Abstract
The prediction of planetary positions, distances in the solar system, the status of the Sun, and the age of the world: these were the big questions of astronomy during Gascoigne’s lifetime. The alternative cosmologies of Ptolemy and Copernicus were still being hotly disputed. Kepler’s elliptical orbits had been embraced by few English astronomers.
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Notes
- 1.
Frisia: a coastal region extending from the north-western Netherlands to the Danish border.
- 2.
Batavia: The Netherlands.
- 3.
Vaquero, J.M. and Vázquez, M., The Sun Recorded through History (London, 2009), 111.
- 4.
Reeves, E., and Van Helden, A., On Sunspots – Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner (Chicago, 2010), 32.
- 5.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, tr. H Rackham (London & Cambridge Massachusetts, 1952), v.9, book xxxv, 84 (p.323).
- 6.
Reeves, E., and Van Helden, A., Op.Cit., 78. The seventeenth century English of the translation by Thomas Salusbury has been updated.
- 7.
Ibid., 87.
- 8.
Ibid., 91.
- 9.
Ibid., 94.
- 10.
Ibid., 98.
- 11.
Ibid., 104.
- 12.
Ibid., 126–7.
- 13.
Ibid., 312.
- 14.
Tarde, Jean, A la rencontre de Galilée: Deux voyages en Italie (Geneva, 1984) (ed. F.Moreau and M.Tetel) (tr. DS), 79.
- 15.
Philosophical transactions, v.27, 288. William Crabtree to Gacoigne (7 Aug 1640).
- 16.
Evans, James, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy (Oxford, 1998), 210. Note that the lengths of the seasons are different in the modern era (currently, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, are 93, 93, 90 and 89 days, respectively).
- 17.
Ptolemy, C., Almagest, tr. GJ Toomer (Princeton, 1998), Book 1, Chap. 7, 45.
- 18.
John Field, in Ephemeris anni 1557 currentis, juxta Copernici et Reinhaldi canones, &c, quoted by Rev Joseph Hunter, Some particulars of the life of John Field, the proto-Copernican of England, Gentleman’s Magazine (London, 1834), v.1 (New Series), 493.
- 19.
Wilson, Curtis Astronomy from Kepler to Newton (London, 1989), art.IX, 207 (originally in Centaurus, v.17 (1973), 207).
- 20.
For a detailed account of the reception of Kepler’s work, see Applebaum, Wilbur, Keplerian astronomy after Kepler: researches and problems, History of Science, xxxiv (1996), 451–504.
- 21.
Whatton, A.B., Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Jeremiah Horrox (London, 1859), 177.
- 22.
Wilson, Curtis, General History of Astronomy (Cambridge, 1989) v.2A, 165.
- 23.
Ibid., 165.
- 24.
Gascoigne to William Crabtree (25 Jan 1641), Bodleian Library, MS. Eng.7031, f.39r.
- 25.
Philosophical transactions, 1711, v.27, 288.
- 26.
Dijkstra, Arjen, A wonderful little book: The Dissertation Astronomica by Johannes Phocylides Holwarda, in Centres and cycles of accumulation in and around the Netherlands, ed. Lissa Roberts (Münster, 2011), 73–99.
- 27.
Philosophical transactions, 1711, v.27, 288–289.
- 28.
Rigaud, S.P., Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1841), v.1., 44. Gascoigne to William Oughtred (c. Feb 1641).
- 29.
The National Archives, RGO 1/40, f.14v.
- 30.
Horrocks, Jeremiah, Opera Posthuma (London, 1678), 336. Letter from William Crabtree to Gascoigne (12 December 1640). Translated in Wilson, Curtis, Astronomy from Kepler to Newton (London, 1989), art.VII, 78.
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Sellers, D. (2012). The Astronomical World of William Gascoigne. In: In Search of William Gascoigne. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 390. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4097-0_10
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