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Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 32, No. 3, pp.

583600, 2001
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Essay Review
John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe:
No Astronomer is an Island?
Adam Mosley*
John Christianson, On Tychos Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 15701601
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xii +451 pp., ISBN 0-521-65081.
Hardback 30.00.
1. Setting the Scene: No Man is an Island, Entire of It Self?
Given the central place of astronomy in that currently unfashionable episode in
the grand narrative of the history of science, the Scientic Revolution, and given
the role which that episode has long played in university curricula, it is hardly
surprising that the name Tycho Brahe is familiar even to scholars whose usual
concerns lie far away from the study of the heavens and from the early-modern
period. Widely remembered as the astronomer whose large observing instruments
supplied the data from which Kepler was to derive the ellipticity of planetary orbits,
Tycho is also known as the scholar who promulgated an alternative to the world-
systems of both Copernicus and Ptolemy. In some quarters, it is true, he is better
known as the Danish noble who was possessed of both a false nose and a prescient
dwarf, and as the man whose table-manners were such that he could almost be
said to have died of embarrassment. But the more colourful aspects of Tychos life
and demise would have remained entirely unknown were it not for the astronomical
accomplishments which originally brought him to the attention of historians. And
that attention has, over the years, proved not inconsiderable: it could hardly be said
that he has been overlooked, or neglected. However, the total number of articles and
monographs devoted to Tycho is but a fraction of those which treat one or more
* Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ, U.K.
PII: S0039-3681(01)00015-2
583
584 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
of that triumvirate of early-modern cosmology constituted by Copernicus, Kepler
and (most especially) Galileo Galilei. In this sense, therefore, it could legitimately
be said that Tycho was the least well known of the most famous of astronomers.
That would be reason enough to welcome a new study of Tycho which was
accessible, well illustrated and researched with diligence and competence. On
Tychos Island is all these things and more. As we learn from its preface, it has
been in the making for a quarter of a century; and for longer than those twenty-
ve years its author has been one of those few individuals who could genuinely
be called a scholar of Tycho, a historian who has made signicant contributions to
the slowly rising edice that is our best picture of the sixteenth centurys foremost
observational astronomer. This study, Professor Christiansons rst full-length
work on the topic, adds more than a few architectural features to that building.
And if some of the new pieces of masonry are ones that, having found them lying
readily to hand, he has merely lifted into place, others have been quarried by him
personally from the primary sources and the archives. On Tychos Island is there-
fore an important and engaging addition to the literature on Tycho. It will prove
valuable to specialist scholars as well as to pedagogues.
Although the rst part of the work is essentially a biography, Professor Christian-
son has wisely not attempted to supplant the existing English-language accounts
of Tycho and his studies. Christiansons treatment is more selective than either the
text by John Dreyer, still useful and readable despite its great age and its errors,
1
or the more exhaustive work of Victor Thoren, to which Christianson contributed.
2
He manages, neverthless to repair the life erected by Dreyer and Thoren in more
than a few places, repointing the odd fact, and patching the interpretative plaster-
work where the cracks of age have now become visible. More importantly, his
focused approach allows him to begin work on a whole new wing of the building,
one for which Dreyer and Thoren did no more than lay a foundation. For Christian-
son is principally concerned with providing an account of Tychos island of Hven,
and its observatory Uraniborg, as the site of an extraordinary collaborative
enterprise. Describing Uraniborg as a large-scale, multifaceted scientic research
institute (p. 5), he speaks of Tycho as an innovative organiser of resources and
people; indeed, one of the most innovative in any period of history (p. 3). On
Tychos Island may thus be read as the analysis of an early episode in the history
of sciences management; an episode, moreover, that Christianson claims had far-
reaching consequences.
Christiansons description of Tychos project in terms that are so uncompromis-
ingly modern may not endear his work to all readers; particularly since the connec-
tion between Hven and the subsequent institutionalisation of the scientic
enterprise at which he seems to be hinting is something whose existence is never
1
Dreyer (1890).
2
Thoren (1990).
585 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
unambiguously established. But his readiness to detect a familial resemblance to
Uraniborg in later sites of research does not in any way diminish Christiansons
sensitivity to the historical specicities that properly explain the character and suc-
cess of the astronomers operation. Patronage, and an almost ritualised concept of
friendship closely akin to it in respect of the dynamics of the relationships that
resulted, are portrayed by him as the cultural institutions that allowed Tycho to
garner the support required to construct and staff his observatory. And hence,
applying to Tychos case all that scholars have recently learnt about the princely
sponsorship of early-modern science, he not only notes the importance to the
astronomer of his funding by King Frederick II, but also exposes the reciprocal
benets to the monarch which made that funding possible. He makes clear that
what Dreyer dismissed, indexically, as Tychos poetic effusions
3
the verses that
the astronomer composed in honour of various of his noble and learned acquaint-
ances, were in their own way as much a part of his project of astronomical reform
as Uraniborgs precision instrument technology. And he discusses the portraits and
emblems produced by Tycho, both those which were incorporated in the fabric of
Uraniborg, and those distributed through friends and correspondents, in terms
which make evident their importance as self-conscious statements of the noble
Danes scholarly ambition and status. None of these individual insights are parti-
cularly surprising, it is true; but the value of them being articulated, well and in
one place, should not be underestimated.
Christiansons appreciation of the real signicance of what, in the Anglo-Amer-
ican literature, has often been considered as being of only peripheral interest, is
partly due to his familiarity with Scandinavian scholarship. For, as he has elsewhere
noted, Scandinavian historians have often pursued Tycho through broader avenues
of inquiry than have their anglophone colleagues.
