The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by (PDF)

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User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I love this book. It is a historical who-dun-it centered on the marginal notes made in the copies of De Revolutionibus

⭐, the book by Nicholas Copernicus that started the Age of Science. In loose connection with the 500 year anniversary of Copernicus’ birth in 1973, Dr. Gingerich set out on the “boring” task of compiling a list of all known copies of the first and second editions of the book. This task took almost 30 years, and in the process, Dr. Gingerich used the marginalia to reconstruct a lively history of the early participants (and opponents) in the Copernican revolution which spanned the lives of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei.For me it was a slow read — not because of technical detail but because it is such a fascinating story that I didn’t want to go at my normal pace. I can hardly think of higher praise than this. I relish stories of people who worked at the true frontiers of science, as these men did.Just one small carp. The footnote on p. 191 is a bit misleading. Commenting on a fresco “observing the eclipse at Christ’s passion” he states “There couldn’t have been an eclipse at that time. Jesus was crucified the day after Passover…” This is wrong on two counts. True, there was no solar eclipse (as the fresco indicates according to a communication with the author), but there was a lunar eclipse at the crucifixion (which Peter refers to in Acts 2:20). Second, the crucifixion was on the “day of preparation” for the Passover — just preceding the Passover feast. See the Wikipedia article on the Crucifixion of Jesus citing the 1983 article by Humphreys and Waddington, and the dvd

⭐which also mentions the eclipse. The crucifixion was on Friday, April 3, 33 AD.I recommend this book as bedside reading for anyone interested in a great who-dun-it.HMSChallenger

⭐The period from Copernicus to Newton is certainly one of the richest and most important in the history of astronomy. Material covering this period is plentiful and one of the chief challenges for the casual historian of astronomy is culling through the options and deciding what to read.Certainly biographies figure high on the priority list. Here the selections reflect the amount of material available about the lives of the principle players. Galileo and Newton have no shortage of books devoted to their lives and work. Biographies of Copernicus are rare because relatively little is known of his life. Kepler and Tycho fall somewhere in the middle.The current work of by Owen Gingerich is a very different take. It is essentially the biography of a book: Copernicus’ seminal De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium.Gingerich has been in a hunt for surviving copies of the 1st and 2nd editions of Copernicus’ De Rev for over 30 years, and this book tells the story of his journey and its rewards, trials, dead-ends, who dunits, and frustrations. Gingerich has written of his trek before, in magazines and selected articles. Many of these pieces have been released in his two excellent compilations, The Great Copernicus Chase and The Eye of Heaven, but those few pieces were only tantalizing morsels. The full course meal is in the present volume, and it is a treat.Gingerich’s census of surviving copies of De Rev presents a unique window into the development of cosmology and the slow acceptance of the heliocentric view. Early scholarly readers were in the habit of annotating their copies, pointing out their agreements and dissents, occasional passages of scripture, comments of their teachers, etc. Since many of the books passed from owner to owner over the centuries, Gingerich found many copies that contained multiple layers of annotations, marginal notes, edits, censorings, etc.What began as a simple census of extant copies soon turned into a scientific/historic detective story as Gingerich traced the various schools of thought, teacher/student relationships, and geographic migration of ideas through 16th to 18th century Europe. The result is a fascinating, personal account of the journey, detailing many of Gingerich’s wrong turns and dead ends as well as the brilliant deductions and “aha” moments as he traveled the globe and interacted with the community of Copernicus scholars, rare book dealers, and often, the seamy underside of library theft and international looting during wartime.The title, by the way, is lifted from Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers, a work which Gingerich read as a graduate student. Koestler referred to De Rev as “the book nobody read,” and Gingerich was inspired to find out if that was really true. Except for the opening chapter on cosmology, De Rev is a murderously technical and geometrical treatise, and could only be understood by those well-trained in mathematics. But as Gingerich soon learned, it was far from ignored.Gingerich’s book has much to add to any history of the period. De Rev was owned by virtually all of the important figures in the history of astronomy. Tycho, Kepler, Galileo and Newton all figure prominently in the story, and Gingerich’s clear prose and knack for story telling will give even the uninitiated reader a pleasurable introduction to one of the most fascinating periods in history. However, to the knowledgeable reader who is already familiar with the development of ideas in astronomy, this book will be hard to put down due to its unique spin on the period.Gingerich has produced an instant classic in the history of astronomy with this book. It is a fascinating read and has already entered my personal top-ten list as a book that will be referred to again and again.

⭐This book sets out to prove its title is wrong and that Copernicus’ book which Arthur Koestler called ‘The book nobody read’ was in fact thoroughly studied by many people. Owen Gingerich very interestingly chronicles the years of travel and research which he put into viewing every surviving copy of the two 16’th century editions of “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”. In doing so he also provides a fresh perspective on the way the book was received when it was originally printed, as well as a vivid view into the world of book collecting and book stealing. A great book for anyone interested in the development of modern ideas of the universe, or would just like a good read.

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