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The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

List Price: $13.45
Your Price: $13.45
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent introduction to basic astronomy
Review: I just want to focus on one aspect of this book. The first chapter and the appendix forms a very nice introduction to basic astronomy. If you want to read a book like "The Sun in the Church, Cathedrals as Solar Observatories" by Heilbron, but get shell shocked by the astronomy, then Kuhn's book is a good place to start. It's not easy reading, but Kuhn has a lot of very good pictures.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent discussion and detail
Review: The author gives thorough discussion about what Copernican revolution really is, who were the key players and how each contributed to the overall progress. In addition, it provides many technical details about many systems that affect the revolution in one way or the other. However, I do not think that any necessary astronomical experience is necessary to read the book, but in order to understand the full picture it is necessary to understand the technical details. Overall, the book develops the idea very clearly and gives insights that give a good understanding of how scientific thought developed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A fascinating book
Review: This book is an excellent and entertaining book for a scientific reader and/or for a general reader who doesn't mind being challenged a bit by logical arguments. Don't let this discourage you, though, since the logical arguments are not too difficult and really need to be discussed for completeness sake. The historical background adds to the book in a way comparable to Carl Sagan's 'COSMOS' series or to 'The Mechanical Universe' series. This book should be required reading for all enlightened westerners. It's THAT good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A fascinating book
Review: This book is an excellent and entertaining book for a scientific reader and/or for a general reader who doesn't mind being challenged a bit by logical arguments. Don't let this discourage you, though, since the logical arguments are not too difficult and really need to be discussed for completeness sake. The historical background adds to the book in a way comparable to Carl Sagan's 'COSMOS' series or to 'The Mechanical Universe' series. This book should be required reading for all enlightened westerners. It's THAT good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding Elucidation
Review: This book, written before his Structures, is condensed, well written and, for me at any rate, highly entertaining. No one with a casual understanding of the history of astronomy can read this and not be surprised. Of special interest is the illumination of the fact that at the time Copernicus offered his Helio-centric cosmology there was no good, scientific reason for accepting it - it being a geometric inversion of the Ptolemaic system and thus inheriting exactly all of the Ptolemaic deficiencies. Kuhn explores the reason for the gradual shift to Copernicanism and the effects a moving earth had on other sciences.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Interesting book
Review: Unlike 'the Structure of Scientific Revolutions', this book is well-written and informative, if you want to know about the development of ancient astronomy. Belongs with serious, entertaining and informative books on the history of science like those by Hoyle (who explains what Copernicus really did) and Barbour (who pointed me to Hoyle in the first place).


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