Rights statement: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BJH The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, British Journal for the History of Science, 44 (1), pp 29-60 2011, © 2011 Cambridge University Press.
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Your astronomers and ours differ exceedingly’
T2 - the controversy over the ‘new star’ of 1572 in the light of a newly discovered text by Thomas Digges
AU - Pumfrey, Stephen
N1 - http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=BJH The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, British Journal for the History of Science, 44 (1), pp 29-60 2011, © 2011 Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2011/3
Y1 - 2011/3
N2 - This article presents evidence that an anonymous publication of 1573, a Letter sent by a gentleman of England [concerning …] the myraculous starre nowe shyning, was written by Thomas Digges, England's first Copernican. It tells the story of how it arose out of research commissioned by Elizabeth I's privy counsellors in response to the conventional argument of Jean Gosselin, librarian to Henri III of France, that the star was a comet which presaged wars. The text is significant because it seems to contain the observations and opinions that Digges held before he completed his other astronomical treatise, the groundbreaking Alae seu scalae mathematicae. It also casts some light on the development of Digges's radical and puritan views about the star, Copernican astronomy, the infinity of the universe and a belief that the ‘latter days’ of the world had arrived.
AB - This article presents evidence that an anonymous publication of 1573, a Letter sent by a gentleman of England [concerning …] the myraculous starre nowe shyning, was written by Thomas Digges, England's first Copernican. It tells the story of how it arose out of research commissioned by Elizabeth I's privy counsellors in response to the conventional argument of Jean Gosselin, librarian to Henri III of France, that the star was a comet which presaged wars. The text is significant because it seems to contain the observations and opinions that Digges held before he completed his other astronomical treatise, the groundbreaking Alae seu scalae mathematicae. It also casts some light on the development of Digges's radical and puritan views about the star, Copernican astronomy, the infinity of the universe and a belief that the ‘latter days’ of the world had arrived.
U2 - 10.1017/S0007087410001317
DO - 10.1017/S0007087410001317
M3 - Journal article
VL - 44
SP - 29
EP - 60
JO - British Journal for the History of Science
JF - British Journal for the History of Science
SN - 1474-001X
IS - 1
ER -