars more amply in a ‘system’ he was to publish later.13 Galileo fulfilled his promise only in 1632, with the publication of the Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, written in Italian as a witty conversation among three characters, who represented different cosmological positions. He had by then a long record of publishing in Italian on topics such as comets, sunspots and floating bodies; in fact, Sidereus nuncius was his last work originally published in Latin. Galileo clearly sought to establish himself as an author with a different, or at least extended, reading public in comparison with his predecessors.
Following the Galilean example, major actors in seventeenth-century cosmology composed texts aimed at a broad audience as well as fellow specialists. Kepler published his revolutionary Astronomia nova (1609) for a limited audience of readers who could tackle hundreds of pages of detailed astronomical calculations of the orbit of Mars. The Imperial Mathematician was clearly concerned about readers’ ability to decipher his work, since he included detailed chapter summaries, diagrams of the contents and an index.14 He complemented this complex and challenging work with an Epitome of Copernican astronomy, published in three parts between 1617 and 1621, which synthesized his previous works in a format intended for students.15 Descartes withheld publication of his treatise The world following Galileo’s trial, but advertised his Copernican positions in the Principia philosophiae (1644), quickly translated into French (1647).16 Newton composed his Principia as an extraordinarily demanding technical treatise, comprehensible only to a select few.17 Yet he also prepared a separate treatise entitled Systema mundi, which expressed his innovations in a more accessible manner. It was quickly translated into English as The system of the world and published in 1728, a year after Newton’s death.18
Faced with a broad and heterogeneous public, composed of different kinds of readers, astronomers hesitated about the proper way to publish their works. Christiaan Huygens exemplifies this very clearly. He had early in his career published groundbreaking and technical works in astronomy, such as the Systema Saturnium (1659), announcing the existence of a ring around Saturn.19 When late in his career he considered the publication of a more general text about the system of the world and the possibility of life on other planets, he initially planned to publish it in French. He even prepared detailed notes in this language.20 He reconsidered, however, and ultimately composed the text in Latin; but he did not write only for fellow astronomers. In fact, he defined very clearly the kind of readers he envisaged, and those he wanted to avoid. The ideal reader was someone like his brother Constantijn, educated in Latin and sufficiently skilled in mathematics to understand the geometrical aspects of the system of the world.21
Huygens expressed concern about the reactions of several types of readers: those who lack knowledge of mathematics and would look at the work as whimsical—they would not seriously consider the author’s attempts at estimating the magnitude of the planets and the size of their orbits. He also sought to avoid readers who would attack the work on religious grounds, since they would regard conjectures about life on other planets as contrary to Scripture. This seemed especially detrimental to Huygens’s purposes, whose text expresses a deep religious sensibility.22 Huygens implicitly divided his readers according to several potentially overlapping criteria: readers of Latin or of vernacular languages, a division which also implied a rough division between male and female readers; skilled or unskilled in mathematics; and readers whose attitude to Scripture would or would not lead them to a distorted understanding of the text.
Authors addressed such divisions among readers through a range of strategies. As we have seen, they often shifted between texts aimed at specialists and texts aimed at a broader audience. But this was not their only option. Translation, too, bridged different audiences: Galileo came to consistently write in Italian, yet his Dialogues concerning the two chief world systems also appeared in Latin (1635), as well as in English (1661). Huygens’s Cosmotheoros quickly appeared in English (1698) and in French (1702). These attempts to address different linguistic audiences meant that authors, translators and publishers realistically expected to reach a fairly wide readership. Even Newton’s notoriously difficult Principia generated hopes of market demand: Edmund Halley, who had done much to encourage Newton to publish, specifically mentioned to him that his discussion of the system of the world would be the section that would draw readers’ attention and lead to sales.23
Astronomical authors borrowed numerous literary and bookish techniques when crafting their texts. Beyond the format of the dialogue, Galileo relied on the iconography of the frontispiece to defend Copernicanism.24 Descartes experimented with a range of genres for his ideas, even composing a theatrical play with philosophical ambitions.25 And Huygens placed his work in dialogue with Fontenelle and an entire tradition of cosmic voyages that started with Kepler and continued through John Wilkins, Francis Godwin and Cyrano de Bergerac.26 This is not simply a story of diffusion of scientific content to amateurs. The astronomers were borrowers as much as they were givers, and the system of the world served as a central node in such interactions.
The exchanges among astronomical authors and heterogeneous publics further emerged in the use of seemingly contradictory or inappropriate terminology. Astronomers could choose different vocabularies and examples to fit different publics, even in cases where they did not change their minds on astronomical detail. In his Cosmotheoros, Huygens described planetary orbits as ‘circles’ around a Sun at the centre of the system, even while he insisted on other technical elements of measurements, such as the declination of the ecliptic or the changes introduced in the scale of lunar orbits in comparison to planetary orbits. He even mentioned Kepler’s discoveries in this context, without alluding to the fact that they imply elliptic planetary orbits.27 When Huygens directly reacted to Newton’s work, he examined a range of possible motions under centripetal forces, and considered different curves based on conic sections, from parabolas to hyperbolas. Finally, he concluded:
… now seeing the demonstrations of Mr. Newton, that if we assume this type of weight [pesanteur] in the direction of the Sun, which diminishes in the aforementioned proportion, it balances so well the centrifugal forces of the planets, and indeed produces the effect of elliptical movement that Kepler foretold and verified by observations, I cannot doubt that these hypotheses on weight are correct, just like Mr. Newton’s system, as it is based on them.28
Huygens’s alternating use of circles and ellipses in different texts reflects his awareness of his different reading publics.
