You can purchase this book clicking here.

If you wish to purchase further titles already reviewed here, please return each time to SBB. Using the direct links available at our site is easier than searching by title, author, or ISBN number.

EDITORIAL INFORMATION

Through much of the Scientific Revolution, between 1650 and 1750, Catholic churches were the best solar observatories in the world. Constructed initially to solve the pressing problem of providing an unquestionable date for Easter, the instruments that made the churches' observatories also threw light on the disputed geometry of the solar system. Within sight of the altar, they subverted Chruch doctrine about mankind's place in the universe. Measurements made in the oldest cathedral observatory, San Petronio in Bologna, in the heart of the Papal States, supported Kepler's revolutionary discovery that neither the sun's orbit, nor the earth's, can be a circle, and thus indirectly favored ideas condemned at the trial of Galileo.

A tale of politically canny astronomers and cardinals with a taste for mathematics, The Sun in the Church explains the unlikely accomplishments of the Chruch-sponsored observers. Combining brilliant writing with deep learning, the book corrects long-held oversimplifications about the hostility between science and religion.

(Extracted from the dust jacket).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.
-Acknowledgments.

-Introduction.

-Renaissance and Astronomy.
-Counter-Reformation and Cosmology.
-Wider Uses of Meridiane.

-1. The Science of Easter.

-The Luminaries and the Calendar.
-A Scandal in the Church.

-2. A Sosigenes and His Caesars.

-Florence.
-Bologna.
-Rome.

-3. Bononia Docet.

-A New Oracle of Apollo.
-Astronomia Reformata.

-4. Normal Science.

-Perfecting the Parameters.
-Repairs and Improvements.

-5. The Pope's Gnomon.

-Calendrical and Other Politics.
-The Meridian in Michelangelo's Church.
-Meridiane and Meridians.

-6. The Accomodation of Copernicus.

-Heliometers and Heliocentrism.
-Protective Measures.
-Book Banning.

-7. The Last Cathedral Observatories.

-The Things Themselves.
-Their Results.
-Their Comptetitors.

-8. Time Telling.

-Some Means of Conversion.
-The Equation of Time.
-More Light Play.

-Appendices.

-Abbreviations.

-Works Cited.

-Notes.

-Credits.

-Index.