Tycho Brahe in Iberia


Tycho Brahe in Iberia: The reception, circulation and appropriation of Tychonic cosmology and observational astronomy in the Iberian World, 1572-1758


Individual project (6 years) funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT); CEECIND/02607/2017)



Main research questions:






Recent historiography has shown the relevance of Danish nobleman, astronomer and polymath Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) to the history of science [7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16]. He highlights profound changes in astronomy and cosmology. Among other aspects it has been argued that Tycho was the first astronomer to see the heavens as a region of dynamic change; the first to think seriously about systematic, verifiable and rigorous observation of nature and develop ways to do it; and the first to organize scientific activity on a large scale [8]. Additionally, in response to Copernican heliocentrism he developed and proposed a geo-heliocentric world system – which became a popular model of the cosmos in Europe for most of the seventeenth century, especially among Jesuit astronomers [11, 15]. And as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Tycho’s assistant in Prague for a year, remarked in the preface to his Astronomia Nova (1609): “…everyone has been adding to his own boat the tables taken from the shipwreck of Brahaean astronomy…” In fact, Tycho’s data was largely used by the Iberian astronomical and mathematical practitioners of the time [3, 13, 14]. Another instance where a lasting Tychonian mark was left was the practice of observational astronomy. Two cases, taken front the Portuguese Empire and its ramifications, show how far the circulation of Tycho’s books and instruments have gone: (i) in the 1620s André de Almada (1570?–1642), professor of theology at the University of Coimbra, commissioned a solid quadrant based in Tycho’s description in the Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (1598) [4], and (ii) in the late 1660s, using the same book, Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688) commissioned a set of instruments to Peking observatory [6]. Finally, it is known that at least the Portuguese Pedro Nunes (1502-1578) [17] and the Spanish Jerónimo Muñoz (c.1520-c.1591) [3] were cited and studied by the Danish nobleman, imprinting an Iberian influence to his astronomical work. The reception of Tycho in Iberia was the subject, or part of the narrative, of a number of studies, usually focused on institutional settings (for instance the Aula da Esfera, in Lisbon [1, 2, 10]), on a particular historical actor (Cristoforo Borri [5] and Sigüenza y Góngora [3] are just two examples), or in a facet of the Tychonic legacy as happened with his cosmological system [10, 14, 15, 18]. In contrast to the present situation, my approach will be grounded on a wide variety of primary sources, paying special attention to and using the inputs of book history, the material culture of science, and the history of nautical science. The systematic study of written and iconographical – printed and manuscript – sources will certainly produce a comprehensive, deeper and more balanced view of the reception of Tycho’s astronomical and cosmological legacy in Iberia, highlighting and explaining differences and similarities between the Spanish and Portuguese cases.

 

References

[1] - BALDINI, U. (2004) The teaching of Mathematics in the Jesuit Colleges of Portugal, from 1640 to Pombal, in L. Saraiva, H. Leitão (eds.) The Practice of Mathematics in Portugal (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra), 293-465.

[2] - BALDINI, U. (2000) The Portuguese Assistancy of the Society of Jesus and Scientific Activities in its Asian Missions until 1640, in L. Saraiva (ed.) História da Ciências Matemáticas – Portugal e o Oriente (Lisboa: Fundação Oriente), 49-104.

[3] - BROTÓNS, V. (2014) Disciplinas, Saberes y Prácticas – Filosofía natural, matemáticas y astronomía en la sociedad española de la época moderna (València: Universitat de València).

[4] - CAROLINO, L. (2016) Science, patronage, and academies in early seventeenth-century Portugal: The scientific academy of the nobleman and university professor André de Almada, History of Science, 54, 107-137.

[5] - CAROLINO, L. (2008) The Making of a Tychonic Cosmology: Cristoforo Borri and the Development of Tycho Brahe’s Astronomical System, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 39, 313-344.