Astronomers also repeatedly described Copernicus’s innovation as the placing of the Sun at the centre of the system, even though they knew that its location was off-centre in his mathematical models.29 Newton himself varied his definitions of the location of the Sun even in the same text. When developing the notion of centripetal force, he followed common parlance when explaining: ‘The distances of the Planets from the Sun come out the same, whether, with Tycho, we place the Earth in the centre of the system, or the Sun with Copernicus.’30 However, when arguing against Tycho, Newton demonstrated that the Sun revolves around the common centre of gravity of the system. He even estimated the errors resulting from the assumption that the Sun is at the centre of the system, concluding that ‘astronomers are not far from the truth, when they reckon the Sun’s centre the common focus of all the planetary orbits. In Saturn itself, the errour [sic] thence arising does not exceed 1′45″’.31 For Newton, too, it was possible to place the Sun at the centre of the system in simplified discussions, while he was clearly aware that this was not absolutely correct.32
In fact, descriptions of the system of the world itself occupied a relatively minor role in the texts of astronomers, since their claims for authorship relied on other innovations. The bulk of their texts were devoted to those arguments they perceived as most conclusive in the debates, and not to the issue of choice among different systems as such. Arguments on the tides took pride of place in Galileo’s Dialogue, and occupy the entirety of day four. He devoted days one and two to a refutation of Aristotelian notions of motion. Only on day three does he focus on astronomical issues per se, including a rather limited description of the system of the world itself.33 In The world, Descartes devoted considerable space to optical discussion and to a hypothetical explanation of the system of the world’s genesis, rather than to its actual structure. He even neglected any quantitative astronomical data: his emphasis on the physical properties resembled Aristotelian texts, which he indeed aimed to replace. As one of the most prominent mathematicians of the seventeenth century, he surely had no difficulty treating the geometrical constructions of astronomy and their quantitative elements. Newton devoted the first two books of the Principia to discussions of motion and to a refutation of Descartes’s theory of vortices, and only described the system of the world in book 3.
Robert Hooke provides perhaps the best example of a staunch supporter of Copernicanism who focused on a relevant technical proof and not on the system itself. In his Attempt to prove the motion of the Earth, Hooke described his attempt to measure the parallax of a distant star, Gamma Draconis. He detailed how he transformed his London house into a large-scale telescope, and concluded with some daring cosmological hypotheses, including the relation between distance and planetary attraction.34 Yet he did this without discussing the system of the world itself. This division between descriptions of the system of the world and other elements, as we shall see, gave texts by ‘core’ authors a different structure from many of the texts produced by amateurs.
These texts circulated in constant dialogue with a broader audience unified around shared cultural concerns. Authors at the ‘core’ saw no contradiction between their painstaking work on the technical elements on the system of the world and its use for orientation in broad cultural terms. These issues clearly coexisted for Huygens, who, in his discussion of life on other planets, presented astronomy as an index of civilization. ‘What is it then after all that sets human Reason above all other’, asked the Dutch savant, ‘and makes us preferable to the rest of the Animal World? Nothing in my mind so much as the contemplation of the Works of God, and the study of Nature, and the improving those Sciences [sic] which may bring us to some knowledge in their Beauty and Variety.’ Indeed, since creatures on other planets are not, says Huygens, inferior to humans in their dignity, they surely ‘not only view the Stars, but they improve the Science of Astronomy’.35 Newton’s discussion of the system of the world in book 3 of the Principia drew on elements of the Prisca sapientia, which ‘were the tip of an intellectual iceberg in which Newton told the story of the original pristine religion’, a vast cultural programme through which he reinterpreted the history of civilization.36 Descartes discussed the structure of the world in terms of a new creation story, a thought-experiment structured by the imagination.37 These luminaries clearly wrote with broad cultural concerns in mind, and authors in the ‘astronomical penumbra’ participated in this dialogue.
Amateur Astronomers as Authors
Amateur authors wrote and published texts dealing with the system of the world. They used the system of the world in ways similar to the leading astronomers: they employed mathematical and physical arguments to understand their world as well as to make claims about their own place in the wider culture. Each example surveyed here is atypical, and does not individually stand for a multitude of other, similar cases. However, all come from a similar milieu—educated French society in the second half of the seventeenth century—and they illustrate how discussion of the system of the world was pertinent to a range of participants: artisans and professors, men and women, Catholics and Protestants, nobles of the sword and nobles of the robe, members of the judicial elite, and medical professionals. Collectively, they demonstrate a widespread interest in the system of the world, which was exactly the kind of interest that astronomers reacted to, thus transforming astronomy from the concern of professionals typical of the late sixteenth century to an ingrained part of elite culture by 1700.
