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Order of Contents
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Article
1600’s
van Mastricht, Peter – bk. 3, ch. 6 in Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB), vol. 3
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The History of Astrology
On the 1500’s – 1600’s
Article
Tessicini, Dario – Astrology, Heliocentrism & the Copernican Question (Essay Review of R. Westman, ‘The Copernican Question. Prognostication, Skepticism & the Celestial Order’) in Galilaeana, X, 2013, pp. 219-236
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Book
Dohoney, Justin – ‘In So Many Ways Do the Planets Bear Witness’: The Impact of Copernicanism on Judicial Astrology at the English Court, 1543-1660 Masters thesis (Clemson Univ., 2011)
Abstract: “The traditional historiography of science from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries has broadly claimed that the Copernican revolution in astronomy irrevocably damaged the practice of judicial astrology. However, evidence to the contrary suggests that judicial astrology not only continued but actually expanded during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries…
Contrary to their European counterparts on the Continent, English patrons typically required tangible, practical results to justify their support of client-scientists. The heliocentric theory received a largely positive reaction in England, and many astrologers readily employed its mathematics to make more precise predictions of planetary locations, which would presumably lead to better prognostications of human events. As long as scientists and patrons defined science in these exclusively mathematical terms, astrology could comfortably exist within these scientific boundaries.
However, throughout the mid-sixteenth century, multiple processes occurred that changed astrology from a science into a popular belief in England. Patrons began to lose interest in astrology and thus financed fewer astrologers, and with the instability of the Civil War, fewer patrons were in positions of power to provide this sort of support. Furthermore, as astrology enjoyed increased popularity among the lower and merchant classes of England through almanac and pamphlet publications, scientists saw it in their best professional interest to consciously distance themselves from astrology and redefine and re-categorize it beyond the reasonable margins of proper scientific practice. In short, while astrology declined as a scientific activity during the latter half of the seventeenth century, it found success as a popular activity beyond the confines of conventional science.”
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Related Pages
On Geocentricism & Heliocentrism
On the History of Religion & Science, & on the Mosaic Physics