Thomas Kuhn's, book The Copernican Revolution deserves to be regarded as the best of that small group of longue duree histories that mark postwar historiography of science. In many respects, it is probably the single most influential one. Tightly written and brilliantly argued, it is responsible, together with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, for the continued popularity of the metaphor of revolution in science among scholars and students alike. Yet, surprisingly, while aspects of the story conceived in Kuhn's original account (...) have been debated, researched, and considerably revised, his overall understanding of a scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus has received no detailed scrutiny. The same may be said of the deployment of Copernican episode in Structure. Finally, a critical appreciation is in order not least because Kuhn's story is so compact and his language at times metaphorical. (shrink)

List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg; 1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg; 2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin; 3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield; 4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicus’s preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman; 5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne; 6. Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in (...) early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver; 7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr.; 8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon; 9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski; 10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook; 11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter; 12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney; 13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey; Index. (shrink)

In separate reviews of The Copernican Question published in the Summer 2012 issue of this journal, Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron find little that meets their approval while failing to provide readers with a full and accurate summary of the book’s major claims and arguments.* The reviewers engage in an exercise in deconstructive surgery, essentially breaking down and reconstituting the work into separate studies. Swerdlow, who devotes most of his twenty-five page treatment to chapter 3 (with brief side-glances at the (...) introduction, chapters 1, 8, and 11), leaves the impression that my book is almost entirely about Copernicus. Heilbron, who confines himself mostly to what I have to say about Galileo, identifies a .. (shrink)

Considerable historiographical controversy surrounds the question of why and how Copernicus decided to overturn the prevailing Earth-centered representation of the heavens. This essay summarizes some key elements of an explanation first laid out in The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (2011) and subsequently expanded with further evidence in Copernicus and the Astrologers (2016). Copernicus’s defining problem situation is to be found in his involvement in a culture of astrological prognostication during his student days in Bologna (1496–1500). Just before (...) Copernicus’s arrival in the fall of 1496, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s attack on the foundations of astrology appeared from a prominent Bologna publisher. This publisher also produced several of the prognostications authored by Domenico Maria di Novara, in whose house Copernicus lodged. Among Pico’s many charges was a claim that astrologers do not agree on the order of the planets. Although the word “astrology” appears only once in Copernicus’s extant writings, it is certain that he was aware of Pico’s account of the astrologers’ disagreements on the matter of planetary order. The Copernican Question sets forth an inference about how and why Copernicus turned to heliocentrism that claims to be not only plausible but also the likeliest to correspond to what actually happened. (shrink)

In setting forth a new theory of the growth of scientific knowledge, Larry Laudan shows that any account of scientific change has consequences for the relationship between the history, philosophy and sociology of science. It is a laudable feature of his work that he does not treat any of these disciplines as undifferentiated monoliths. In fact, one of his main goals is to show that his account of progress requires specific ways of doing and relating these three disciplines. As an (...) historian invited to speak at the Philosophy of Science Association, it seemed appropriate for me to appraise the function of history of science in Laudan’s program. Without going into unnecessary detail, let me begin by examining some of his main claims.The focus of Laudan’s argument is on science construed as a form of problem-solving activity and on progress and rationality as appraisals of problem-solving capabilities. (shrink)

Duhem regarded the history of physical science as carrying a twofold lesson for the practicing physicist. First, history revealed the slow, groping, yet continuous development of physical theory toward a true description of the relations among natural entities. Second, history also unmasked false explanations and metaphysical beliefs that might seduce the unwary scientist into following an unfruitful line of research. This paper brings forth the central images underlying Duhem's historiographical project and uses the papers by S. Menn and W. A. (...) Wallace to ask what Duhem's enterprise actually meant in practice. I argue that the main question is the following: What is to count as the proper space of historical meaning and explanation? Strong Duhemians, such as S. Menn, purchase the longue durée at the cost of making historical agents into completely passive transmitters of conceptual homologies; weak Duhemians, such as W. A. Wallace, shorten the temporal distance between agents and permit thereby a modicum of conflict and negotiation within physical theory while still seeking to preserve long-term conceptual genealogies. Both positions, it is argued, allow insufficient room for actors' categories to determine the space of cultural analysis. (shrink)

Three Imperial Mathematicians: Kepler Trapped between Tycho Brahe and Ursus. By Edward Rosen.