A wide range of social profiles becomes apparent from even a brief overview of these authors. Claude Mallemant de Messange and Sébastien Le Clerc debated the authorship of a system of the world of their own invention.38 This system featured an idea that in ‘core’ terms was anachronistic even when first proposed around 1669: that the Sun, as well as the planets, revolve around the empty centre of the world. While the system was anachronistic and did not pass a serious critical examination—as Newton’s early reaction to it confirms—it was presented in the academy of the Abbé Bourdelot; it was published in print in short form in the Journal de Trévoux as well as in detailed books; and it was reviewed in the Journal des sçavans. Its authors took part in Parisian intellectual life under different guises: Le Clerc was a renowned engraver, who came from a family of goldsmiths from Metz. As he moved to Paris around 1665, he cultivated scientific ambitions and published other texts on mathematics. Mallemant de Messanges was a university professor who migrated to Paris from Burgundy. In Paris, he cultivated the patronage of aristocrats by composing works on magnets, comets and on whether 1700 was the last year of the closing century or the first of the new. Le Clerc was an artisan and Mallemant a professor, but the debate on the system of the world brought them together through the medium of print.
Claude Gadroys, who lived probably between 1642 and 1678, became the director of the military hospital in Metz, before dying at a relatively young age.39 In 1675 he published a hefty tome of more than 400 pages that described the system of the world according to the ‘three hypotheses’: Ptolemaic, Copernican and Tychonic.40 Though little is known about his life, it is clear that he was preoccupied by medical concerns: he published a letter on blood transfusion, as well as a text that explained astral influences (long a topic of interest among physicians) using Descartes’s principles.41
Chrétien-François de Lamoignon published in 1663 a defence of Copernican principles in Latin.42 Born in 1644, the 19-year-old Lamoignon defended the Copernican system as part of a disputation in the Jesuit college of Clermont. He brought his arguments into print in a form that preserved their scholastic origins: he did not include diagrams or general descriptions of the system, as other authors did, but preserved the format of the disputation by presenting possible paradoxes or contradictions in Copernicus, which he then moved to defend. Lamoignon would go on to become a prominent magistrate and a président à mortier (judge) in the Parlement of Paris, as well as a recognized figure in learned circles: Boileau dedicated one of his Epistles to Lamoignon, who in 1701 became an honorary member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. Still, his earliest work was this juvenile defence of the modern system of the world.
Blaise-François, comte de Pagan (1604–1665), was born to a noble family from Provence, and was destined to become a military officer. A protégé of the duc de Luynes, Louis XIII’s favourite, he participated in combat against the Huguenots in 1620–21. He made a name for himself as a warrior, and lost his left eye in battle, which did not deter him from further combat. Only in the early 1640s, when his deteriorating physical condition prevented him from taking to the battlefield, did he invest himself in the study of mathematics.43 In 1657 he published his Theory of the planets that claimed to argue against the way astronomers arranged the planetary orbs. In fact, his text mostly explained to readers how to draw the Copernican and Tychonic systems of the world, as well as to use ellipses instead of circular orbits.44
Some authors maintained their work in manuscript form, which they could share with others or treasure for personal use. Jeanne Dumée, who was active in Paris ca 1680, was probably born to a family of the lower nobility. She apparently became a young widow at the age of 17 and used her leisure to further her education in belles-lettres.45 By 1680 she composed a manuscript under the title A conversation on Copernicus’s opinion, which mostly paraphrased François Bernier’s popularization of Gassendi’s philosophy.46 Dumée clearly intended the manuscript for a circle of friends interested in such scholarly matters, and it was probably meant to be printed since a version was reviewed in the Journal des sçavans in 1680.47 It was certainly reworked: the extant version includes a portrait of its dedicatee, Louis de Boucherat, identified as the chancelier of France, a position he assumed in 1685. This manuscript generated for Dumée a reputation as a ‘female astronomer’ that lasted well into the nineteenth century.48
The Breton pastor Philippe Le Noir, sieur de Crevain (1623–1691), devised a system of the world of his own in reaction to modern readings that he found disturbing. Le Noir came from a family of Breton pastors and received an education that took him to the Protestant Academy of Saumur, where he studied Latin and letters. Starting in 1656, Le Noir kept a reading diary, which he maintained until 1690. His major interests were theology and history, as befitting a Huguenot pastor, but he increasingly developed an interest in scientific matters. He could not accept the Copernican system of the world, and attempted to devise a system of his own, which he revised several times. He came up with a Capellan system, in which Mercury and Venus orbited the Sun, which itself circled the Earth, along with the other planets.49 In contrast to Dumée, Le Noir probably did not circulate his text, but his ongoing revisions demonstrate an interest that abided with him for years.50
Viewed as a group, such discussion of the system of the world points to an extended engagement with astronomical questions by ‘penumbra’ reader-authors. The clear distinguishing sign between the text of the astronomical authors and the amateurs is found in the types of materials and questions addressed. All recognized the basic forms of the different systems of the world, and clearly differentiated Ptolemaic and Copernican alternatives. But the amateurs included materials that were not part of the core discussion, and neglected elements that were crucial for the resolution of this core debate, such as Hooke’s attempt to measure the parallax of a fixed star. Gadroys and Mallemant maintained an interest in astral influences that was obsolete, by the standards of the core discussion, when they published their texts.51 Le Clerc and Le Noir evidence obvious anachronisms in their choice of systems, Le Clerc unwittingly suggesting as original a system proposed by another, Le Noir, combining elements from different systems while acknowledging that experts would no doubt point out numerous difficulties with his eclectic solution.52
Dumée presented readers with her reasons for hesitation in adopting the Copernican system, and at times exercised her own judgement in technical matters. For example, she adopted Bernier’s explanation regarding Descartes’s argument for the role of the Moon in creating tides over those offered by Galileo and Copernicus.53 Pagan displayed similar hesitations, and mostly focused on instructing his readers in the various geometric constructions necessary for establishing in a geometric manner the locations of different planets. His claim to innovation was an emphasis on the importance of ellipses for the theories of the planets. He argued that previous astronomers and philosophers represented the movements of the planets in perfect circles, and that ‘if Kepler had been the first among scholars and great personalities to arrange them in elliptical [orbits], he did this superficially [legerement] and through the use of the Rudolphine tables, without geometrical demonstration and in a flawed manner’.54
Even while they chose a variety of approaches and formats for discussion, these authors sustained the discussion of the system of the world in terms that professional astronomers would have recognized. In fact, the range of formats used—published treatises, the publication of a college disputation, manuscripts—demonstrates how far the engagement with the ‘Copernican question’ spread. All these authors were obviously readers of astronomical literature, and even if they are atypical as authors, they surely stand for more readers interested in the problem. And while the contents of these ‘penumbra’ works differ in many respects from the content of ‘core’ works, we can clearly discern all three facets of the system of the world at work in their texts.
