Adam Mosley. Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 354 pp. $105.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-83866-5.

Reviewed by Michael J. Sauter (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A.C., [CIDE], Mexico City)
Published on H-German (June, 2008)

Atlas Shrugs

Adam Mosley's Bearing the Heavens is an estimable contribution to the already lively literature on early modern European astronomy.[1] In this book, Mosley studies Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) not as a lone astronomical genius who developed his own cosmological vision, but as a product of and contributor to the early modern astronomical community. Brahe is, of course, famous for having propounded his geo-heliocentric system, in which the sun revolves around the earth and the other planets, in turn, around the sun. He is also noted for, among other things, having lost part of his nose in a duel and for having constructed a first-class observatory on the Danish Isle of Hven. Mosley's approach is useful and consistent with established approaches of early modernists, such as Mario Biagioli, who have insisted on understanding the ways that early modern social and political structures contributed to the development of science.[2] The work's two main contributions to the literature are its analysis of Brahe's neglected correspondence and its reading of astronomical practice through material culture. That said, this work is not recommended for the general reader, because it assumes much knowledge of the history of astronomy and is organized in a way that makes it a difficult read for the non-specialist. Mosley's work is divided into four long chapters with a short conclusion appended to the end. In this review I will consider each chapter sequentially, before offering a general critique at the end.

Chapter 1, "Bearing the Heavens," explores the Renaissance culture from which early modern astronomy emerged and concentrates most specifically on the use of Atlas in Renaissance-era astronomical texts. In this chapter, Mosley shows how the motif of Atlas ran through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries, as both practitioners and non-practitioners used the belabored Titan in order to glorify both themselves and the new astronomy. Mosley's analysis suggests that an early modern astronomical culture was made possible by the late Renaissance's familiarity with classical texts and images. The virtue of Mosley's approach is that it reveals how the manipulation and re-appropriation of classical images became the basis for communication between practitioners of astronomy, such as Brahe, and mere dilettantes, who liked to hear about the latest discoveries but did not engage in stellar observation. Unfortunately, Mosley does not pursue this possibility in his work and, instead, gets bogged down in an attempt to list every mention of Atlas he found in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century astronomical texts. However interesting some aspects Atlas' astronomical career may be, the steady drumbeat of examples makes the bulk of this first chapter both repetitive and ponderous. A deeper problem is Mosley's failure to establish how the manipulation of textual metaphors and images of Atlas was constitutive of new astronomical practices or protocols. Other chapters in this book have similar problems, but here the issue is most pressing, since Mosley wants to argue that cultural practices aided both the transfer of data and the dissemination of new cosmological theories. In order to do so, he would have needed to distinguish between the modishness of the early modern use of classical metaphors and their effect on the cultivation and transmission of new forms of knowledge.

Chapter 2 concentrates on Brahe's correspondence and is for that reason the most significant chapter in the work. Mosley is absolutely right in his insistence that historians have neglected the letters.[3] In response to this collective oversight, Mosley offers a close reading of the collected missives as a means for understanding how the act of corresponding was constitutive of astronomical practice. Mosley does not explicate all of the correspondence--which consists of some 500 letters--but concentrates only the so-called Hven-Kassel exchange between Brahe and Wilhelm IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (1532-92). Wilhelm IV founded in Kassel what many historians point to as the first professional observatory in Europe. He and his chief assistant, Christoph Rothmann (ca. 1550-ca. 1600) engaged in a wide-ranging program of observation and calculation that resulted in the publication of a star catalogue late in the seventeenth century. Wilhelm and Rothmann each participated in the correspondence, exchanging views with Brahe on proper techniques of observation and calculation, as well as sending and receiving observational data.

