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Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century

1969; Iter Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/rr.v32i3.13996

2293-7374

Adam Mosley, Piers Brown,

History of Science and Medicine

Adam Mosley's new book on Tycho Brahe's astronomical work takes its title from the figure of the mythological Atlas as coelifer: bearer of the heavens.This image of Atlas supporting the celestial spheres on his shoulders was a common symbol of astronomy, appearing in the frontispieces of books, in dedicatory prefaces and poems, and as decoration on astronomical instruments-including Brahe's great equatorial armillary at Uraniborg.Brahe and his contemporaries not only used the figure of Atlas to allude to the weighty responsibility of astronomical observation and prediction, but also drew on interpretations that read Atlas as a historical king and astronomer, suggesting the dignity of both those who engaged in the profession and those who provided patronage to them.This relationship between astronomical work and the systems of cultural capital that enabled it is a central aspect of Mosley's important new study.Like the sixteenth century astronomers who are the subject of his book, Mosley uses the idea of "bearing the heavens" as a figure for his project: "a metaphor for the conveyance of astronomical theories, data, and techniques."Under this rubric, he brings together intellectual, social, and material history by focusing on the processes of astronomical communication, and especially the information and social interaction embodied in letters, books, and instruments.The book "locates [Brahe] within the overlapping technical, courtly, and literary cultures of the period," and considers the transmission of astronomical data in various forms: "the exchange of letters, the production and use of books, the manufacture and transfer of ownership of instruments, and the movement from one site to another of individual practitioners" that were central to the development of an astronomical community in the late sixteenth century.Mosley centers his account of astronomical communication on a consideration of Brahe's Epistolae astronomicae (1596), the published form of his long exchange of letters with the astronomer-prince Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel and Wilhelm's court astronomer, Christoph Rothmann.In chapter two, he considers the epistolary exchanges that were part of Brahe's self-appointed task of gathering a reliable set of astronomical observations.As Mosley points out, while previous scholars studying Brahe have examined his letters for information on his astronomical projects, they have not considered the "letters as a form of scholarly production in themselves, or … the role of epistolary communication … in his astronomical