The system of the world coordinated astronomical–mathematical and physical components, and, just as ‘core’ authors placed different emphases, so did the amateurs. Lamoignon, who published a disputation, focused on the physics and the putative paradoxes created by a moving Earth. He did not employ a single geometrical diagram.55 Le Clerc, on the other hand, had mastered the geometry of perspective as an engraver and employed diagrams and geometrical considerations to substantiate his system. Even though he used Scriptural hermeneutics and physical speculation, geometrical and quantitative elements played a substantial role in his argumentation.56 Gadroys employed geometrical considerations to explain astronomical phenomena, such as the apparent movements of the fixed stars, the Sun, the Moon or the planets. Yet it seems that his attention was mostly focused on physical questions, which he took from Descartes. This is why he discussed the formation of the system, echoing Descartes’s ‘creation story’, problems concerning what he defined as the ‘nature’ of stars, questions of ‘weight’ [pesanteur], and the problem of the tides.57 Indeed, it is useless to attempt to pinpoint precisely the relative importance of mathematical and physical aspects. Just like the ‘core’ astronomers, amateur authors are found over the entire continuum, from the stress on the physical to substantial usage of geometrical elements.
Amateur authors also used the system of the world to stake claims on scientific prizes, to establish themselves in scholarly circles and to orient themselves vis-à-vis a sense of modernity. Le Clerc and Mallemant de Messanges clearly sought to defend a new system, which would enshrine them in the astronomical pantheon. This is why their claims turned into a bitter priority dispute, even though ‘core’ readers knew they would never receive any recognition.58 Lamoignon probably did not seek to innovate, but the decision of the 19-year-old to publish indicates a wish to establish a certain scholarly reputation, though not necessarily among astronomers: astronomy was the most popular subject of publication among the exact sciences in Paris of these decades.59 His publication fitted into a broader strategy in a family whose members cultivated the company of literary authors, wrote the biographies of their parents and developed unusual pedagogical ambitions for their members.60 Gadroys dedicated his publication to the Academy of Sciences, having received its approval to do so. Indeed, he displayed an acquaintance with research programmes developed in the academy, such as the distillation and analysis of plants, which were not widely advertised by the institution.61 Pagan tried to outdo even professional astronomers in their use of the ellipse, which he tailored for presentation to a broad audience.
The work on the system of the world helped its authors to establish themselves in elite culture and to orient themselves within it. Dumée clearly used her manuscript to establish her reputation for astronomical demonstration using spheres and to woo a potential protector in the person of Louis de Boucherat.62 This orientation also operated on a more personal level. Le Noir reacted with disbelief to some of the propositions he read in Descartes, such as the circulation of the blood, and sought to read further scientific texts. He could not convince himself of the veracity of the Copernican system, and when he read a work on the tides by César d’Arcons, a Bordeaux lawyer, he believed he had found the key to understanding the system of the world. He subsequently blended elements from d’Arcons and from Copernicus to produce his own system. Yet his overall goal seems to have been deeply personal, and he suspected that learned scholars would probably be able to decimate his system for its many faults: ‘it suffices that I have cheered my mind with the discovery of a system for my own personal use … within it I can easily see shining the power, order, wisdom, and goodness of our great God’.63 Faced with the tide of innovation in natural philosophy, this personal system anchored Le Noir’s cherished cultural beliefs.
These authors collectively show the system of the world in use in the second half of the seventeenth century among different sectors of the French elite. These ‘penumbra’ authors entered into conversation about scientific developments in astronomy, and if we see them as representing broader groups of readers, they surely indicate a widespread interest in the innovations of the ‘new science’ among French elites. Certainly, other examples of similar texts could be cited from other regions, from Jesuit Athanasius Kircher’s Ecstatic journey (Iter extaticum), which surveys the system of the world from his perspective, to Dutch lens-maker Nicolaas Hartsoeker, who included natural philosophical elements in his optical publication.64 In England, artisans and practical mathematicians published astronomical books for a wide audience: William Leybourn and Vincent Wing’s Urania practica (1649) included ephemerides, an astrological treatise, and astronomical tables, as well as instruction in the relevant geometry.65 The French examples, therefore, complement each other and demonstrate a collective interest in one culture. It was certainly not an extraordinary, though it is a particularly instructive, culture: it would serve as exemplar for elites across the continent for the better part of two centuries.
