This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the 'First Account' of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University - such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages - either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility - the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.
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The place of Edward Gresham's (1603) in the discussion on cosmology and the Bible in the early modern period.
Br J Hist Sci
December 2020
Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330Warsaw, Poland. Email:
This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the 'First Account' of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University - such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages - either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility - the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.
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Stud Hist Philos Sci
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L. and A. Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. Electronic address:
This paper investigates the functioning of the 'Copernican paradox' (stating that the Sun stands still and the Earth revolves around the Sun) in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, with particular attention to Edward Gresham's (1565-1613) little-known and hitherto understudied astronomical treatise - Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603). The text, which is fully appreciative of the heliocentric system, is analysed within a broader context of the ongoing struggles with the Copernican theory at the turn of the seventeenth century. The article finds that apart from having a purely rhetorical function, the 'Copernican paradox' featured in the epistemological debates on how early modern scientific knowledge should be constructed and popularised.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe pre-telescopic observations of the Moon in early seventeenth-century London: The case of Edward Gresham (1565-1613).
Notes Rec R Soc Lond
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Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland.
This article supplements the history of the pre-telescopic observations of the Moon at the turn of the seventeenth century with an analysis of the hitherto understudied manuscript (1603), written by Edward Gresham, an English astrologer and follower of the heliocentric theory. In this treatise, Gresham presents the results of his observations of the surface of the Moon. These findings are discussed against a wider background of contemporary writings by Galileo Galilei, William Gilbert, Johannes Kepler and Michael Maestlin.
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