Early Physics and Astronomy: A Historical Introduction

by Olaf Pedersen

The book is an introductory exposition of the development of the physical and astronomical notions of the universe. It covers the period from Greek antiquity to the Copernican revolution and the Renaissance, half of the text being devoted to medieval science within both the Aristotelian and the Archimedean traditions. The book is intended for a general audience interested in intellectual and scientific developments, but should also be useful as a guide to further studies. Thus it has an extensive bibliography classifying much of the secondary literature on the subject, and also a sixty page 'dictionary' of all the scientists and philosophers mentioned in the text. This contains references to printed editions of the sources and to a selection of books and periodicals.

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pedersen's history has been issued in a revised edition incorporating research up until 1990. As the preface to the first edition of 1974 frankly indicates, the English title is a misnomer. The text pays no more than glancing attention to either pre-hellenic or Indian and Chinese developments in physics. Furthermore, while Islamic contributions are treated, they are regarded less as representing a tradition in their own right, more as tributaries to Western sciences. Given these limitations, however, the text is a creditable survey of Western physics, astronomy and the mathematical tools utilized thereby from the Presocratics through the Renaissance.

The classicist will be interested in this work on at least two counts. First, half of it covers classical Greek sciences themselves in a manner accessible to any reader with a rudimentary background in mathematics and physics. Second, the latter portion, while devoted to the middle ages in Europe, does deal considerably with the controversies regarding the transmission of ideas and technologies.
On the matter of transmission, Pedersen avoids the facile generalities stemming from the renaissance and assigns more importance to social institutions and original research than to the Greeks, whether read in the original or as transmitted via the Arabic. He does, however, tend to follow the dubious practice of assigning discoveries to what happen to be our earliest sources. Thus Parmenides is represented as the originator of the notion that lunar radiation is reflected--an hypothesis which quite likely has been perennial. Still, on the whole, the work is conservative, evidentially grounded with a minimum of bold speculation