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Descrição Detalhada da Publicação
Astronomy, Cosmology and Jesuit Discipline, 1540-1758
Título Livro
The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits
Ano (publicação definitiva)
2019
Língua
Inglês
País
Estados Unidos da América
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Abstract/Resumo
Jesuit scholars took part in all the major scientific controversies in the field of astronomy
and cosmology, and taught generations of philosophers in Europe. Jesuit missionaries
disseminated novelties of Western astronomy as far as China and Japan. Historians have
tended to perceive Jesuit astronomers as a homogeneous group, unified by a common
religious program. This chapter challenges that view and argues that Jesuit scholarship
evolved from defending a traditional Aristotelian-Ptolemaic worldview to advocacy of a
Tychonic cosmology, and eventually supporting, in some cases, a Newtonian view of the
universe. Jesuit astronomers and philosophers also disagreed among themselves on
fundamental questions. In a word, there was no “Jesuit astronomy”. However, this
learned community was particularly affected by official efforts to maintain doctrinal
uniformity, as the debate on Copernicanism demonstrates. Although those institutional
constraints did not fossilize Jesuit astronomical learning, they contributed to diverting it
away from the scientific mainstream.
Agradecimentos/Acknowledgements
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Palavras-chave
astronomy,cosmology,Christoph Clavius,Roberto Bellarmino,Aristotle,Copernicanism,Tycho Brahe,Athanasius Kircher,Roger Boscovich,confessionalization of science