A Scientific Culture: Laying the Foundations for Astronomy
These amateur authors and their readers could not have developed these interests in traditional pedagogical institutions, most prominently in the French universities. Before the eighteenth century, the level of mathematics taught there was very limited, and when students were exposed to innovative physical and astronomical theories, these were clad in heavy garbs of Aristotelian re-interpretations.66 They had to develop their interests and skills by means other than university instruction. Though it is near impossible to survey every possible source, several elements combined, in my opinion, to foster the basic skills required to engage astronomical questions: a shifting educational context, including new pedagogical venues and new textbooks available to the public at large, which bypassed the limited programmes of the universities; the dissemination of the material culture of science among non-specialists; and a persisting interest in astrology and the ‘occult’—all leading to the acquisition of geometrical skills by a wide enough section of the elite.
In terms of education, the seventeenth century continued the humanistic critiques of scholastic education inherited from the Renaissance. It also implemented them through three complementary means: new colleges, household education and the printed book. The story of the foundation of Jesuit colleges from the late sixteenth century onwards is well known, and their contribution to the culture of the early modern science has been amply stressed.67 Descartes was the most famous graduate of such a college, and, as we have seen, Lamoignon published his defence of Copernicus in the context of a student disputation. These were not the only new institutions, however. In sixteenth-century France, cities and towns sponsored the establishment of local schools that were open to pedagogical innovation, and other teaching orders—most prominently the Oratorians—provided new avenues of training for those who sought careers in teaching, often in preference to pursuing a devout life.68 Mallemant de Messange was typical here, entering the Oratory in 1674 and then leaving it to pursue teaching at the University of Paris.69
Along with these institutions, households became prominent sites for educating the children of notable families. The household could complement or supplant university education, as well as itself produce scientific knowledge.70 This development reflected growing literacy rates among elite women, which also manifested itself in the emergence of female authors who gained widespread renown, such as Madeleine de Scudéry.71 In learned families, women took on responsibilities for educating the children in basic literacy. Literary author Charles Perrault even claimed that, thanks to their mother, he and his brothers were never whipped by their professors at college.72 The household helped prepare children for the university, but it also allowed them to devote themselves to other reading materials.73 In some cases, such as the Godefroys, women participated in the scholarly endeavours of the family.74 It is no surprise then that women helped spread astronomical knowledge in several ways: ‘they served as model students, as readers for texts destined for popularization, and as authors and translators of such texts’.75 The household shaped the education of numerous authors. Huygens received an outstanding education at home, and Dumée serves as an example for the new role of women in spreading new astronomical ideas.76 Descartes himself tutored Queen Christina of Sweden in her court.77
In fact, the availability of new reading materials allowed reading elites to further their interests in different domains of natural philosophy. Even basic textbooks that covered the university curriculum appeared in French—not merely in Latin—in the beginning of the seventeenth century.78 Descartes’s philosophy offered an alternative to the university curriculum, and some of his texts, most notably the Principles of philosophy, were aimed at students. Despite his earlier concerns and the decision not to publish The world, Descartes did include details of his cosmological system in this publication.79
Other genres offered access to knowledge of astronomy and basic geometrical skills. The geometry of the geocentric universe, which was also applicable to a heliocentric one, reached wide publics of students through different editions of Sacrobosco’s Sphaera. This Latin text, written for university instruction in the quadrivium during the thirteenth century, appeared in print for the first time in 1472. By 1650 it had appeared in at least 350 editions, though it reached a height of popularity in the second half of the sixteenth century, and went into rapid decline after the turn of the century.80
While the interest of readers in this geocentric text dwindled, they still looked for geometrical instruction on the sphere: Leybourn and Wing included such a section in their work, and the English astronomer John Flamsteed published in 1680 his Doctrine of the sphere with the explicit aim of replacing the geocentric model with a heliocentric one. It was aimed at learners:
I thought I could not perform any piece of Service, which might more justly deserve acceptance, or be more useful to the Ingenious Student of Astronomy than this, wherein I have shewed him how all the Diurnal Appearances of the Sun and the Stars are naturally made, and how laying aside all those Old Projections of the Sphere, which falsely suppose the Earth’s Stability, they may be represented, and the Problems concerning them answered by New ones, grounded on that true System of the World, which supposes the Annual and Diurnal Motions of the Earth, proposed first by Pythagoras, asserted by Copernicus, demonstrated by Kepler, and as most agreeable to reason and experience approved and entertained by the ablest Astronomers of our Times.81
Gadroy’s text on the systems of the world exemplifies the debt to this tradition of discussions of the system of the world. He began with a section on the apparent movements of different heavenly bodies that explicitly relied on the ‘circles that astronomers and geographers use’ to describe the heavens and the Earth.82 The tradition of the Sphere could serve as a crucial stepping-stone for readers who wished to comprehend astronomy and the transformations it had undergone.