4
Similarly well placed to com-
ment on Tychos overlordship of Hven as an aspect of the Danish feudal system,
Christianson provides a description of the astronomers relations with the peasant
families of the islandcovering, for example, the disaffection which attended the
new demands on their time and their labourthat improves greatly on the scanty
material others had assembled. And his account of the events that led Tycho to
abandon Uraniborg, and eventually Denmark, is richer even than that which Victor
Thoren supplied, nicely relating the debacle of the betrothal of the astronomers
daughter to his former student Gellius Sascerides, the ascendency at court of a
faction opposed to Tychos, and the resentment of certain individuals at Copenhag-
ens university. If Christianson is right to suggest that the latter was due to jealousy
of Uraniborgs lavish funding and attractiveness to students, then his characteris-
ation of Tychos island as an early-modern research institute would seem to hold
3
Dreyer (1890), p. 403.
4
Christianson (1998).
586 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
true even with respect to the inter-institutional academic rivalry to which its exist-
ence gave rise.
Christianson is at his best and most original, however, when he looks at Urani-
borg as essentially a domestic environment, home to an extended family of which
Tycho was the head, sometimes stern, quite often jovial. Not content with merely
noting that Tychos assistants were essential to his astronomical and alchemical
labours, or simply commenting on the difference made to their career prospects
by a stay on Hven, he sets out to document what life was like at Uraniborg. He
succeeds in conveying not only the bustling activity of the observatory, and the
occasional drama of a royal visitation, but even the character of some of the more
obscure individuals. His observation that of all the workers on Hven it was only
the Germans who clashed strongly with Tycho, and his explanation of this fact in
terms of the differing national approaches to contractual arrangements, are certainly
intriguing; even if one is inclined to suspect that this difference could actually be
an artefact of the available evidence. And a newly found document Christianson
makes use of, the memorandum of a young scholar who sought employment on
Hven, but who was frightened off by the harsh conditions that would have been
imposed on his residence, is nothing less than a revelation about the care with
which Tycho negotiated the terms of employment of his would-be collaborators
long before Kepler. More than any other historian has done, Christianson shows
us that Uraniborg was an extraordinary environment constructed through Tychos
careful, even at times oppressive, direction and management.
2. Portraying Print: That Library Where Every Book Shall Lie Open?
In other respects, however, Part One of On Tychos Island is less satisfactory.
As Christianson notes at an early stage of the work, the success of Tychos project
depended not just on his management of local resources, but also on the develop-
ment of connections to an international network of scholars and patrons. Tracing
the full extent and signicance of that network has not been Christiansons priority;
he has, quite sensibly, chosen to set at least some limits on what, in its scope, is
a less than modest study. Yet he does tell us how Tycho made and sustained those
connections. And although he certainly acknowledges that correspondence was one
important aspect of the astronomers strategy, he places much greater emphasis on
the products of the printing press. This view of the relative importance of manu-
script and printed communications is not one I am wholly convinced by.
Christiansons understanding of printing and its importance to Tycho is not with-
out precedent. I think it fair to say that he has been persuaded by the arguments
of Elizabeth Eisenstein regarding the transforming power of the printing press, and
follows her in asserting the general importance to astronomy of the new repro-
ductive technology, as well as in celebrating the use made of it by Tycho.
5
Concern-
5
Eisenstein (1979), especially pp. 575635.
587 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
ing the impact of printing on the study of the heavens, Christiansons presentation
of the case is enviably lucid. But readers may feel that no summary, however well
executed, can wholly rescue the Eisenstein thesis from the charge levelled at it by
somethat of oversimplifying the historical phenomena.
6
Indeed, a synopsis is
rather more likely to compound any problem of this kind, by failing to take account
of the exceptions and complexities. It may be true, for example, as Christianson
claims (p. 104), that the printing in 1538 of a good (Greek) edition of Ptolemys
Almagest
7
helped to raise to a new level the published literature on astronomy. But
it was perhaps an unhappy decision to cite this text, in this edition, alongside claims
about the standardising power of the press, and immediately prior to the assertion
that tabulated data (amongst other things) could be reproduced precisely in print,
as it could not in manuscript; unhappy, that is, for someone writing about Christian-
sons subject.
We do not know whether Tycho ever possessed a copy of the 1538 edition of
Ptolemy. It is not one of those books that he cited explicitly in any of his extant
works or correspondence, nor one a copy of which has survived from his library.
8
This fact may surprise some readers of Christiansons text. In particular, it may
surprise any who understand him to say that it was the circulation of this version
of the text, alongside Copernicus De revolutionibus, which presented the astron-
omers of Tychos generation with their great dilemma in cosmology: for that is
one possible construalalmost certainly not the one which was intendedof the
emphasis he gives to it. More importantly, Tychos own comments on the reading
of Ptolemy suggest a somewhat different picture. Writing to Christoph Rothmann,
mathematicus to Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hessen-Kassel, Tycho explained that,
when analysing the star positions recorded by his Alexandrian predecessor, he had
not only employed the translation by George of Trebizond.
9
He had also consulted,
a certain old copy of the Almagest, published nearly seventy years ago at Venice,
10
which expresses the declinations not in numerals, as the Trebizond version does,
but to aliquot parts of a degree in letters.
