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For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Mr. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God.

The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions--astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific--of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus' break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle's theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer's imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM CAELESTIUM is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation.

With a final analysis of Copernicus' life work--its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe--Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it.

This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James B. Conont in his Foreword: "Professor Kuhn's handling of the subject merits attention, for... he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times."

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The brilliant German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), one of the founders of modern astronomy, revolutionised the Copernican heliocentric theory of the universe with his three laws of motion: that the planets move not in circular but elliptical orbits, that their speed is greatest when nearest the sun, and that the sun and planets form an integrated system. This volume contains two of his most important works: "The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy" (books 4 and 5 of which are translated here) is a textbook of Copernican science, remarkable for the prominence given to physical astronomy and for the extension to the Jovian system of the laws recently discovered to regulate the motions of the Planets; and "Harmonies of the World" (book 5 of which is translated here) expounds an elaborate system of celestial harmonies depending on the varying velocities of the planets..
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This 1967 edition of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is a revision of a 1953 edition It includes a foreword by Albert Einstein, which is presented in en face German and English versions.
The translation itself is based on the definitive National Edition prepared under the direction of Antonio Favaro and published at Florence in 1897. The material specifically added to the text by Galileo himself after publication of the first edition (1632) has been included as well. In addition, the margins of the book include translations of Galileo's own postils (running notes), placed as nearly as possible beside their textual references..
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Empirical science makes the unexamined assumption that colors are lined up by wavelength the way they emerge from a prism, blue to red, with red the lowest wavelength Careful analysis of light's luminosity, the way the eye color adapts and the way colors are produced by mixing pigments or adding colored light, however, demonstrate that light is ordered from high frequency white light to low frequency blue light with yellow, red and green frequencies descending in that order between.

The misconception that light is ordered the way it comes out of a prism is one misconception replaced in Light, the sixth volume of The Copernican Series. The misconception that white light is made up of all colors, which requires that matter absorb all colors but the color reflected, is eliminated in favor of light being a frequency which is reduced when it interacts with matter. With light a frequency, the misconception produced by Young's two-slit experiment that light is a wave is eliminated in favor of the actual dynamics of the experiment showing light to be made up of a flow of particles organized into packets by the process of combustion.

A further misconception, that light is not made up of what gives it off, and therefore does not exist between its cause and effect, is eliminated in favor of a clear explanation of the structure of light, what it is, how it is produced, how it moves, how it interacts with matter, and how it dissipates. With light something that is real, that is actually produced by matter, the misconception of polarity is removed from the current concept of the atom that makes up matter and an atom constructed that actually produces light.

With a clear picture of the structure of light and the matter that produces it, Light describes the relationship of light to heat, energy, electricity and magnetism, and the effect of light in physical reality, from mirages to morning glories, lightning to tornadoes..
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In God's Two Books, Kenneth Howell offers a historical analysis of how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century astronomers and theologians in Northern Protestant Europe used science and religion to challenge and support one another. Howell reveals that the cosmological schemes developed during this era remain monumental solutions to the enduring problem of how theological interpretation and empirical investigation interact with one another. God's Two Books reshapes our understanding of the interaction of cosmological thought and biblical interpretation in the emerging astronomy of the Scientific Revolution by analyzing new texts and offering interpretations that cast old materials in a new light. The central argument of this compelling book is that the use of the Bible in early modern cosmology is considerably more complex and subtle than has previously been recognized. Drawing on the writings of Lutheran and Calvinist astronomers, natural philosophers, and theologians, Howell analyzes several underlying patterns of interpretation which affected how these historical figures viewed the mutual interaction of the books of nature and Scripture. He argues that while they differed on how the disciplines of astronomy, physics, and theology should relate to one another, most thinkers shared the common goal of finding and explaining the true system of the universe. Howell introduces the notion of a convergent realism to describe Protestant intellectuals' approach to incorporating empirical and theological perspectives into a holistic version of the universe. They believed the sacred page was relevant to cosmology but denied that the Bible had scientific content. At the same time, these thinkersargued that the theological truths expressed in the Bible were interwoven into nature in subtle, yet revealing, ways. Their resulting interpretations show continuity with Catholic thinkers and discard oversimplifications such as literal versus figurative hermeneutics or Copernican versus anti-Copernican cosmologies. Among Howell's many original contributions in this cogent study is a distinctive approach to Kepler's exegesis of nature and an introduction to the debate of many Calvinist thinkers who have previously received little attention..
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This major work by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg is a monumental rethinking of the significance of the Copernican revolution for our understanding of modernity. It provides an important corrective to the view of science as an autonomous enterprise and presents a new account of the history of interpretations of the significance of the heavens for man.

Hans Blumenberg is Professor of Philosophy, emeritus, at the University of Munster in West Germany. This book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.
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