The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe (review)
secondary literature actually is. References to astrologically inclined contemporaries are few and tellingly brief: the names of Johannes Kepler and Jean Baptiste Morin, two additional examples of how early modern astrology has been overlooked in historical scholarship, surface several times without showing how “the question of Galileo’s technical astrology” (5) might have been any different from contemporary notions. As the editors underscore, astrology was “something shared and taken for granted by [Galileo] and his contemporaries” (2), and the losses suffered by Galileo’s astrological manuscripts have only further concealed an essential element of his personal and professional experience. With its abundance of articles and primary sources, many of which are translated into English for the first time, Galileo’s Astrology anticipates ways in which a more complete picture of Galileo might emerge. In doing so, the work raises more questions than it answers, with the intention that scholars have more than enough fodder for future study. PATRICK J. BONER University of Cambridge