80 Journal for the History of Astronomy

of this sort is of the diurnal rotation of the Earth, which would mean that the sphere of
the fixed stars would only have to rotate with a very slow motion. He argues very
strongly in favour of this and answers numerous arguments against it before saying:
"However, everyone maintains, and I think myself, that the heavens do move and not
the earth" (p. 537). Various reasons have been suggested for this backstepping, and
here we should only note that if Oresme had maintained the motion of the Earth the
basis of much of the rest of his commentary would have been removed, so fundamental
is the notion of a stationary Earth to Aristotelian cosmology. Oresme may have per-
ceived many weaknesses in the Aristotelian ship, but he was not yet prepared to scuttle
it.
Aberdeen University A. G. MOLLAND

ASTRONOMY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The High Firmament. A. J. Meadows (Leicester University Press, 1969). Pp. 207.
£2.10 (42s.)

A book subtitled "A survey of astronomy in English Literature" presages Snow. The
blurb is less threatening and more accurate: "The . . . survey provides background
information to help in understanding literary references to astronomy, and at the same
time presents the history of astronomy from an unusual angle-that of the common
man rather than the specialist." But that "common man" indicates the hopeless flaw;
behind it is the only partially adequate assumption that reading and writing "English
literature" are not "specialist" acitvities. One is not erecting artistic apartheid to
insist that anyone reading creative work appropriately must engage in a particularly
acute form of conscious and receptive response, and that if he is to write about (let
alone write) "literature" that alertness requires its own specific articulation. At no
point does Dr Meadows exemplify that mode. His reading is impressively wide; what
pains is its instrumentality: fragments, mere gobbets, are inserted, references given,
authors alluded to; but, in the only relevant sense, "meaninglessly". The internal
significance of an astronomical image is rarely teased out; it remains "evidence". Not
that Dr Meadows guts his sources crudely, philistinely asserting their reduction to data;
the briefest of harmless lining comment (cf., for example, pp. 1260 and the quotation
is there, cleanly scalpelled, quivering demurely amid the whirling thoughts of Brahe,
Kepler, or Herschel.
That the connections are so lightly made forces the question: "evidence" for what?
The foreward speaks of "the study of non-scientific literature.".. provid[ing] an insight
into the diffusion of scientific ideas throughout society as a whole". But this invites
examination of the mediations, rather than contemplation of the end-result. There are
glimpses: Elizabethan eschatological expectation (p. 39), Raleigh's circle (ch. IV),
Puritanism (p. 93), scientifically-minded clergymen (passim), the early Royal Society
(p, 1080-but one desperately needs to probe deeper into what severed Sprat and
Dryden (compare their styles, their linguistic energy!) than Dryden's "failing to pay
his dues" (p. 113).
A compressed review can only point: for example, to the slurring of lines between
serious art, hack versifying, and non-creative writing. One hopes and pleads that such
pointing is not impolite, but an index of shared frustration. Faced with a "cumulative"
(pace Kuhn?) and a "non-cumulative" mode of human inquiry (cf. p. 106), how can
we intelligibly ruse them? Dr Meadows gives the literary student the Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern activities of the astronomers (they were, indeed, ancestors of Brahe-

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 Book Reviews 81
p. 77), with occasional entrances from the Hamlet playing on the other side of the
circular stage; the result makes a pleasant, casual, book-but I would be surprised
if a man concerned enough to have explored literature as extensively as Dr Meadows
were himself really satisfied with the result-which indicates and underlines the problem.
St Edmund's House, Cambridge BERNARD SHARRAtT

PRAGUE INSTRUMENT COLLECTION

Astronomy Gnomonics. A catalogue of instruments of the 15th to the 19th centuries in

the collections of the National Technical Museum, Prague. Zdenek Horsky and Otilie
Skopova (National Technical Museum, Prague, 1968). Pp. 202. n.p,

New museums of science and technology are being founded all over the world. The
public's interest has concentrated on technology, and in Great Britain industrial archae-
ology clubs have sprung up in appreciable numbers. Publishers have taken advantage
of this, although books are produced for the general reader rather than for the scholar.
As might be expected, there has been some increase in the interest taken in scientific
instruments, but for several reasons this tends to be restricted. After all, early loco-
motives, for example, lend themselves more readily to spectacular display than do
scientific instruments. There is, too, a limitation in the number of scientific instruments
available. A technical museum can do very well from the remains of the Victorian
period, but a new museum of scientific instruments would have to find a great deal of
money if it were to include even a very few astrolabes. To satisfy the awakened curio-
sity in the early instruments of science, therefore, there is a need for well illustrated
source material; a need not satisfied as yet in any quantity. Scientific instruments can
be of great importance to the historian, although this facet of the history of science has
developed only recently, and no body of studies has yet accumulated. There is, then,
a growing interest in scientific instruments that is both general and specialist, and either
readership can profit from the book under review.
One would expect the historical consciousness of the Czechs to ensure that a con-
siderable and valuable collection of early scientific instruments would be assembled and
displayed in the National Technical Museum in Prague, the home of the superb six-
teenth-century maker, Erasmus Habermel. One is not disappointed. This catalogue is
the first, apparently, of a series, and it is restricted to astronomical and gnomonic
instruments; it is also limited to instruments made in or before 1850. Geodetic instru-
ments, however, made before 1700 are included, but none made later. All telescopes
earlier than mid-eighteenth century are included, but later ones are restricted to those
for purely astronomical use, that is, those with the image inverted or those on an equa-
torial mounting. Only celestial globes are listed, but reference is made to the terrestrial
partner if it is in the Museum. All armillary spheres are included, while all clocks, even
those with astronomical data, are left for a later catalogue.
After a brief preface there are 134 pages of descriptive catalogue under the following
sub-headings: astrolabes (one complete and one rete), astronomical rings (one),
astronomical instruments (nineteen), telescopes (seven), sundials (120), nocturnals
(three), globes and armillary spheres (eight of each), and varia (two miners' compasses
and a time conversion table). The forty-two plates show some ninety instruments in
black and white, and although not of the highest quality, these illustrations are quite
serviceable. Finally, there is an index of makers.
The authors, members of the staff of the National Technical Museum, are to be
congratulated on a well-made and useful catalogue. The descriptions are as full and
F

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