11
In other words, not wholly trusting
the printed data in the tables, Tycho elected to check the entries against a copy of
the work in which the numbers in the text were spelt out alphabetically. It was a
sensible precaution: a single digit error in a numerical string might be as difcult
to conjecturally emend as it was to detect, whereas a number spelt out in full would
tolerate the misprinting of any one character. Of course, the same applies to texts
copied by hand; and indeed, in an accompanying letter Tycho had remarked that
the art of printing was devised scarcely 150 years ago, and in the great period of
6
See, for example, Grafton (1980) and Johns (1998), especially pp. 628.
7
Grynaeus (1538).
8
Norlind (1970), pp. 333410.
9
That is to say Schreckenfuchs (1551), which incorporates a reissue of Gaurico (1528). See Norlind
(1970), p. 358.
10
Ptolemy (1515).
11
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, p. 95: Tycho to Rothmann, 20th January 1587.
588 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
time prior to that many things, especially in the characters of the numbers, could
have been allotted falsely through being rewritten so many times. But he went on
to note that even in the printing art itself, error is easily admitted; unless a careful
corrector is employed.
12
The overall impression one acquires is that Tycho, like
many of his contemporaries, was as wary of typographical errors as he was of
those that were scribal. For this reason, among others, he was ambivalent about
the printing press, viewing it as a technology that propagated erroneous texts and
opinions as readily as sound ones.
13
To be fair to Christianson, when it comes to analysing Tychos own use of the
press he does not shy away from describing the many practical difculties the
astronomer faced in maintaining his printing operation. And he does acknowledge
one of the drawbacks to the vast increase in the number of works in circulation,
the problem that individual authors had in getting their texts noticed amidst a pleth-
ora of other ones (p. 105). In Christiansons account, however, this obstacle
becomes an opportunity for Tycho to shine; or rather a series of opportunities, for
it is one that he is shown to have overcome on multiple occasions. And in very
much the same spirit, early barriers to publication appear to spur the astronomer
to adopt the most forward-looking of solutions. Tycho discovered that Copenhagen
printers were not equipped to deal with his new kind of technical scientic publi-
cation, Christianson tells us (p. 85); and so, motivated also by concerns over the
accuracy and quality of his projected works, and by a desire to retain control of
his intellectual property, he set out to establish the worlds rst working scientic
press. As unproblematic as these statements may appear to the casual reader, they
are not ones that I feel can pass uncontested.
In the case of the rst claim, the difculty may once again be an ambiguity of
phrasing. But the more natural reading of Christiansons meaning, that there was
a causal connection between the content of Tychos publications and the inability
of the local printers to produce them, is problematic. Explaining to one correspon-
dent the decision to establish his own printing operation, Tycho did indeed claim
that he had found himself unable to make use of the Copenhagen printers. Yet the
technical nature of the proposed work was not the reason that he stated. Rather,
it was because on account of the plague raging at this time, it would not be safe
for the astronomer to employ them; and for the additional reason that, since they
are now occupied with certain other printings, he could not do so swiftly.
14
Admit-
tedly, Tycho did go on to say that a consequence of establishing a press on Hven
would be that he could closely oversee the publication of his work, thereby ensuring
the delity of the text and the data, and the sufciency of the works illustration.
And Christianson may well be right to place more emphasis on Tychos concerns
over quality of content, not to mention intellectual property, than is apparent from
12
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, pp. 712: Tycho to Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel, 18th January 1587.
13
Regiomontanus was one of those who expressed a similar opinion; see Pedersen (1978), p. 177.
14
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 81: Tycho to Heinrich Brucaeus, 1584.
589 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
a strictly literal reading of this document. But the implication, accidental or deliber-
ate, that Tycho was obliged by anything more than the circumstances of the
moment to eschew the commercial print-trade is undoubtedly misleading. Heavily
illustrated texts were no great novelty by the mid-1580s, nor were books rich in
tabulated data. There was nothing about the layout or content of Tychos publi-
cations that would have presented insurmountable difculties had he chosen to
nance, and work closely with, an existing printing operation.
15
Had this not been the case, Christiansons second claim could perhaps have been
more readily interpreted. A scientic press could have been understood as one
capable of producing Tychos new species of scientic publication. As things stand,
however, it is difcult to understand what is meant by the claim that the astronomer
set out to establish the rst printing enterprise matching this description. Working
is an important qualication here; it enables Christianson to dismiss, in an endnote,
the printing ofce of Regiomontanus as that of one whose achievements were too
modest to qualify (p. 398). But it is not clear, if something more than mere aspir-
ation is to be counted, by what criteria the handful of publications produced at
Nuremberg by the earlier astronomer are to be assessed against the handful of
publications produced by Tycho at Uraniborg and Wandsburg and found to be
wanting.
16
Nor is it clear what is so qualitatively different about the operations of
such astronomer-printers as Johannes Schoner and Peter Apian, or of commercial
printers with a strong appetite for mathematical texts such as Erhard Ratdolt, Guil-
laume Cavellat and Johannes Petreius, that they too can be dismissed as candidate
scientic presses without even a mention.
17
Exclusivity of output is possibly Chri-
stiansons chief consideration; and provided that we allow Tycho to be indulged
in the matter of his poetry, that much might be granted. Ultimately, however, it
seems that if Tycho did set out to developand perhaps even succeeded in estab-
lishinga type of printing enterprise which was entirely without precedent, then
Christiansons vocabulary, dependent as it is on that ambiguous scientic, is too
imprecise to describe it.
The extent of Tychos success as an author is also, I think, open to question.
