Amazon.com Review
It's sometimes hard to remember that once upon a time, astrology was state-of-the-art science. It was inextricably wound up with astronomical observation, after all, and good Renaissance men often pursued both avocations. Preeminent among astrologers and natural philosophers of the 16th century was Girolamo Cardano, the subject of Anthony Grafton's scrutiny in
Cardano's Cosmos. Cardano is a prime biographical subject, having lived a life of extraordinary proportions. He pursued careers in medicine, mathematics, palmistry, and writing in addition to astrology, and eventually ended up on the wrong side of the Inquisition. Forbidden to teach publicly, Cardano nevertheless continued his investigations, played politics, and wrote a wicked, tell-all autobiography.
Cardano considered himself a "master of time," and this theme winds through Grafton's narrative as it must have wound through the astrologer's life. Astrology was a tool for both predicting the future and for explaining the past.
As an astrologer--and as an autobiographer--he struggled with time, trying to uncover the hidden logic of his past and to show how accurate predictions could yield valuable therapies for his own and others' futures.... More than once, however, Cardano tried to replace this perspective with a radically different one: one in which time past and future mattered little or not at all.
Unlike many a modern astrologer, Cardano's scientific bent allowed him to acknowledge that other factors were often at work in matters of fate. To keep up with these influences, he became an expert in occult matters as well as a keen observer of the natural world.
Grafton's biography artfully exposes the everyday life of an extraordinary man. Cardano comes alive as a brilliant, egotistical eccentric whose desire for order and truth was satisfied by the complex systems of astrology. --Therese Littleton
From Publishers Weekly
An ambitious young man from Milan, lifesaving physician, traveler, mathematician, scholar of antiquity, 16th-century academic superstar and victim of the Inquisition, Girolamo Cardano embodied in one life much of what makes the Italian Renaissance fascinating to modern readers. The polymathic and resourceful Grafton (The Footnote), a Renaissance historian at Princeton, places Cardano's life and works at the center of a detailed investigation of Renaissance astrologers, their work, their beliefs, their clients and their impact. Grafton aims "to do justice to both the rationalism and the irrationality of Renaissance astrology," addressing "both its ancient sources and its modern [that is, 16th-century] social role." Seers across Europe pegged 1524 as the date for a second Noah's Flood, causing fears, then jokes, as the date approached. Famous predictors were asked for political counsel--and put themselves in danger by giving it. Cardano's early book of horoscopes made him a celebrity; his arguments with his critics illuminate the everyday impact of the Protestant Reformation. His voluminous writings, Grafton explains, "combined wide astrological interests with obsessively detailed self-revelation." Explaining how European readers regarded astrology and its rival arts, Grafton also relates the often ferociously personal intellectual battles that were fought. A writer of superb perspective and clarity, Grafton aims both at other historians and at lay readers. The latter will have to wade through some abstruse detail but will likely find the varied, informative, sometimes bizarre journey more than worth the effort. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