Books explaining the art of fortification became another relevant tradition, less obviously connected to the system of the world, yet probably as influential in the seventeenth century. This was an age of siege warfare: innovations related to the adoption of gunpowder and new forms of fortifications encouraged the appearance of specialized engineers from the sixteenth century, not to mention a burgeoning literature. Initially, the specialists and the literature were especially prominent in the Italian peninsula, with the first publications on fortification in Italian appearing from the second half of the sixteenth century.83 In France, the seventeenth century saw the emergence of a French approach to military architecture and the formation of a royal corps of engineers, which in turn fostered the publication of new kinds of illustrations in works on fortifications: ‘Military drawings, which in the sixteenth century sometimes still played the role of speculative instrument, henceforth became a resolutely practical working tool for engineers in the context of training as well as for application in the field.’84 Works such as Jean du Breuil’s Universal art of fortification surveyed different national schools of fortification and instructed readers in their drawing and design. Such a text relied on a geometric manner of presenting the material, advancing from definitions to practical design. Readers learned to draw a perpendicular line, to measure angles and to work with parallel lines so that they could implement their own designs for fortifications. ‘This is the science of kings and princes’, explained du Breuil, ‘who amuse themselves by putting on paper their beautiful thoughts for the design of a city or a castle, on how one should besiege and attack a [fortified] place.’85
On occasion, these works drew on traditions of geographical texts and included a discussion of the system of the world as part of a broad survey of the universe. The engineer Alain Manesson-Mallet, for example, published a Description of the universe that combined elements from all these traditions: he started with a survey of the globe, based on the basic concepts and definitions enshrined in Sacrobosco’s sphere tradition, and moved to definitions of the different climatic zones according to ancient authors and modern geographers.86 His second chapter explained the structure of the cosmos and presented four systems of the world: Ptolemaic, Copernican, Tychonic and Cartesian. Manesson-Mallet did not explicitly endorse one system, and presented the essential elements of each, though with a clear bias towards the Copernican. Copernicus’s opinion ‘was first ardently followed by Rheticus, Rothmanus, Landberge, Kepler, Galileo, and in our days by Descartes, Gassendi, and the Comte de Pagan, as well as the most intelligent among our astronomers’.87 Manesson-Mallet also devoted several pages to an exposition of the three movements attributed to the Earth by Copernicus, which contrasts with the single page he devoted to each of the Ptolemaic and Tychonic systems to signal his strong personal, yet unstated, preference.88
Mannesson-Mallet’s treatise illustrates the affinity between such publications and the new educational context. By 1683, the year he published this work, Manesson-Mallet had retired from military service and held the position of professor of mathematics to the pages of Louis XIV’s petite écurie. These Small Stables served to train about 30 children of noble families from the provinces, who had to prove their nobility so that they could train for military careers. Their education included subjects such as riding, dancing and fencing, as well as writing, drawing and mathematics.89 His treatise, dedicated to Louis XIV, exemplifies the knowledge of a professor of mathematics for the court nobility and his manner of imparting it to students. Its publication in print promoted its contents to an audience broader than the pupils in the Small Stables: the system of the world became a symbol and a common reference for the nobility and for those who sought to imitate it through such channels, which combined an education outside the university, books in new genres and an education in practical mathematics.
In this educational and cultural context, the system of the world fitted into a broader material culture that also contained other astronomical elements. Jeanne Dumée, for instance, possessed a telescope and models of the celestial spheres, one Ptolemaic and the other Copernican. In fact, since her knowledge of observational astronomy seems to have been quite limited, the models played a crucial role in the composition of her text.90 The Count of Vermandois, one of Louis XIV’s bastard children, used as part of his education scientific books such as Claude Perrault’s Essays as well as relevant instruments, including globes, microscopes and mathematical instruments.91 When an expedition of Jesuit astronomers left France for the far east in 1685, they took with them quadrants, pendulums to measure time by the second, magnets, microscopes and thermometers. They received instruments and instructions from the Parisian Academy of Sciences, but they also had another source. The Duc du Maine, another bastard son of Louis XIV, who was 15 at the time, took an interest in the mission. He gave the Jesuits a ‘demi-cercle’ for geometrical uses, much larger than the two they already had, which he had ‘ordered for his personal use’.92 His education, too, led to an interest in mathematics and astronomy, enough that he would order relevant instruments. Clearly, astronomical and mathematical books became part of a larger material culture of science. Certain members of the elite developed a taste for it from an early age.
