Beschreibung
FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE, BEING THE ORIGINAL SHEETS PRINTED AT HVEN IN 1588 FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION, REISSUED WITH A NEW TITLE PAGE, PREFACE BY BRAHE S ASSISTANT TENGNAGEL, AND COLOPHON LEAF. In 1588, Tycho s royal benefactor died, and a volume of Tycho s great two-volume work Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata (Introduction to the New Astronomy) was published. The first volume, devoted to the new star of 1572, was not ready, because the reduction of the observations of 1572 3 involved much research to correct the stars positions for refraction, precession, the motion of the Sun etc., and was not completed in Tycho s lifetime (it was published in Prague in 1602/03), but the second volume, titled De Mundi Aetherei Recentioribus Phaenomenis Liber Secundus (Second Book About Recent Phenomena in the Celestial World) and devoted to the comet of 1577, was printed at Uraniborg and some copies were issued in 1588. Besides the comet observations, it included an account of Tycho s system of the world. We do not have evidence of Brahe s early opinions of the heliocentric system, though it is clear that, like the Wittenberg astronomers, he admired the specific arrangements of circles in the planetary models. However, later publications and letters show that he was troubled by the physical and scriptural obstacles to a moving earth, and by the enormous distances of the fixed stars that Copernicus s system implied. In response to these difficulties, Brahe proposed a compromise system, announced in a chapter to a work on the comet of 1577 published in 1588. In the so-called Tychonic system, which was intended to satisfy both the astronomers and the philosophers, all planets circle the sun, which in turn orbits around a motionless earth. With this schema as a guide, Brahe hoped to construct better models of planetary motions (The Cambridge History of Science vol. 3, p. 574). While Tycho s hypothesis may seem a shameless compromise to us, a falling between two stools, it gained a large number of adherents in its own day by dint of its reasonableness and avoidance of controversy. For many, it replaced the Ptolemaic system as the most formidable rival to Copernicanism (Heninger, The Cosmographical Glass). As the title imprint makes clear, Tengnagel did not consider the work to have been previously published (nor, for that matter, does Zinner). Provenance: early inscription ex libris Seminarii Valentinensis below Brahe s name on title; another below. Houzeau and Lancaster 2699; Zinner 3952. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1596305853705
Verkäufer kontaktieren
Diesen Artikel melden