As mentioned already, Christianson holds that, faced with the problem of making
his own work stand out from those of other authors, Tycho adopted a strategy that
was highly successful; so much so, in fact, that it set the established the format
15
I do not mean to imply that the production of astronomical texts could not be formidably difcult
for those engaged in the process: witness Keplers struggles to have the Tabulae Rudolphinae printed,
as documented by Caspar (1993), especially pp. 308328. But the establishment of Tychos printing
operation on Hven clearly did not prevent him from having to make provision for whatever type and
other necessaries the Copenhagen printers might have lacked; it simply rendered the supervisory process
less inconvenient.
16
On Regiomontanus as a printer, see Pedersen (1978), as well as the article by Wingen-Trennhaus
(1991), cited by Christianson. Swerdlow (1993), p. 165, refers to Regiomontanus operation as the
very rst printing rm devoted to scientic publishing.
17
For these printing operations see, respectively, Schottenloher (1907), van Ortroy (1963), Redgrave
(1894), Risk (1982), Pantin (1988) and Shipman (1967).
590 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
for future scientic authors. Of the De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis
(1588) he writes that: Chapter Ten established a model for what would eventually
become a standard part of scholarly monographs: a critical survey of other literature
on the subject . . . From now on, there would be only one standard work on the
comet of 1577. It was a breakthrough publication in the history of science, and
became a paradigm for the work of other scientists (p. 122). It is a strong claim,
and yet certainly one with considerable merit: Christianson has, I think, correctly
arrived at Tychos objective in subjecting the cometary treatises of other authors
to extended critical scrutiny. But as I encountered it, at more than one point in the
text, I found myself wondering. How innovative was Tychos literature survey,
within the domains of both astronomy and scholarship in general? Who, when
subsequently referring to literature on the comet of 1577, preferred Tychos book
to others that could also have been mentioned? And if it is true that the structure
of Tychos work inuenced succeeding generations of scientic authors, where
and when did this inuence rst manifest itself, and how did it propagate? Answers
to at least some of these questions could have been made readily available. In the
controversy over the comets of 1618, for example, several of the disputants referred
to Tychos De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis, and it is clear that they
considered it an important work, if not one that was awless.
18
And if the answers
to others would likely prove a little more elusive, for that very reason Christianson
ought to have supplied whatever assistance he could to those of his readers who
might have been curious. But, apart from the bibliography of On Tychos Island,
no such help is forthcoming.
I was left wondering, too, by Christiansons assessment of Tychos Astronomiae
instauratae mechanica (1598). His assertion (p. 223) that it was one of the most
elegant scientic works ever produced, and set a new standard for description of
technical apparatus raises very similar questions to those previously mentioned.
When, how and on whom did this work exert the inuence with which Christianson
credits it? Moreover, his claim that, used in conjunction with the text, the illus-
trations allowed readers to reproduce the instruments in precise detail, is another
claim that seems to stand without the assistance of any accompanying evidence.
True, it is well known that Tychos instruments inspired those constructed in China
by the Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest (16231688); they seem also to have
been the model for those deployed in Brazil by the astronomer Georg Markgraf
(16101644). And yet the extent to which the Mechanica, or Tychos other publi-
cations, enabled their precise duplication has not, I think, been clearly established.
19
Modern theoreticians would have us believe that the replication of instrumental
apparatus is hardly so simple;
20
and in fact the view on the matter from Uraniborg
itself seems to have been remarkably similar. One of Tychos assistants was
18
See Drake and OMalley (1960).
19
See Chapman (1984), Halsberghie (1994) and North (1979).
20
For example, Collins (1985) and Schaffer and Shapin (1985), especially pp. 225282.
591 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
assigned, in 1591, the task of compiling a description of Uraniborgs instruments
to be sent to Landgrave Wilhelm of Hesse; subsequently published in Tychos
Epistolae astronomicae, the resulting document was in many ways a forerunner of
the Mechanica.
21
Yet its own author succinctly expressed its limited value. But
truly, he wrote, to describe all these [instruments] with that accuracy which is
needed, and to explain all their parts, so that their construction and use could be
understood in all respects, would be a more difcult labour than this brief synopsis
can encompass; for not even very many words would sufce for this, but rather
manual handling and visual inspection is required, and that by those who under-
stand these things well and have learnt to use them correctly.
22
Other contemporary
evidence supports his assessment. Giovanni Antonio Magini constructed Tychonic
instruments; but he did so with the assistance of Gellius Sascerides.
23
Jacob Kurtz,
Imperial Prochancellor and mathematician, and Thaddeus Hagecius, the Imperial
Physician, had a Tychonic sextant constructed before Tycho came to Prague; yet,
despite being supplied with engravings and models of Uraniborgs instruments,
they relied upon the expertise of the talented Jost Burgi, the Hessen artisan who
had improved the instruments of Kassel after receiving instruction from another
former worker on Hven, the mathematician Paul Wittich.
24
And in 1598, even as
he sent him the Mechanica, Tycho suggested to Joseph Scaliger that he seek assist-
ance from a third student, Christian Hansen Riber, if he wished to build for himself
one of the illustrated sextants or quadrants.
25
Each of these cases casts doubt on
the claim that the book would have been sufcient in itself as a set of crafts-
mans instructions.
My reservations about Christiansons portrayal of Tychos printing success
extends beyond his characterisation of individual works, to the claims he makes
21
See Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, pp. 250295.
22
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, p. 288.
