The Review Nobody Cares About

Hi,

So I finished up The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich.

Mr. Gingerich is a historian specializing in the history of science and the history of astronomy in particular. Over 30 years ago in the early 70's, the 500th anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus was celebrated and as he was one of the committee members organizing the event he decided to take a survey of all the known extant copies of Copernicus's De Revolutonibus -- the book that described Copernicus's theory of heliocentrism. Despite the book's importance it was widely rumored that only a handful of contemporary astronomers had actually read the whole thing (since the latter half of the book was dense with the charts and tables needed to prove that Copernicus's system could make better predictions).

What became apparent as Mr. Gingerich conducted his survey is that a number of copies had extensive marginalia where previous owners had taken notes on the book's contents. Further, he was able to identify whole "families" of annotations where one teacher (say Tycho Brahe) would make a series of notes that would then be copied down by their students and then added onto from there. These notes provided some interesting links between the great names of 16th and 17th Century astronomers and the rapidly evolving theories they developed.

The book is pretty interesting but rather than follow a timeline, it tends to group major themes of the survey and then devotes a chapter to following the whole thing through. This isn't necessarily a bad way to approach things, but near the end of the book it turns into a bit of a mish-mash of topics that are sort of piled in at the end. Still, there's some very interesting insight into how Copernicus's ideas were spread across the continent. All and all an interesting read and mildly recommended.

later
Tom

The Review Nobody Cares About

Hi,

So I finished up The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich.

Mr. Gingerich is a historian specializing in the history of science and the history of astronomy in particular. Over 30 years ago in the early 70's, the 500th anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus was celebrated and as he was one of the committee members organizing the event he decided to take a survey of all the known extant copies of Copernicus's De Revolutonibus -- the book that described Copernicus's theory of heliocentrism. Despite the book's importance it was widely rumored that only a handful of contemporary astronomers had actually read the whole thing (since the latter half of the book was dense with the charts and tables needed to prove that Copernicus's system could make better predictions).

What became apparent as Mr. Gingerich conducted his survey is that a number of copies had extensive marginalia where previous owners had taken notes on the book's contents. Further, he was able to identify whole "families" of annotations where one teacher (say Tycho Brahe) would make a series of notes that would then be copied down by their students and then added onto from there. These notes provided some interesting links between the great names of 16th and 17th Century astronomers and the rapidly evolving theories they developed.

The book is pretty interesting but rather than follow a timeline, it tends to group major themes of the survey and then devotes a chapter to following the whole thing through. This isn't necessarily a bad way to approach things, but near the end of the book it turns into a bit of a mish-mash of topics that are sort of piled in at the end. Still, there's some very interesting insight into how Copernicus's ideas were spread across the continent. All and all an interesting read and mildly recommended.

later
Tom