INSIDE THE STARGAZER'S PALACE

At the dawn of modern science.

Historians agree that the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution jump-started today’s science with pioneering geniuses like Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and René Descartes. Award-winning historian Moller, author of The Map of Knowledge, focuses on the 1500s, delivering a riveting account of that century by focusing on pioneers who are unknown to many readers. Astronomy led the way. Scholars had been measuring heavenly movements throughout history to determine time, the calendar, and religious celebrations as well as the future; astrology remained a respectable practice for an astronomer for another century. Even before the telescope (invented after 1600), scholars used complex instruments to improve their calculations of stellar movements, a major goal of 16th-century observers. The century’s greatest astronomer, Tycho Brahe, discovered little, but his precise calculations supported later breakthroughs from Johannes Kepler and Newton. Moller emphasizes that Nicolaus Copernicus’ 1543 announcement that planets orbit the sun was interesting but not a bombshell. Like the ancient, clunky, Ptolemaic system, Copernicus assumed that planets orbited in perfect circles, which they don’t, so his calculations were no more accurate than Ptolemy’s. This golden age of instrument making benefited mapmaking, geography, and navigation in addition to astronomy, energized by Columbus’ discoveries, which revealed—to everyone’s amazement—that the earth contained vast unknown lands. These lands fascinated scholars of the era, but their fascination also encompassed astrology, alchemy, angels, spirits, mythical beasts, and omens, with only a hint of skepticism that did not take hold until later.

The run-up to the Scientific Revolution in expert hands.