23
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 303: Magini to Tycho, 22nd July 1591, and p. 305: Tycho to
Sascerides, 1591. See also Dreyer (19131929), vol. V, p. 128: Magini to Tycho, 1st February 1592,
this letter being the one with which Magini dedicated his Tabula Tetragonica (1592) to Tycho, and
which Tycho reproduced in his Mechanica (1598). Although Magini obviously did not have access to
the Mechanica at the time that he constructed his instruments, he did possess some of the engravings
it would contain, for these had been reproduced in the De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis
(1588), of which he was one of the privileged recipients. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. IV, pp. 369
377, and vol. V, p. 125: Magini to Tycho, 13th September 1590.
24
For the letter in which Hagecius requested the models, see Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 244:
Hagecius to Tycho, 1st June 1590. Tycho assented in his letter to Kurtz of August 1st 1590, though
doubting their utility. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 257. Like Magini, Hagecius already had
access to the engravings of some of the instruments, these having been sent to him both as loose sheets
and in the copy of the De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis that Tycho had sent to him. See
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 96: Tycho to Hagecius, 25th August 1586, and p. 120: Tycho to
Hagecius, 3rd May 1588. The existence of Curtius sextant, and Burgis part in its construction
(Confectus est a quodam insigni artice Lantgraviano . . .), was reported to Tycho by Hagecius on
December 14th, 1593. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 357. Wittichs role in the transfer of tech-
nology between Hven and Kassel has been well documented, and is discussed by Christianson. Burgis
work is treated most comprehensively in Leopold (1986).
25
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VIII, p. 107: Tycho to Scaliger, 17th/23rd August 1598. See, on this
overture, Grafton (19831993), vol. II, pp. 476477.
592 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
for the role of the press in establishing Tychos reputation during his lifetime. On
this point I do feel that I need to be cautious; for as someone whose research to
date has been largely Tychocentric, I consider myself badly placed to assess the
extent to which the astronomer was known to scholars of his age with whom
he had no form of contact. I cannot help wondering, however, whether Professor
Christianson is not hampered, to a smaller degree, by the same limitation. And, in
particular, when he tells us that from the 1580s onwards the printing press helped
to make Tycho and his island known to a broad European public, I suspect that
his assessment of the astronomers fame may be overly generous.
In part, Christiansons claims rest upon a publication that did not emanate from
Uraniborg: the Civitates orbis terrarum of Georg Braun, the fourth volume of
which did indeed offer its readers a brief glimpse of Tychos island and equip-
ment.
26
And there are other works that Christianson could have mentioned (but
doesnt), in which the existence of the Danes observatory was reported: works
such as Heinrich Rantzaus Catalogus (1580) of kings and princes who supported
astrology, the popularity of which is suggested by the fact that it was swiftly
reprinted,
27
or Giovanni Antonio Maginis Geographia universa nova (1596), pub-
lished in conjunction with an edition of Ptolemys Geography, a text which was
paid the unwelcome compliment of being pirated almost immediately.
28
When the
works dedicated to Tycho are taken into consideration as well, texts such as the
Aegloga de eclipsi solari anno 1574 (1574) of Peder Jacobsen Flemlse,
29
the
Tabula Tetragonica (1597) of Magini,
30
and the De natura caeli libri triplicis
libellis tres (1597) of Cort Aslakssn,
31
then it is clear that Christianson has a
point. Printed books must surely have done something to bring Tychos name to
the attention of his scholarly contemporaries.
And yet, with the possible exception of Aslakssns text, none of these works
could really have conveyed much to their readers about the identity and importance
of Tycho and his observatory. That, as Christianson well knows, would have
required the distribution of Tychos own publications. But the rst of these, De
nova stella (1573), which was produced before Uraniborg was properly established,
and prior to Tychos command of his own printing operation, was not marketed
26
I have used the facsimile edition, Braun and Hogenberg (1965). For the description of Hven, see
vol. II, part 4, fol. 27r28r. For the publishing history of the work, see vol. I, pp. xxivxxvii.
27
See Rantzau (1580), p. 30. Zinner (1964) records three subsequent sixteenth-century imprints, pro-
duced at Leipzig in 1581, 1584 and 1590.
28
I have consulted one of these pirate copies: see Magini (1597), fol. 99v, and Bennett and Bertoloni-
Meli (1994), p. 141.
29
However, this work, briey mentioned by Dreyer (1890, pp. 1178), Thoren (1990, p. 92), and
Christianson himself (p. 278), was probably not widely distributed.
30
See Dreyer (19131929), vol. V, pp. 1278, for the letter of dedication, as reproduced in
Tychos Mechanica.
31
See Aslakksn (1597), sig. A2rA4r, for the dedication, and Moesgaard (1972), p. 122, for a brief
discussion of the text.
593 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
widely by its publisher-printer.
32
It was Tycho who sent copies to certain individ-
uals outside of the country, to friends such as Paul Haintzel of Augsburg and
George Buchanan of Scotland: men to whom he was already known one way or
another.
33
And essentially the same strategy, that of presenting copies to a select
group of correspondents and patrons, was employed by him as a means of distribut-
ing all of the writings that he subsequently printed.
34
This careful selection of
readers is hardly compatible with the claim that printing made Tychos work fam-
iliar to numerous scholars with whom he had no other form of acquaintance; and,
indeed, Christianson does not ask us to believe that his assertion rests on this
inadequate basis. Instead, he tells us that the poetry Tycho published was put up for
sale at Frankfurt (p. 96), that some copies of the De mundi aetherei recentioribus
phaenomenis were likewise distributed (p. 124), and that news of the Mechanica
outstripped Tycho himself in reaching Prague and the Emperor (p. 226).
On some or all of these points Christiansons view may be the correct one.