[6] - CHAPMAN, A. (1984) Tycho Brahe in China: the Jesuit mission to Peking and the iconography of European instrument-making processes, Annals of Science, 41:5, 417-443.

[7] - CHRISTIANSON, J. R. (2002) On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe, Science, and Culture in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: CUP).

[8] - CHRISTIANSON, J. R. (2002) The Legacy of Tycho Brahe, Centaurus, 44, 228-247.

[9] - CHRISTIANSON, J. R. et al. (eds.) (2002) Tycho Brahe and Prague: Crossroads of European Science (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Harri Deutsch).

[10] - LEITÃO, Henrique (2008) O debate cosmológico na Aula da Esfera do Colégio de Santo Antão, in Sphaera Mundi: A Ciência na Aula da Esfera (Lisboa: BNP), 27-44.

[11] - LERNER, M.-P. (1995) L’entrée de Tycho Brahe chez les jésuites ou le chant du cygne de Clavius, in L. Giard (ed.) Les jésuites à la Renaissance – Système éducatif et production du savoir (Paris: PUF), 145-185.

[12] - MOSLEY, A. (2007) Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: CUP).

[13] - PORTUONDO, M. M. (2009) Secret Science – Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago: UCP).

[14] - RANDLES, W. G. L. (2004) The Unmaking of the Medieval Christian Cosmos, 1500-1760 – From Solid Heavens to Boundless Aether (Aldershot: Ashgate).

[15] - SCHOFIELD, C. (1981) Tychonic and Semi-Tychonic world systems (New York: Arno Press).

[16] - THOREN, V. E. (1990) The Lord of Uraniborg – A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: CUP).

[17] - TIRAPICOS, L. (2009) Tycho Brahe e os instrumentos que reformaram a astronomia, in H. Leitão, L. Martins (org.) Estrelas de Papel – Livros de astronomia dos séculos XIV a XVIII (Lisboa: BNP), 43-48.

[18] - VERNET, J. (1973) Copernicus in Spain, in J. Dobrzycki (ed.) The Reception of Copernicus’ Heliocentric Theory (Dordrecht: Springer), 271-291. 

Cristoforo Borri, Collecta Astronomica, ex doctrina (Lisbon, 1631), Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, VAR. 1881.

                                   

In Portugal the Jesuits followed Tycho’s system very early. In the Aula da Esfera of the College of Santo Antão (Lisbon) at least from 1615-16, starting with the lessons of Giovanni Paolo Lembo (1570-1618), the various world systems were discussed and the superiority of Tycho’s scheme advocated. Cristoforo Borri (1583-1632) was one of the professors of the Aula da Esfera in the early seventeenth century. In the 1630s he published, in Lisbon, his own version of Tychonic cosmology in the book Collecta Astronomica ex doctrina.

Tycho Brahe, Astronomiae Instauratae mechanica (Nuremberg: Levinus Hulsius, 1602).

One of the quadrants where Tycho used and tested the division of scales devised by Portuguese cosmographer and mathematician Pedro Nunes (1502-1578), a device later known as nonius, the Latin version of Nunes' name.  


Outputs in the framework of the project:


PAPER

"On the censorship of Tycho Brahe’s books in Iberia," Annals of Science, 77 (2020), 96-107 [link].

"Nicolau Copérnico, Tycho Brahe e os Oratorianos em Portugal," Lusitania Sacra, 49 (janeiro-junho 2024), 83-95 [link].

BOOK CHAPTER

“Pedro Nunes, Tycho Brahe, and Orazio Borgondio: Two Failed Schemes to Read Angular Scales?” in Sara Schechner and Sofia Talas (eds.), Failed Scientific Instruments (Leyden: Brill, forthcoming). 

BOOK REVIEW

"A Muñoz Biography," Journal for the History of Astronomy, 53 (2022), 230-231 [link].

SEMINAR

"Tycho Brahe e os Cosmógrafos Ibéricos," Conferências CIUHCT [in Portuguese], 28 January 2021 [link]