BOOK REVIEW: The Physicist and Astronomer Christopher Scheiner: Biography, Letters, Works

Franz Daxecker

Reviewed by Hilmar W. Duerbeck

Publications at Innsbruck University VUI 246, 2004.

ISBN 3-901249-69-9. 175 pages. Information about availability from the author:franz.daxecker@uibk.ac.at

File jad11_3.pdf contains the review in pdf format.

The Innsbruck ophthalmologist Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daxecker has already presented many valuable contributions on the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner (1573-1650) and his scientific activities. Most of Daxecker's researches were published in German; this book presents the first thorough study of Scheiner's life and work in English. It gives an excellent overview on this contemporary and adversary of Galileo Galilei. Besides three extensive chapters on his work, his correspondence and his writings, the book includes a recently rediscovered obituary text of 1650, and a list of commemorative places.

This review cannot give a full account of Scheiner's life as an astronomer, architect, docent, father confessor, advisor in spiritual and mundane matters; the reader is referred to the 40 well-referenced pages in Daxecker's book. As concerns the second part, the correspondence, Daxecker gives letters and concepts in the form of English summaries. These are mainly notes of his superiors, which permit glimpses on his character - often admonitions to pay his debts (the publication of his opus magnum on solar spots had exhausted his financial resources), the selling of instruments, the observance of paucity (which he obviously neglected), and the reproach of his ``hot-blooded nature''. The third part gives summaries of his lecture on De tubo optico and of his published writings on sunspots (Rosa Ursina, 1626-1630), atmospheric refraction (Sol ellipticus, 1615), optics of the human eye (Oculus hoc est, 1619), etc. The Jesuit Scheiner deeply rooted in the theological establishment and had to take into consideration the accepted teachings of Aristotle. When he announced the discovery of sunspots, he used the pseudonym Apelles (an antique artist who hid behind his work of art to listen to the opinion of thespectators); the publication of the postume Prodromus de solemobili (1651) also shows his cautious, conservative behavior in astronomy. On the other hand, his basic mathematical-physical-physiological studies (pantograph, the construction of telescopes, the refraction, the structure of the human eye) were less confined by an ideological corset.

The book was written in German and was translated into English. The translation appears at places somewhat clumsy, although the somewhat peculiar wording can often be clarified by the use of a dictionary. One of the major flaws is the statement that Scheiner discovered ``flares'' on the sun (once also ``torches'' are mentioned); an earlier German version of this section correctly mentions ``Fackeln''. Solar flares were only discovered in 1859, Scheiner himself described ``faculae'', an expression that is also used in present-day English.

Not only Scheiner had his problems with the heliocentric system: The book cover shows a geocentric world system, which is described as ``heliocentric system of Father Christopher Clavius''. On p. 37 we read ``the Copernican teachings and thus the hypothesis of Galilei, that the sun was orbiting around the earth'', and we wonder what the Galilei trial was all about. An edition of writings by and on Galilei, written by A. Mudry, contains the sentence ``... erbringen die Beobachtungen dieses Buches [von Scheiner] so viele Beweise, um der Sonne die ihrzugeschriebene Bewegung abzusprechen, daß ich nicht zu glauben vermag,daß Pater Scheiner nicht selbst in seinem Herzen an die Meinung des Kopernikus glaubt.'' Now this is certainly a sentence that Mark Twain would have loved to quote in his study of the awful German language, and indeed the translator lost his track in the piles of suspended negations, and wrote ``the observations of Father Scheiner in the Rosa Ursina contain such prolific evidence for the circulation of the sun around the Earth that I am sure Father Scheiner agrees with Copernicus at the bottom of his heart.''

In 1891, A. v. Braunmühl published the last extensive biography of Christoph Scheiner. Daxecker's new authoritative biography summarizes earlier studies on single aspects of the author and of other modern Scheiner researchers, which were often published in sources which are difficult to access (regional publications, exhibition catalogs, and Festschriften). The somewhat ambiguous English translation suggests a careful and cautious reading. Nevertheless, this is an important book on Scheiner's many-sided researches and a valuable contribution on the reception of the heliocentric system in the 17th century.