Tycho himself stated, in a letter to Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, that some
copies of his Epistolae astronomicae (1596) were sent for sale to Frankfurt.
35
It
would not be entirely out of character, therefore, for Tycho to have entrusted his
earlier writings to one of the merchants of the Book Fair. But what basis there
might be for the claim that they were put up for sale is not made clear in either
the text or the endnotes. With respect to the poetry, I would hazard a guess that
the source in question is Christoph Rothmanns letter to Tycho of September 1587.
For here Rothmann wrote that he had obtained a copy of some of Tychos poems
from Hans Aalborg on the occasion of the last Fairs at Frankfurt;
36
and it is Aal-
borg, bookseller to the University of Copenhagen, whom Christianson credits with
the commercial distribution of these verses (p. 96). Yet Rothmanns testimony
does not necessarily indicate that Rothmann purchased the poems from Aalborg
at Frankfurt, nor that they were sold there on earlier occasions: Tycho frequently
made use of merchants travelling to the Frankfurt Fairs to courier letters and docu-
ments to and from various places, Kassel among them.
37
I am inclined to believe
that, in this case, as in others, the distribution of the printed material followed the
distribution of manuscript letters.
Christiansons reasoning in the case of the De mundi aetherei recentioribus
32
This was Tychos own complaint in his Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata (1602), when he
reproduced a portion of the 1573 text. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. III, p. 96.
33
See Dreyer (19131919), vol. VII, p. 14: Hainzel to Tycho, 10th March 1574, and p. 21, Buchanan
to Tycho, 6th April 1575.
34
See, for details of the recipients of the various works, Norlind (1970), pp. 1227, 2327, and 286
293. In addition, Hagecius and Kurtz were sent a partial copy of the Progymnasmata as early as August
1590. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, pp. 2745.
35
Dreyer (19131929), vol. XIV, pp. 1078: Tycho to Moritz, 17th June 1597.
36
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, pp. 1178: Rothmann to Tycho, 21st September 1587.
37
Indeed, Tychos letter to Rothmann of January 20th 1587, to which this letter of Rothmann was
a belated reply, had been conveyed by an unnamed courier travelling from Denmark to Frankfurt and
back again at the time of the Spring Fairs. See Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, p. 105: Tycho to Rothmann,
12th August 1587, and p. 110: Rothmann to Tycho, 21st September 1587.
594 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
phaenomenis is even less clear to me. Perhaps he takes Tychos assertion (in Nov-
ember 1589) that of the copies of this work except for a very few I have not
allowed these to be distributed to others
38
as evidence that some small number
had been made available commercially. Certainly Tycho always projected the com-
mercial distribution of his astronomical writings: he produced them in substantial
editions of 1500 copies, and he repeatedly mentioned Frankfurt as a possible mar-
ketplace.
39
Yet the De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis was intended to
be the second part of a three-volume work on celestial phenomena, and, as Tycho
wrote to Thaddaeus Hagecius in 1590, he had kept possession of most of the copies
because I did not want to make it public until all the volumes were printed.
40
They never were, at least not in the form the astronomer had originally intended.
I believe, therefore, that the promised sale of this text only occurred after the death
of its author.
As regards the Mechanica, and the two manuscript works that were concurrently
distributed, if Rudolph II knew that princes and scholars throughout Europe were
turning the pages of those marvellous volumes before he had seen them (p. 226),
then this occurred contrary to Tychos explicit instructions and ostensible interests.
Fearing, or pretending to fear, that as the dedicatee of these works the Emperor
would feel aggrieved that he had not been the rst to receive them, Tycho asked
those to whom they were presented to keep their possession of them a secret.
41
That news of these works percolated nevertheless to the Imperial Court is far from
implausible; indeed, it is possible that Tycho fostered this process himself, knowing
that, provided an appearance of propriety was maintained, it could work to his
benet. But here, as in the other cases I have discussed, Christianson does not
support the claims of his lively narrative with any argument or evidence.
Undoubtedly some latitude should be allowed to Christianson in respect of the
works annotation, partly because his work is in places a synthesis of existing
studies, and partly because it has been written at such a level as to allow it to be
assigned as undergraduate reading. Even so, I repeatedly found myself wishing
that the author and the press had considered it appropriate to supply a richer set
of endnotes. At times, the lack of argument and annotation makes it difcult to
separate attested historical fact from justiable speculation, and justiable specu-
lation from purely literary licence. The account of Tychos arrival on Hven, for
example, which Christianson invests with considerable dramatic tension, describing
even the details of costume and gesture (pp. 3233), is entirely unannotated. Is the
38
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 213: Tycho to Hagecius, 1st November 1589.
39
See both the letter mentioned in the preceding note and Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 122:
Tycho to Bartholomew Scultetus, 17th August 1588, and p. 327: Tycho to Scultetus, 12th March 1592,
as well as various other places in Tychos correspondence. On this point, I disagree with the analysis
offered by Johns (1998), pp. 1418.
40
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 224: Tycho to Hagecius, 25th January 1590.
41
See, for example, Tychos account of this request being made to Prince Maurice of Orange, in
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VIII, p. 67: Tycho to Holger Rosencrantz, 8th May 1598.
595 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
reader to conclude that it has been compiled without the aid of the report of even
a single contemporary witness? Similarly, Christianson condently asserts (p. 102)
that Marsilio Ficino was one of those depicted among the portraits of seven Italian
philosophers, who ourished around one hundred years ago, contained in one and
the same picture to be found in Tychos musaeum;
42
a fact of some signicance
in the light of his emphasis on the inuence on Tychos circle of Ficinan Neopla-
tonism. But we never learn what source permits us to know this. And it is parti-
cularly frustrating when assistance promised by a note turns out to be of another
form than we might have expected. When Christianson tells us, for example (p.
