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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (2004)di Owen Gingerich
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. While the author does name drop a bit, does wax a bit nostalgic about his career, and does gloat a bit about his discoveries, this is still a fascinating book. Not only does it provide information about who used Nicolaus Copernicus' book, and when and how, but it also provides information about the educational system in the 1500s and 1600s, publishing, book collecting, museum work, university research into the history of science, and a number of other topics. It may be a book that is more about how research into the history of science is conducted, and I may have wished for more information about Copernicus and his life, but it's still a grand read. ( ) In his surprise 1959 bestseller about Kepler, The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler claimed that Nicolaus Copernicus' book, De Revolutionibus had very little influence on the other astronomers of his time because it was little-read. While Koestler was a captivating and persuasive writer, his history and his science (as in The Case of the Midwife Toad) was often suspect. When astrophysicist and science historian Owen Gingerich happened upon a copy of De Revolutionibus that was richly annotated in the hand of a Copernicus contemporary, he began to wonder whether Koestler's claim could be erroneous. Thus began his quest to locate every extant copy of the first and second editions of the famous book, this so that he could study the marginalia written by their owners - people like Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. Would you believe that he located over six hundred copies that have survived the four hundred fifty years since its first publication? Gingerich tells us the personal story of how he compiled his exhaustive "census" of the book that many would claim began the scientific revolution. It is a great story of science, history, and books. It starts in a courtroom, where Gingerich testifies in a case involving a stolen copy of De Revolutionibus and meanders through libraries, museums, and book dealers throughout the world. As a (very) amateur book collector, I thought I knew something about the subject, but Chapter 13, "Sophisticated Ladies" was very informative to me. This is a wonderful book, which is scheduled for release by Penguin in paperback early in 2005. I recommend it in any kind of cover.
For Gingerich, an astrophysicist and historian of science at Harvard, the quest became a 30-year obsession described in ''The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus'' -- a fascinating story of a scholar as sleuth. His enthusiasm for what might be judged a rather fine point of history is infectious. His book deserves to be read not only by historians and bibliophiles, but by anyone with a taste for arcane detective adventures and a curiosity about the motivations of scholarly perseverance.
Publisher's description: In the spring of 1543 as the celebrated astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, lay on his death bed, his fellow clerics brought him a long-awaited package: the final printed pages of the book he had worked on for many years: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Though Copernicus would not live to hear of its extraordinary impact, his book, which first suggested that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe, is today recognized as one of the most influential scientific works of all time--thanks in part to astrophysicist Owen Gingerich. Four and a half centuries after its initial publication, Gingerich embarked on an epic quest to see in person all extant copies of the first and second editions of De revolutionibus. He was inspired by two contradictory pieces of information: Arthur Koestler's claim, in his book The Sleepwalkers, that nobody had read Copernicus's book when it was published; and Gingerich's discovery, in Edinburgh, of a first edition richly annotated in the margins by the leading teacher of astronomy in Europe in the 1540s. If one copy had been so quickly appreciated, Gingerich reasoned, perhaps others were as well--and perhaps they could throw new light on a hinge point in the history of astronomy. After three decades of investigation, and after traveling hundreds of thousands of miles across the globe--from Melbourne to Moscow, Boston to Beijing--Gingerich has written an utterly original book built on his experience and the remarkable insights gleaned from examining some 600 copies of De revolutionibus. He found the books owned and annotated by Galileo, Kepler and many other lesser-known astronomers whom he brings back to life, which illuminate the long, reluctant process of accepting the Sun-centered cosmos and highlight the historic tensions between science and the Catholic Church. He traced the ownership of individual copies through the hands of saints, heretics, scalawags, and bibliomaniacs. He was called as the expert witness in the theft of one copy, witnessed the dramatic auction of another, and proves conclusively that De revolutionibus was as inspirational as it was revolutionary. Part biography of a book, part scientific exploration, part bibliographic detective story, The Book Nobody Read recolors the history of cosmology and offers new appreciation of the enduring power of an extraordinary book and its ideas. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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