Friday, December 18, 2009
This is the first review of the literature on Pluto. Here I look at David Weintraub’s Is Pluto a Planet? Weintraub supports Pluto’s planetary status and is, probably, still upset that the IAU’s definition of a planet excludes Pluto.
Posted by Darin Hayton on 12/18 at 01:25 AM
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Thursday, December 31, 2009
Johannes Kepler, who was born on 27 December 1571, is the subject of a couple recent interesting articles. These articles are an opportunity to see how Kepler was typical of the early-modern European scholar, a person as interested in astronomy and optics (our notion of sciences) as theology and astrology.
Posted by Darin Hayton on 12/31 at 12:17 PM
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Saturday, January 16, 2010
A review of Alan Boyle’s The Case for Pluto, which is readable and enjoyable. As he makes clear in the title, he favors a definition of a planet that would include Pluto, as well as an indeterminate number of yet-to-be-discovered objects orbiting our sun as well as other stars.
Posted by Darin Hayton on 01/16 at 10:50 PM
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Brahe may have died, but speculations about how he died and who killed him seem to be alive and well these days (even proliferating). Such conjectures remain pointless. Further, they deny historical expertise and, at least in this instance, represent a secular form of hagiography.
Posted by Darin Hayton on 12/03 at 10:25 PM
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
A brief summary of some papers on early modern astronomy and astrology at the History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Two technical/detailed papers, one that dipped into the sources, and final paper that argued for the importance of Historia in 16th-century astronomy
Posted by Darin Hayton on 11/15 at 10:52 PM
Thursday, December 29, 2011
A recent article in The Economist on Luther prompted me to think about ephemeral astrological literature in early modern Europe. Here I suggest that we need to take this literature more seriously than we typically have.
Posted by Darin Hayton on 12/29 at 04:58 PM
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