Germany

Griendel’s Micrographia nova was the German counterpart to Hooke’s Micrographia (1665). Greindel improved the objective lens. Many of his illustrations are of the same creatures examined by Hooke.

In contrast to Piccolomini, who omitted constellation figures in favor of scientific accuracy, Bayer superimposed constellation figures upon the star maps without compromising positional accuracy. These figures were artfully drawn by Alexander Mair.

A “camera obscura” (“dark room”) consists of a box or container in which light enters via a small hole and projects an image on an opposite wall. The image will be reversed and upside-down, but its proportions will be preserved.

In Works and Days, the poet Hesiod, a roughly contemporary of Homer, compiled guidelines for conducting life and forecasting the weather according to the stars.

Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century. Ptolemy’s technical work on astronomy, originally written in Greek, was titled Almagest (“The Greatest”) by its Arabic translators.

In the most lavishly illustrated book of the 1400’s, solid spheres ceaselessly turn, carrying the planets and filling the universe between the outermost heaven and the central Earth.

Agricola described early modern mining and metallurgy practices throughout the German speaking areas of Europe. The remarkable illustrations make this work a paramount example of how abundant visual representations in the Printing Revolution transformed science and technology.

Scheiner, a Jesuit astronomer, eventually published the definitive work of the 17th century on sunspots, in which he accepted Galileo’s argument that sunspots “move like ships” on the surface of the Sun.

Schickard, a friend of Kepler’s, designed this planisphere or “astroscopium” to calculate the positions of the stars for any day and hour of the year. Schickard also devised a calculating machine to produce astronomical tables according to Kepler’s laws.

Erasmus Reinhold, a professor at Wittenberg who was sympathetic to Copernicus, published the first Greek edition of Ptolemy’s Almagest.

In this minor work, Kepler offered an analysis of comets that agreed with Grassi’s.

A “calendarium” contains predictions of the positions of the Sun and Moon for several decades into the future. Regiomontanus calculated their positions for 40 years beginning in 1476; Stoeffler for 62 years from 1518-1579 inclusive.

This is Kepler’s famous pretzel diagram, where he focused attention on the planet rather than the rotating solid sphere which carried the planet. In an Earth-centered system, the planet must follow some kind of similar pretzel path as it is carried along within a thick solid sphere.

The tiny size of a volume by Coronelli belies its historical importance: in this Epitome, Coronelli explained how to use celestial and terrestrial globes, and his techniques for constructing them.

Clavius taught mathematical astronomy in the Rome College (Collegio Romano), the leading Jesuit university in Rome. Aristotle did not emphasize mathematics, but Clavius’ lifelong work established mathematics and astronomy as essential areas of study for Jesuit schools.

This work by Macrobius (5th century) illustrates the wealth of ancient and early medieval literary sources relevant to cosmology. Macrobius here comments upon a classic story of Cicero which described a vision given to the Roman general Scipio.

This 17th-century treatise on music shows a mechanical, water-driven organ. Water enters on the right side of the diagram, turning a gear mechanism that animates a cylinder roll and keyboard. Musical notation cut into the cylinder roll determines the keys depressed for any given time.

Medieval remedies and natural knowledge: An explosion of 16th-century herbals dramatically extended the “materia medica” tradition deriving from ancient writers, assimilating a vast increase in the number of known plants.

In the New Astronomy (Astronomia nova 1609), Kepler demonstrated with respect to Mars what we now call his first two laws of planetary motion. In the preface to that work, translated here, Kepler answered objections to Copernicus based upon Scripture.

Nieremberg saw an unpublished manuscript of Hernandez. Many of his descriptions of plants and animals relied upon Hernandez and other sources from Mexico and Peru. In classification, Nieremberg retained Hernandez’ use of native Nahuatl names.

Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth lies in the center of the universe. The Earth moves as a planet around the Sun. In 1543 little proof was available that the Earth moves; there were many reasons not to accept it.

In one of Kircher’s images is of Matteo Ricci is pictured on the left, along with Xu Guangki (??? 1562-1633) on the right.

From his new astronomy, using Tycho’s observations, Kepler calculated these tables of the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets. Kepler adopted John Napier’s recently invented computational method of logarithms, published in 1614.

Aristotle’s Mechanics contained an analysis of the principles of motion and simple machines. While no longer accepted as an authentic work by Aristotle, its influence among Renaissance scientist-engineers was profound, as illustrated in this commentary by Baldi.

Why physicians studied astronomy: Zodiac Man diagrams like this one reveal the hidden correspondences between the organs of the body (the microcosm) and the influences of the stars and planets that affect them (the microcosm).

Kepler’s major correspondence is gathered here in two rare volumes bound together. Bernegger, one of Kepler’s closest friends, also published Latin translations of Galileo’s Compass, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, and Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World.

The Rudolpine Tables were not a best seller. Three years later, Kepler and his son-in-law Jacob Bartsch published this little extract to stir up interest in the Rudolphine Tables and boost sales. It contains predictions of the transits of Mercury and Venus across the disk of the Sun in 1631.

In this work, Bruno advocated a technique for discovery through pure thought, influenced by the methodology of Raymond Lull. This volume also contains the first printing of Bruno’s Examination of Forms (1588).

With a telescope, Mayr observed the four satellites of Jupiter, accurately determining their periods of revolution. He named them Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, names which are still used today. In this work Mayr also considered Tycho’s objection to Copernicus based upon star sizes.

Schott was among the first to report the “Miracle of Magdeburg,” the sensational story of Otto von Guericke’s public demonstration of the reality of the vacuum. Von Guericke bolted two large hemispheres together, then evacuated the air inside them with his air pump.

In this work, von Guericke explained the design of his air pump and recounted additional experiments conducted with it. He employed the barometer to forecast the weather, and invented an electrostatic generator.

Scientific theories may be accepted on the basis of a weighing of many complex factors rather than a single determinative observation or crucial experiment. From antiquity, Copernicanism had been rejected due to a failure to observe stellar parallax.