Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology / / Sara Schechner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Schechner, Sara,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.) :; 53 halftones 2 tables

In a lively investigation into the boundaries between popular culture and early-modern science, Sara Schechner presents a case study that challenges the view that rationalism was at odds with popular belief in the development of scientific theories. Schechner Genuth delineates the evolution of people's understanding of comets, showing that until the seventeenth century, all members of society dreaded comets as heaven-sent portents of plague, flood, civil disorder, and other calamities. Although these beliefs became spurned as "vulgar superstitions" by the elite before the end of the century, she shows that they were nonetheless absorbed into the science of Newton and Halley, contributing to their theories in subtle yet profound ways. Schechner weaves together many strands of thought: views of comets as signs and causes of social and physical changes; vigilance toward monsters and prodigies as indicators of God's will; Christian eschatology; scientific interpretations of Scripture; astrological prognostication and political propaganda; and celestial mechanics and astrophysics. This exploration of the interplay between high and low beliefs about nature leads to the conclusion that popular and long-held views of comets as divine signs were not overturned by astronomical discoveries. Indeed, they became part of the foundation on which modern cosmology was built.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION. Shared Culture, Separate Spaces -- PART ONE: SIGNS OF THE TIMES -- CHAPTER I Ancient Signs -- CHAPTER II Monsters and the Messiah -- CHAPTER III Divination -- CHAPTER IV Portents and Politics -- PART TWO: NATURAL CAUSES -- CHAPTER V From Natural Signs to Proximate Causes -- CHAPTER VI The Decline of Cometary Divination -- PART THREE: WORLD REFORMATION -- CHAPTER VII Comets, Transmutations, and World Reform in Newton's Thought -- CHAPTER VIII Halley's Comet Theory, Noah's Flood, and the End of the World -- PART FOUR: COMET LORE AND COSMOGONY -- CHAPTER IX Refueling the Sun and Planets -- CHAPTER X Revolution and Evolution within the Heavens -- CONCLUDING REMARKS. Popular Culture and Elite Science -- APPENDIX. Recent Resurgence of Cometary Catastrophism -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX