Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern CosmologyPrinceton University Press, 1999/09/27 - 365 ページ 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. |
目次
Shared Culture Separate Spaces | 3 |
SIGNS OF THE TIMES | 15 |
Ancient Signs | 17 |
Monsters and the Messiah | 27 |
Divination | 51 |
Portents and Politics | 66 |
NATURAL CAUSES | 89 |
From Natural Signs to Proximate Causes | 91 |
Halleys Comet Theory Noahs Flood and the End of the World | 156 |
COMET LORE AND COSMOGONY | 179 |
Refueling the Sun and Planets | 181 |
Revolution and Evolution within the Heavens | 188 |
Popular Culture and Elite Science | 216 |
Recent Resurgence of Cometary Catastrophism | 222 |
NOTES | 225 |
309 | |