Publishing Sacrobosco's De sphaera in Early Modern Europe: Modes of Material and Scientific Exchange

This open-access book explores the cultural background of the pivotal transformations of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, focusing on the edition history of Johannes de Sacroboscos Tractatus de sphaera. It demonstrates how the academic book trade influenced the homogenization of scientific knowledge and the material infrastructure through which it was disseminated, laying the foundation for modern scientific communities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 492 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

This open-access volume delves into the rich cultural backdrop of the pivotal transformations of scientific knowledge during the early modern era. It explores the intricate history of Johannes de Sacroboscos Tractatus de sphaera, the most widely disseminated textbook on geocentric cosmology, from the unique perspective of the numerous printers, publishers, and booksellers who guided this text from manuscript to print culture. Through their efforts, they transformed it into a well-established platform for scientific learning. The corpus, consisting of 359 distinct editions featuring Sacroboscos treatise on cosmology and astronomy printed between 1472 and 1650, represents the scientific European shared knowledge concerning the cosmological worldview of the early modern period, far exceeding the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. The contributions to this volume shed light on how the academic book trade influenced the process of homogenization of scientific knowledge. They also provide a detailed account of the material infrastructure through which such knowledge was disseminated, thus establishing the foundations for the establishment of modern scientific communities.

Weight: 1061g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030865993
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022