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The role of Rothmann in the dissolution of the celestial spheres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Bernard R. Goldstein  and
Peter Barker
Bernard R. Goldstein
Affiliation:
Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Peter Barker
Affiliation:
Department of the History of Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019–0315, USA.
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Extract

At the end of the sixteenth century astronomers and others felt compelled to choose among different cosmologies. For Tycho Brahe, who played a central role in these debates, the intersection of the spheres of Mars and the Sun was an outstanding problem that had to be resolved before he made his choice. His ultimate solution was to eliminate celestial spheres in favour of fluid heavens, a crucial step in the abandonment of the Ptolemaic system and the demise of Aristotelian celestial physics. These debates involved issues that had not previously been part of astronomy, and had the effect of undermining the traditional hierarchy of the sciences. While this complicated story involves many scientific personalities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the present paper we will concentrate on one figure who has been assigned an unnecessarily minor role in most histories of science: Christoph Rothmann. In the present paper we show that ‘the dissolution of the celestial spheres’ depends on arguments about the substance of the heavens, following a mistaken argument of Gemma Frisius, elaborated by Joannes Pena and appropriated by Rothmann. We next consider the status and origin of the doctrine, as presented by Brahe, that the heavenly spheres are solid, and the impact on Brahe of Rothmann's treatise on the comet of 1585. Rothmann provided several key ideas that enabled Brahe to develop his system, and we suggest in passing that Rothmann may also have precipitated Brahe's re-evaluation of his attempt to detect the parallax of Mars during the opposition of 1582–83. We offer a new account of this central piece of evidence for the Tychonic system.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 385 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1995

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References

1 See, e.g., Donahue, W. H., The Dissolution of the Celestial Spheres, New York, 1981Google Scholar; Rosen, E., ‘The dissolution of the solid celestial spheres’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1985), 46, 13–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lerner, M.-P., ‘Le problème de la matière céleste après 1550: aspects de la bataille des cieux fluides’, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences (1989), 42, 255–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Rosen, , op. cit. (1)Google Scholar, is an exception; however, as we will argue, he errs in giving Rothmann priority for views that Pena had already held.

3 We begin by adhering to the common expression, ‘celestial sphere’, but later we will generally use the technical term, ‘orb’. For the definition of ‘orb’, see item (3) on p. 387, below. The terms, ‘sphere’, ‘orb’ and ‘heaven’, have often been used interchangeably, and it is not easy to be entirely consistent. Further, it would be more accurate to talk about the demise of the doctrines concerning celestial spheres, rather than the dissolution of the spheres themselves.

4 The latest document by Rothmann we have found is a letter he wrote in 1597 concerning his work on the fixed stars: see Philippi, H., Politische Akten nach Philipp d. Gr., 1567–1821, Abteilung a: Landgräfliche Personalien, in Repertorien des hessischen Staatsarchivs Marburg, Bestand 4, Marburg, 1973, 23 (MS 39, 24)Google Scholar. We are most grateful to K. Manders for bringing this reference to our attention.

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33 For example, in Thoren, V., The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe, Cambridge, 1990, 274Google Scholar, we read: ‘the next question was how the planets actually made their rounds of the heavens if there were no crystalline spheres to carry them’.

34 The only possible exception we have found (after an extensive search of many early sources, aided by J. L. Mancha) is in the Hebrew text of the Mishneh Torah by Maimonides (d. 1204), Yesodei ha-Torah 3.1: ‘You see all the stars [i.e., the planets and the fixed stars] as if they are all on one orb (galgal), even though one is above the other, because the orbs are pure and transparent (zakkim) like glass (zekukit) or sapphire (sappir)’(Praizler, T. H., Sefer Mishneh Torah le-rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon, Jerusalem, 1985, 34Google Scholar; See also Rosner, F., The Existence and Unity of God: Three Treatises Attributed to Moses Maimonides, Northvale, NJ, and London, 1990, 48)Google Scholar. Maimonides may have understood sappir to refer to ‘crystal’: cf. Guide of the Perplexed, i.28 (Kafah, Y., Moreh nevukhim le-rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon, 3 vols., Jerusalem, 1972, i, 63)Google Scholar where the Arabic ballúr (meaning ‘crystal’) is used to translate the Hebrew sappir in Exodus 24:10. See also T. Langermann, ‘The “True Perplexity”: The Guide of the Perplexed, Part II, Chapter 24’, in Perspectives on Maimonides (ed. Kraemer, J. L.), Oxford, 1991, 159–74, on 162 fGoogle Scholar. Note that even here the relevant property of ‘crystal’ is transparency, not hardness. The earliest text we have found in which the hardness of crystalline planetary orbs is assumed to be the prevalent view before Brahe is in a work by Fontenelle that appeared in 1687: ‘Mais on a vu des comètes qui, étant plus élevées qu'on ne croyait autrefois, briseraient tout le cristal des cieux par où elles passent’ (Schackleton, R., Fontenelle: Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, Oxford, 1955, 68).Google Scholar

35 Benjamin, F. S. Jr and Toomer, G. J., Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary Theory, Madison, 1971, 182.Google Scholar

36 Li livres dou tresor de Brunetto Latini (ed. Carmody, F. J.), Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948, 93Google Scholar; translated in Barrette, P. and Baldwin, S., Brunetto Latini: The Book of the Treasure, New York, 1993, 71.Google Scholar

37 This figure also appears in Grant, , op. cit. (11), 152.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Josephus, , Antiquities, i. 1Google Scholar (concerning the creation), ‘After this, on the second day, he [God] placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts; and determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth’, translated in Whiston, W., The Works of Josephus, 1736, repr. Peabody, MA, 1987Google Scholar. Despite Josephus, in Genesis 1 the firmament is not called ‘crystalline’.

39 Grant, , op. cit. (29), 324–70.Google Scholar

40 Grant, , op. cit. (11), 173Google Scholar; cf. Grant, , op. cit. (29), 347.Google Scholar

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45 TBOO, iv, 222–3Google Scholar, passim.

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66 We intended to treat this correspondence more extensively in our book, Kepler's Unification of Physics and Cosmology (in preparation).

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72 TBOO, vi 214–15.Google Scholar

73 TBOO, vi, 314.20–1Google Scholar, and vi, 316.5–10. See also Gassendi, , op. cit. (61), 434.Google Scholar

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