Customer Reviews

The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler (Masters of Modern Physics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is essential for anybody who wants to understand what Ptolemy, Copernicus and Kepler really did. It's a bit more technical than "The Great Copernicus Chase", but if you're serious, you'll appreciate it.

And if you're really serious, you'll get a copy of the paper by James Evans in Am. J. Phys 56 (Nov, 1988) 1009-1024. It answered tons of technical questions for me. Just do it, you'll thank me (and Jim Evans!).

I don't get it. The Kindle edition price is very high. No paper, no ink, no binding, no shipping costs incurred by Amazon. Yet their asking price is similar to the hard copy. Is anyone else bothered by this?

I bought this book because I am hoping to write a book myself, giving a thumbnail sketch of history relevant to today's climate science (including Global Warming) from the Ancient Egyptians through Newton and Foucault and into the present. Real meteorology started 7 years after Foucault's work, as a direct result of what was learned from Foucault's pendulum.

I am a climate scientist, not an historian, so I have a steep learning curve to write such a book.I had previously obtained Toomer's magnificent translation of Ptolemy's "Almagest" (it shows Ptolemy to have been the world's first full-on theoretical physicist, and a magnificent teacher). I knew Toomer valued Gingerich highly, so I bought Gingerich's book. It has not disappointed. It has helped me to understand Ptolemy's fairly opaque book much better, and has also given me a much better appreciation of Copernicus the man.
I would have liked it if Gingerich had described Brahe in the same way -- we scientists value observations first, then theory -- and Ivar Peterson's "Newton's Clock" does a better job on Kepler. Nevertheless, I nearly gave this book five stars, not four.