Occult theories and publications intrigued French elites in the second half of the seventeenth century and contributed to their interest in systems of the world and their uses.93 Several of the authors already examined—Gadroys, Mallemant de Messange and Pagan—shared an interest in astrology, and included discussion of astral influences in their astronomical works. Abbé Pierre Le Lorrain de Vallemont (1649–1721), who published Sphere of the world, according to Copernicus (1707), devoted an entire book to occult physics. This work explained how to use divination rods for discovering hidden treasures, water fountains and criminals who fled the law, all based on occult principles.94 Interest in the occult was indeed widespread among elites in Paris and at court. The police inquiry into the ‘affair of the poisons’, which erupted in 1677, exposed an extensive underworld network of magicians, sorceresses and rogue priests who all were all too ready to peddle their fantastic wares. Their clientele ranged from the poor in the most downtrodden suburbs of Paris to the mistress of Louis XIV.95 In spite of explicit criticisms of the occult—Charles Perrault excused Pagan’s interest in judicial astrology by explaining that even great men usually show some weakness—it was still a strong presence even in the second half of the seventeenth century, and drove practical interest in the system of the world.96
From the perspective of the reading elite, seventeenth-century mathematics was not a unified enterprise but one that they encountered in many forms. Acquiring the basis of geometry through the reading of Euclid was an attractive ideal, as attested by the story recounted by Gilberte Perier, sister of mathematician Blaise Pascal. She told how, as a child, Pascal developed for himself the first 32 propositions in book 1 of Euclid without knowing the book or the help of a grown-up.97 We may take the story with a grain of salt, but it demonstrates how knowledge of Euclid was the acme of mathematical education.
However, mathematics also came in other shapes and forms. Practitioners might develop an interest in mastering particular methods transmitted in narrow circles. Such methods were not necessarily formalized or connected to a broader axiomatic framework. English followers of Thomas Harriot developed the ‘method of differences’, while one bone of contention between Tycho Brahe and his adversaries was the ‘prostaphaeresis method’ for trigonometrical calculations.98 Further, and as the treatises on fortifications show, readers sometimes developed an interest in basic geometry and construction problems that relied on Euclidian geometry for pragmatic purposes, without the rigor characteristic of Euclid or the innovative appeal of methods developed in specialist circles. Indeed, some of the mathematical bestsellers of the period were books on practical mathematics, clearly designed to serve general readers.99
Authors of astronomical texts directly called on such skills. In key moments in their texts, they asked their readers to construct the geometrical forms of the system, knowing that their readers would likely have the requisite skills. Galileo did this through the character of Simplicio, representing Aristotelian positions. When Salviati, who speaks for the Copernican position in the dialogue, expounds his argument for the mobility of the Earth and the Moon around the Sun, Simplicio claims that he is not convinced, and suggests that a diagram might facilitate the discussion. Salviati jumps on the opportunity and instructs Simplicio: ‘That shall be done. But for your greater satisfaction and astonishment, too, I want you to draw it yourself … So take a sheet of paper and the compasses; let this page be the enormous expanse of the universe.’100 The instructions that followed resembled many problems in practical geometry, yet they were intended as proof of the Copernican system: ‘since you are sure without my telling you that the Earth is located in this universe, mark some point at your pleasure where you intend this to be located, and designate it by means of some letter.’101 Salviati then instructs Simplicio to mark the locations of the Sun and of Venus, according to sensible experience and extant knowledge about the motions of the planets. As Simplicio reaches the conclusion that Venus has to revolve around the Sun, he details a range of concerns in an essentially geometric language: Venus does not recede from the Sun in an interval of more than 40 degrees; its size changes by a factor of about 40 times, depending on its conjunctions; and it shows changes in shape.102 The latter is especially noteworthy: even though the famous phases of Venus were discovered through the use of the telescope, Galileo did not mention the instrument in this context. Simplicio is led to admit defeat in this crucial passage in the Dialogue, overcome by a geometrical technique that readers would find easy to re-enact.
Huygens made similar demands on the geometrical skills of his readers. He also expected his readers—personified as his brother, the addressee of the text—to be able to use telescopes and take into account optical considerations thanks to their knowledge of geometry. For example, he assumed an ability to imagine an observer’s perspective from different planets as a basis for understanding how astronomy would be practised on other planets. He asked his readers to imagine the perspective of the inhabitants of Saturn: they would see similar constellations, such as the Bear or Orion, but they would not revolve around the same axis. The only planet visible to them would be Jupiter, presumably since the other planets are too far away. And Jupiter would seem to them like Venus seems from the Earth: it would always remain within 37 degrees of the Sun.103 Such an exercise asks the reader to draw different circles, to see how Venus would appear from the Earth and Jupiter from Saturn. In fact, drawing circles around different centres and using the angles that intersecting lines create was quite common in construction problems, such as the construction of a pentagon around an equilateral triangle.104 Drawing circles in different proportions was crucial to Huygens’s purpose of explaining the dimensions of the cosmos and inciting a sense of wonder at the Creator. He even asked his readers to imagine a diagram included in the book, representing a small section of the Earth’s orbit, with the Moon circling it, in the context of the solar system and the fixed stars. In such an arrangement the orbit of Saturn would have a radius of 360 feet.105
Huygens reminisced over the days he and his brother devoted to studies and their nights devoted to stargazing. When Saturn would be at a favourable conjunction,
… you may happen to make some new discoveries, good Brother, if you would but make use of your two telescopes of 170 and 210 foot long; the longest, and the best I believe now in the world … I cannot but think of those times with pleasure, and of our diverting labour in polishing and preparing such Glasses, in inventing new Methods and Engines, and always pushing forward to still greater and greater things.106
Other exercises in optics were also helpful: to grasp the amount of sunlight reaching Jupiter, Huygens instructed his brother to construct a tube, whose end would be sealed with a plate of brass. This plate would have a hole whose radius would be in the ratio of 1:570 to the length of the tube. The illumination provided by the hole would equal the illumination on Jupiter. If the hole were twice as narrow, it would equal the illumination on Saturn.107 The Huygens family was certainly extraordinary in terms of their education. But for them, as for Jeanne Dumée, astronomy was practised within the household and in the context of a material culture that included instruments as well as books.