79), that the lengthy suppers customary in the households of the Danish nobility
were transformed by Tycho into a daily staff meeting for the scholars and mech-
anics of Hven, one looks to the accompanying endnote to provide the proof that
matters of business were routinely discussed at Uraniborgs table. Instead, we are
directed to evidence that such meetings are still an essential feature of modern
scientic organisations: a reference that is either irrelevant to what occurred on
Hven, or else, in respect of Christiansons larger argument about the character of
Uraniborg, somewhat guilty of begging the question. In either case, the point could
easily have been omitted to make room for one of those references which are
wanting. Non-specialists may not miss the precise annotation that one would expect
of an article in a journal, but those who work on early-modern astronomy will
greatly regret that On Tychos Island has been packaged as if it were no more than
a text-book.
3. The Cartography of Relations: Every Man is a Piece of the Continent, a
Part of the Main?
Throughout Christiansons work, the names of certain individuals mentioned in
the text are printed in bold. By this typographical convention it is indicated that
entries exist for these persons in Part Two of On Tychos Island, a biographical
directory containing details of almost a hundred of the astronomers close col-
leagues and acquaintances. It is here, for example, that one may nd out the truth
about Uraniborgs jesters: Per Gek, a brief visitor to Hven mentioned in contempor-
ary sources, and Jeppe, the famous prescient dwarf whose actual existence, it turns
out, must be doubted. One may learn here all that is known about Han Crol, poss-
ibly the foremost maker of Uraniborgs instruments. Or one may read short
accounts of Johannes Kepler, Christian Longomontanus, and other assistants of
Tycho who achieved their own small measure of celebrity. By pursuing the ident-
ities of Tychos coworkers, great and small, through the polyglot pages of national
biographies, articles and monographs, Christianson has done other scholars in the
eld a substantial service, potentially saving them a signicant labour. On the
42
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, p. 269.
596 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
strength of its second half, it seems likely that On Tychos Island will endure as
a work of reference even if its rst part should ever begin to look dated.
Of course, these capsule biographies, as the dustjacket calls them, are restricted
in their scope and accuracy by their rather limited volume. Inevitably, the necessity
of conserving space has produced some statements capable of misleading. In the
entry on Rothmann, for example, Christianson asserts that, in the course of corre-
spondence with Tycho, the Hessen mathematicus concurred with him that the tails
of comets were due to the effect of sunlight passing through the comets rareed
substance (p. 348). Yet it was precisely during these exchanges that Rothmann
retracted his support for the theory that tails were merely optical phenomenathat
being the view which, following Girolamo Cardano and others, he had upheld in
his unpublished treatise on the 1585 cometand advanced instead the idea that
they were dispersed plumes of the comets material.
43
And although Tycho did
subscribe to the optical hypothesis, he postulated that the tail of the comet he had
studied most closely was generated by the passage not of solar light through its
lens-like head, but of light emanating from Venus.
44
Thus, although Christiansons
statement approximates the views of both Rothmann and Tycho, it is precise about
neither. And it has the effect of making what was actually conict of opinions
look like a consensus.
In such a case, the source to which the cautious scholar should have recourse
is immediately obvious. But this is not true of all the statements which Christianson
makes in his capsule biographies. Rather than referring each claim to an individual
source, he has simply opted to append a list of references to every entry, sorting
these not according to their merits, but merely by the alphabet. The difculty that
this presents to those wishing to check Christiansons facts has been exacerbated
by an inclusion policy that is sometimes overgenerous. Consider, for example, the
entry for the Dutch globemaker Arnold van Langren. At rst sight, the
accompanying references seem reassuringly plentiful. But several of the sources
turn out not to concern Arnold at all, dealing instead with his son, and heir in the
trade, Michael. And if the inclusion of these is justied by Christiansons descrip-
tion of him, at the end of Arnolds biography, as the most famous of the whole
dynasty of the van Langrens, it would surely have been desirable to omit those
in which even he is only mentioned in the footnotes or in passing.
45
Of the other
texts listed, many have Willem Janszoon Blaeu, the van Langren familys chief
commercial rival, as their principal subject; so that just one article, except for those
contained in the dictionaries of national biography, is concerned entirely with the
van Langren business and family. Scrutiny reveals, therefore, a remarkably slender
43
For the views expressed by Rothmann in his cometary treatise, see the later publication of this
work by Willebrord Snel (1619), pp. 1309. His revised view is contained in the letter to Tycho of
September 19th 1588; see Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, pp. 1556. A useful survey of the history of
the optical theory of comets is provided by Barker (1993).
44
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VI, pp. 1712: Tycho to Rothmann, 21st February 1589.
45
van Helden (1974) is a case in point.
597 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
foundation for the various facts about Arnold which Christianson retails, in both
parts of the text, with apparent authority.
I have selected the case of Arnold van Langren for a particular reason. In Christi-
ansons account of Tychos life and work, as in previous ones, Arnold and his
brother Hendrik are characters on the very periphery. At the request of Jacob, their
father, these two globemakers both travelled to Hven seeking permission to use
Tychos star catalogue as the basis of a new celestial instrument. But Tycho with-
held his consent, refusing to release the stellar data before his catalogue was n-
ished and made available to the public. Consequently, a competition between three
rms ensued, so that in Amsterdam, during the winter of 15989, the Langrens,
Blaeu, and Jodocus Hondius the Elder, working with Petrus Plancius, were racing
to construct the rst published celestial globes based on Tychos data (p. 230).