Using Brahe's correspondence, Mosley shows how social and political status overshadowed all aspects of astronomical communication. Consider that although Brahe was a Danish noble, and thus merited respect from the commoner Rothmann, he was not equal to Wilhelm, a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. For that reason, the tone Brahe adopted in his letters depended heavily on the addressee--almost obsequious when writing to Wilhelm, almost haughty when addressing Rothmann. We moderns may see the social grid that structured early modern written communication as inherently limiting, but Mosley wants to suggest that letters exchanged between people of unequal status could, nonetheless, have contributed to the development of astronomy. I use the word "suggest" deliberately, because Mosley does not offer more than tantalizing bits of evidence that the exchange of letters really changed anyone's mind on any issues of great importance.[3] It is true that a visitor to Hven saw Brahe's instruments and then transferred knowledge about their design to Kassel, thus improving the quality of Wilhelm's observations, but this transfer was initially unauthorized and seems not to have effected any changes in theory. Indeed, on the most significant issues, such as Copernicus's helio-centrism or finding the correct value for atmospheric refraction (pp. 92-96), the mutual exchange of views on practical matters may have hardened the positions of both sides, which would imply that the early modern social/political system actually prevented the rise of an astronomical community, at least as understood in the modern sense.

Chapter 3, "Books and the Heavens," offers a useful corrective to the general belief among historians in the absolute power of the printed word.[4] Mosley argues in this chapter that if we are to understand the early modern astronomical community, we must recognize that, in this period, the concept "book" is unstable at best. We moderns tend to think of books as discrete items and, as a result, have understood their movement through early modern society in simple terms, say, as commodities exchanged within a marketplace, which leads us to overestimate both their diffusion and influence. Mosley rightly points out that historians routinely (and incorrectly) append Brahe to this modern approach to books, because he constructed a printing press on Hven that produced works intended to diffuse his astronomical discoveries, thus making him appear as both a print entrepreneur and an astronomical pioneer. Mosley argues, however, that this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Brahe's attitude toward books. Brahe did not print and distribute his books for profit, but as part of a strategy to increase his profile within the early modern system of court patronage. Hence, we can say more generally that books were not a market commodity from whose sale a financial profit was expected, but objects of prestige distributed within an early modern gift economy and in pursuit of important people's favor. Mosley also reminds us that for all the retrospective influence that we may ascribe to certain books, such as Brahe's own works, the difficulties that attended acquiring a text often limited its reach. (Brahe tried repeatedly to get fundamental fifteenth- and sixteenth-century astronomical texts sent to him in Hven, to no avail.) In documenting the very real limitations that the early modern world placed on the book trade, Mosley has done a great service, in particular because he invites historians of astronomy to shift their attention away from pure textual analyses and toward the more practical aspects of early modern astronomy.

Chapter 4, "Instruments," is the most exciting chapter of the book and greatly extends the insights that Mosley presented in the previous chapter. Here, Mosley understands astronomy not as a discipline governed by a set of protocols produced through print exchange, but as a field of inquiry defined by a common material culture.[5] Within Mosley's text, this chapter serves to complete a rhetorical circle, in so far as it shows how early modern instruments were as deeply embedded in Renaissance Europe's literary and gift culture as were books. First, Mosley notes that instruments drank as deeply from the classical spring as did books and letters, with Atlas repeatedly appearing as a decorative motif. Second, Mosley documents how instruments functioned as gifts within the early modern patronage system, often appreciated more for their aesthetic qualities than their practical utility. Third, Mosley shows how specific instruments had their own histories, becoming famous not only for their designs but also for who owned them, or had gifted them.[6] (Along these lines, I should note the significance of Mosley's highlighting of Dresden as a center for the collection, distribution, and use of scientific instruments. The field would benefit greatly from a closer study of Dresden's influence on early modern astronomy.)[7] Finally, Mosley offers a crucial insight into early modern practices by noting how instruments were understood as an integral part of a library collection. We may be tempted to keep separate instruments from books, but in the sixteenth century the two were often kept and used together. In no case is this clearer, Mosley notes, than in the use of early modern terrestrial and celestial globes, which often served as calculating devices for the interpretation either of written works or new observations. (This was the case for Wilhelm in Kassel.) In this sense, Mosley's emphasis on the pursuit of material culture has opened a potentially fruitful way of understanding the complicated process of imagining the universe that, ultimately, ran through Nicolas Copernicus, Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton.