Even astronomers at the cutting edge of the ‘new science’ could address a relatively broad range of readers, modelled on their family members, or close friends in the case of Sagredo in Galileo’s dialogue. They could rely on the geometrical skills such readers possessed, and this is perhaps a good reason for their choice of using circles to describe planetary orbits and for placing the Sun at the centre of the system even in cases where they knew the orbits to be elliptical and the Sun to be eccentric in relation to the centre of the system. This simplified the construction problem for readers, who wanted to grasp the general structure of the system without necessarily performing laborious calculations using ellipses based on eccentric assumptions. These readers also possessed models and instruments that they could use to grasp the cosmological debate on the system of the world. By way of the mediating role of the system of the world, they were in continuous dialogue with the core of the developments in early modern science.
Conclusion
Eighteenth-century astronomy developed apace: the cohesion between mathematical and physical elements grew stronger and more pronounced; European voyages provided new observations such as the transits of Venus or the measurements of the Earth’s curvature; and intensive networks of scientific academies connected European savants.108 Yet the system of the world continued to play a mediating role similar in most respects to the previous century. Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) provides perhaps the clearest case. Du Châtelet was born to a noble family. Her father conducted diplomatic missions and held the position of introducing ambassadors at Louis XIV’s court, while the family had deeper roots in the judicial milieu of the Parlement of Paris. As a child, she was educated in the household and perhaps also at a convent. She developed a keen interest in the sciences, on which she read books and received private tutoring. Her form of education resembles those of amateurs from the previous century, and Du Châtelet made her way into the world of science in similar ways: she became acquainted with literary authors through circles connected with her family’s Parisian hotel.109
Du Châtelet made her name in the world of science as an important mediator of Newton’s ideas in France. Most famously, she produced a French translation of the Principia, accompanied with her own commentaries. In this sense, too, she demonstrated how a bookish project served as a form of mediation in the world of science. Excluded from the Parisian Academy of Sciences because of her gender, she associated as an aristocrat with literary figures such as Voltaire and with competent mathematicians such as Alexis Clairaut (1713–1765) and Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759). Clairaut assisted with some of the technical elements related to the translation.110
Du Châtelet’s commentaries display the ambiguities about the exact location of the Sun that are characteristic of previous discussions of the system of the world. Copernicus, she explains, revived the heliocentric system of the Babylonians and the Pythagoreans, and ‘again placed the Sun at the centre of the world, or, to put it more exactly, at the centre of our planetary system’.111 She was clearly aware, at the same time, of geometrical complexities in Copernicus’s system and was therefore probably aware of the eccentric location of the Sun in his calculations.112 Certainly, in her own description of the system, she stressed the elliptical orbits of the planets. She credited Kepler with this discovery and explained that the Sun occupies one of the foci of the elliptical orbits. Yet still she did not feel the need to harmonize the claim that Copernicus placed the Sun at the centre of the world with the mathematical details of the system of the world. This was not because of a lack of mathematical competence or negligence in working over previous texts: Du Châtelet certainly read with a keen and critical eye the works of her predecessors, and pointed to the ‘bizarre ideas’ of Kepler and Huygens where they merited such critiques.113 It was due to the persistently complex task of using the system of the world to signal, at once, physical and mathematical elements, as well as claims to astronomical priority.
Such an example of the persistence of the system of the world as a symbol that connected authors at the core of the astronomical debate with the penumbra should lead us to rethink entrenched assumptions about the emergence of European scientific culture. In spite of studies that show how integrated scientific concerns could be to everyday concerns of Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially around empirical and fact-finding ventures,114 the overarching narrative of scientific change still prefers to see these centuries as made by the milestones of a few great men. In this scenario, the wide diffusion of previously recondite concerns in a recently constituted public sphere only began to take effect in the eighteenth century.115 In Joel Mokyr’s view, this required cultural entrepreneurship on the part of the new heroes of the early modern science, such as Bacon and Newton.116
This article has argued for a different view. It suggests that the world of letters, especially after 1600, functioned as a new social space that allowed for the emergence of the early modern science as a cultural movement. It is not so far-fetched to imagine the end of a ‘Habsburg Renaissance of astronomy’ ca 1600, had the main protagonists died without bequeathing their problems to a generation that would discuss them in a different social space.117 From around 1600, with the maturation of the European book industry and the emergence of vernacular-reading elites, published texts connected authors and readers even in seemingly complex and technical topics such as astronomy. Major authors such as Galileo and Huygens participated in a discussion with a lay public even as they tackled problems that, at their root, only a few experts could fathom. As the French example shows, some of these lay readers picked up a quill and became authors themselves. They often had the basic geometrical skills to do so, and they certainly were concerned with the profound cultural implications of the system of the world. Indeed, in some cases, they even thought they could compete for the prestige of recognition from the core for the systems of the world that they created. Scientific culture in Europe grew around such forms of dialogue and exchange; these forms can help to explain how and why this initial scientific renaissance did not remain just another golden age but became instead a transformative institution at the heart of European modernity.
See endnotes at source.
Originally published by Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 01.18.2023, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.