This is what we are told, but in fact Christianson has been grievously misled by
his sources.
46
The story derives, ultimately, from the Vita Tychonis of the seven-
teenth-century atomist Pierre Gassendi.
47
As Christianson himself notes, this is a
work that should be used with some caution; and its shortcomings in this instance
are indicated by the fact that the visit of only one van Langren brother to Hven
is mentioned, whereas the names of both clearly appear in the diary kept at Urani-
borg. In fact, two other contemporary sources make it evident that Gassendis later
account and chronology are somewhat erroneous. The rst of these, reproduced in
Tychos Opera, is the letter addressed to the astronomer from Frankfurt, in which
Cort Aslakksn stated that: You should know that a celestial globe set out anew
according to your observations, and skilfully and ingeniously crafted, has been
issued at these Fairs, to the great joy of many. But it was thought to be clearly
too dear, at 22 thaler together with a terrestrial globe of the same magnitude.
48
The second is an extant example of this celestial globe preserved in the Frankfurt
Historisches Museum: it is clearly marked as the work of Jacob, Arnold and Hend-
rik van Langren, and it indicates that it has been based on data supplied by the
Dane Tycho Brahe. It even reproduces the astronomers portrait. And it, like the
letter, is dated not 1599, but 1594.
Christianson could have learned about the 1594 globe in at least two other places:
a 1983 article in Der Globusfreund which simply describes it,
49
or a comprehensive
work on Netherlandish globemaking which provides illustrations as well, and which
is in any case a much richer source on the van Langrens than those he consulted.
50
The fact that he did not is quite understandable. The earlier article is not indexed
in the Isis cumulative bibliography; and while the monograph is, it does not appear
46
In addition to my comments in the text on this point, it is worth noting that the Hondius globe of
1598 did not make use of Tychos data, but the one produced by him which did only appeared in 1600,
and was copied from Blaeus. See van der Krogt (1993), pp. 152162.
47
See Gassendi (1654), pp. 120 and 135.
48
Dreyer (19131929), vol. VII, p. 368: Aslakksn to Tycho, 23rd October 1594.
49
Holbrook (1983).
50
van der Krogt (1993), pp. 83135, 421459.
598 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
under the names of either Blaeu or van Langren. It is to be regretted, however,
that the globes existence was not brought to Christiansons attention; and for
reasons other than merely establishing a correct chronology. Like the later globes
he describes, the van Langren instruments were a splendid advertisement for
Tychos observational programme. And if I am right about Tychos own publi-
cations, they may have been the rst tangible evidence of that programme to be
made widely available. This means, I believe, that the van Langrens deserve a
more central place in the story of the propagation of Tychos reputation than they
have yet been accorded. If the printing-press did help to make the astronomer
famous, it may have rst done so not through books, but through instruments.
It is possible, I think, to draw a more general lesson from this rather narrow
observation. While some of the entries in Christiansons register have the character
of cradle-to-grave biographies, this fact only reects how little is known about
the more obscure of the astronomers assistants and acquaintances. Elsewhere the
emphasis is rmly on individuals relations with Tycho and the Tychonic legacy.
For the biographies are really an exercise in tracing and making sense of the
cultural, material and intellectual networks that connected these persons to one
another, and to the astronomer especially (p. xi). The case of the van Langrens
shows that this task, as important and urgent as it is, is also formidably difcult.
After all, it is in the details of one life and another that we nd their points of
contact; and when it comes to interpreting the signicance of the intersection of
those lives, other small details may make every conceivable difference. Yet, with-
out wishing to denigrate Christiansons achievement in any way, for one scholar to
master the details of a hundred or so lives in this fashion may simply be impossible.
Moreover, while concentrating on one central gure does make this project some-
what more feasible, it does so by limiting the interactions recorded to some subset
of those involving all the persons in the register. If we wish to better understand
the community of which Tycho is a part, however (and I believe that this is indeed
something which Christianson would think valuable), then we would want to map
not only Tychos relations with, say, Arnold van Langren, Christoph Rothmann
and Johannes Kepler, but also the points of contact between any two of these
individuals, those obtaining between their friends and acquaintances, and so on
for some considerable distance outward from the Danish astronomer. Although
Christianson encourages his readers to continue and extend his work (p. xi), I am
not convinced that On Tychos Island presents us with a model of the best way of
doing so. Historians, not just of early-modern astronomy, but of scholarship in
general, may wish to think more about how we can best chart the international
and local networks inhabitated by gures such as Tycho.
But to end on such a note would be both discourteous and misleading. If I have
criticised Christiansons work before the mortar has quite dried, so to speak, it is
because it is likely to be seen as an authoritative treatment by an acknowledged
expert on this material. It certainly deserves to be. It is, as I said at the outset, an
599 John Donnes Verdict on Tycho Brahe
important contribution to our understanding of Tycho; and as such it should be
welcomed by both scholars, and teachers, of the history of astronomy and the early-
modern period.
AcknowledgementsAlthough the opinions expressed here are entirely my own, I would like to express
my gratitude to Nicholas Jardine and Liba Taub for their guidance and advice during my researches
into Tycho. It also seems appropriate to register here my debt to Silke Ackermann, who rst brought
to my attention the existence of the 1594 van Langren globe in the Frankfurt Historisches Museum. I
am grateful to John North for guidance on a point of translation, and for referring me to his article
on Markgraf.
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