A More Perfect Heaven
How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos
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- £8.49
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
The bestselling author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter tells the story of Nicolaus Copernicus and the revolution in astronomy that changed the world.
'Lively, inventive ... a masterly specimen of close-range cultural history' Wall Street Journal
'Fantastic ... A masterly telling of how Copernicus revolutionised science' The Times
In the 1520s a Polish cleric named Nicolaus Copernicus developed a revolutionary theory which placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of our universe. The secret existence of this manuscript tantalised scientists everywhere in Europe. Then in 1539 a young German mathematician, Rheticus, travelled to meet Copernicus in the hope of setting eyes on it. Dava Sobel tells the story of a new concept of the heavens, and how Rheticus persuaded the cautious Copernicus to allow him to take the precious but dangerous manuscript out into a world that it would change for ever.
In her compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles the history of the Copernican Revolution, relating the story of astronomy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. And as she achieved with her international bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, in A More Perfect Heaven, Sobel expands the bounds of popular science writing, giving us an unforgettable portrait of a major step forward in the human knowledge of our universe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sobel, author of the bestselling Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, brings something different to the bulging Copernicus canon. She wants to know why Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 1543) waited till shortly before his death to publish the universe-expanding ideas that he had previously only quietly circulated among other scientists. Her conclusion: in the midst of Martin Luther's challenge to the Catholic Church, Copernicus, himself a Church canon, feared the Church's response to his radical notion that Earth revolved around the Sun. His thesis, of course, altered nothing less than the our view of our place in the cosmos. Daringly, Sobel embeds within a factual narrative a two-act play in which she imagines the relationship between the aging Copernicus and a young mathematician (and Lutheran) named Georg Joachim Rheticus, who Sobel says "convinced the great astronomer "to publish his crazy idea. Delivered with her usual stylistic grace (and here, a touch of astrological whimsy), Sobel's gamble largely succeeds in bringing Copernicus and his intellectually and religiously tumultuous time alive. B&w illus., maps.