Mosley's concluding remarks bring the work together by suggesting ways that historians could augment our understanding of early modern astronomy. In essence, Mosley wants historians of astronomy to apply Robert Darnton's ideas on the history of communication to the overlapping networks and communities that comprised the world of early modern astronomy.[8] Mosley argues that we can do this by tracking how the people involved in astronomy--including the craftsmen who made the instruments--traveled from site to site in Europe, collecting and transferring new theories and techniques as they moved along. This call to study movement is an express criticism of works by Owen Gingerich and Richard Jarrell, who Mosley claims have defined the early modern astronomical community primarily as a group that "read, understood and responded to Copernicus" (p. 296).[9] Mosley's point is well taken. It would be much better to examine the diffusion of knowledge through not only multiple kinds of sources but also the interaction among sources, people, and places. Historians of early modern astronomy should, however, be cautious when heeding Mosley's (and Darnton's) call. On the one hand, Darnton's vision of communication is shaped deeply by the practices that prevailed in eighteenth-century Paris, and it is not at all clear that a vision of communication derived from such a unique time and place can be expanded to entire centuries and/or continents. On the other hand, and consistent with this point, the communicative structures that Mosley urges us to study retained a distinctly medieval flavor, except that here we have itinerant astronomers and craftsmen, rather than theologians and philosophers. Hence, a study of communication defined along modern lines--Darnton's article frames eighteenth-century Paris between reflections on Silicon Valley and the end of the second millennium and also highlights the rapidity and even virulence of new forms of communication--risks overstating the modernity of both a period and a field of inquiry that Mosley took such pains to show was not quite modern. Hence, although Mosley's work presents a serious and fruitful challenge to the current literature on early modern astronomy, it remains to be seen whether the method it proposes can resolve the problems that lurk within the existing literature.

Against the backdrop of these general comments, I offer as a conclusion some words on what strike me as two fundamental weaknesses of Mosley's text. First, the book lacks an adequate description of Brahe's own formation as an astronomer. Although Mosley does not pretend to have written a biography of Brahe, the inclusion of some biographical information, including his travels and education in German-speaking central Europe, would have solidified Mosley's larger point about Brahe's place in an astronomical community. It would also have contributed mightily to Mosley's own call to understand better early modern astronomy's practices of communication, since Brahe had experiences in a variety of German-speaking cities, including Augsburg, Basle, Kassel, Leipzig, Rostock, and Wittenberg. Second, also absent from this book is a sense for the specifically central European context of Brahe's life and work. In Brahe's day German was still spoken at the Danish court and many Danes, including Brahe, pursued their educations in the German states. (Brahe also lost his nose in Rostock, while fighting with another Danish student.) In addition, as Mosley himself notes, Brahe's most important correspondent on astronomical matters was a German prince. It is, therefore, no accident that in 1597, when Brahe chose exile to avoid conflict with the new Danish king, Christian IV, he found refuge first in northwestern Germany and later with Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) at the imperial court in Prague, where Brahe also collaborated with Kepler. All of this suggests that we must understand Brahe's Renaissance world as being, in no small measure, also an imperial one, that is, that the politics and culture of the Holy Roman Empire were a crucial contextual factor that, at once, supported and constrained Brahe's contribution to the development of astronomy. In the end, Brahe lived in Rudolf II's world.

Notes

[1]. See, for example, Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (New York: Walker & Company, 2004), The Great Copernicus Chase and other Adventures in Astronomical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Reink Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans: The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002); Ladina Bezzola Lambert, Imagining the Unimaginable: The Poetics of Early Modern Astronomy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002).

[2]. Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

[3]. The most recent biography of Brahe has this flaw. See Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: a Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

[4]. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

[5]. On this concept and its relation to astronomy, see the important article by Sara Schechner, "The Material Culture of Astronomy in Daily Life: Sundials, Science, and Social Change," Journal for the History of Astronomy 32 (2001): 189-222.

[6]. On this point, also see J. A. Bennett, "The English Quadrant in Europe: Instruments and the Growth of Consensus in Practical Astronomy," Journal for the History of Astronomy 23 (1992): 1-14.

[7]. On Dresden as a court city, see Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

[8]. Robert Darnton, "An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris," American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1-35.

[9]. Mosley cites the following works: Owen Gingerich, An Annotated Census of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566) (Leiden: Brill, 2002); and Richard A. Jarrell, "The Contemporaries of Tycho Brahe," in Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton, ed. René Taton and Curtis Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 22-32.

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Citation: Michael J. Sauter. Review of Mosley, Adam, Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century. H-German, H-Net Reviews. June, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14615

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