This volume consists of eleven essays drawn from papers originally presented at the Museo Galileo, Florence, in 2011. It takes as its theme discussions of the significance of ‘celestial novelties' – specifically novae and comets – in the years leading up to and following the famous observations of such phenomena that took place in the 1570s. As the editors of this volume note in their introduction, the events of the 1570s are well known to historians of science. Although frequently they have been assigned key roles in narratives of the Scientific Revolution, the editors suggest that ‘we still do not possess the complete picture’ of their significance. Responding to this need, these essays will, they argue, provide a ‘better and broader’ understanding of the cosmological discussions of the period (p. x).
In a more general sense the essays in this volume are intended to present a series of new approaches to the history of celestial novelties in this period. Broadly they divide into two types: the first reconstructs the context of the debate on celestial phenomena in the late sixteenth century; the second considers how individuals responded to the challenges presented by the celestial novelties. A significant number of the essays focus on astrology and its importance in framing the context for much cosmological discussion of the period. This theme, which has featured prominently in the work of Robert Westman and Steven Vanden Broecke, is enriched in this volume by the work of Dario Tessicini, Tayra M.C. Lanuzo Navarro and Víctor Navarro Brotons, Elide Casali and Adam Mosley.
The editors suggest that the volume will broaden our understanding of cosmological debate in several specific ways. First, several of the essays, including Mosley and Tessicini's contributions, underline the wide variety of literary genres in which the celestial novelties were discussed. Comets, for example, were discussed in texts on meteorology, medicine and history. Tessicini surveys the Italian literature pertaining to the comet of 1577, and finds that few, if any, of the authors were professional mathematician–astronomers. He thus raises questions about the relationship between their works and those of the likes of Galileo Galilei and Christopher Clavius. Nick Jardine's essay examines the manner in which Christopher Rothman presented his Dialexis Cometae qui Anno Christi M.D.LXXXV. mensibus Octobri and Novembri apparvit. He describes the manner in which Rothman's account of the comet of 1585 drew upon existing genres for discussing comets in order to present his own findings and to develop the emerging genre of observationes.
Second, some of the essays in the collection broaden the geographical scope of historiographical discussion. Spain, France and Italy have been relatively marginalized in existing historical accounts of celestial novelties, and several of the contributions begin to redress the balance. Lanuza Navarro and Navarro Brotons suggest that changing cosmological ideas had little impact on astrological prediction in Spain. Isabelle Pantin describes the work of the Italian Carmelite Francesco Giuntini, who was exiled in Lyon, and his efforts to accommodate the nova of 1572 within his traditional cosmology.
Other essays in this volume use a consideration of the celestial novelties to shed new light on the work of some of the more established figures in the historiography of early modern science. Miguel Angel Granada describes how Tycho Brahe used the debate over the significance of the novae to contest Nicholas Copernicus's cosmology. In an analysis of the dedicatory letters to Rudolf II in De stella nova (1606) and the Astronomia nova (1609), Francesco Barreca and Patrick J. Boner explore how Johannes Kepler drew analogies between his astronomical studies and the Holy Roman Empire's military conflicts with the Ottomans.
This book therefore offers a wide-ranging set of studies, which touch in various ways on the reception and interpretation of celestial novelties in the late sixteenth century. Many of the individual essays are of a very high standard, and make useful contributions to their respective fields. Nevertheless, it is harder to determine their collective value. Although focused on the central issue of celestial novelties, and as I have indicated there are common themes connecting several of the essays, there is no clear sense of how they add up to more than the sum of their parts. A clearer sense of what the editors took to be missing from the existing accounts of the Scientific Revolution and of the specific ways that these essays address these gaps would, perhaps, have given the volume more focus.
