Comets, popular culture, and the birth of modern cosmology
By: Sara Schechner Genuth.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 365
Subjects: Comets.; Cosmology.; Religion and science.; Superstition.
Description: "In a lively investigation into the boundaries between popular culture and early-modern science, Sara Schechner Genuth presents a case study that challenges the view that rationalism was at odds with popular belief in the development of scientific theories. Schechner Genuth delineates the evolution of people's understanding of comets, showing that until the seventeenth century, all members of society dreaded comets as heaven-sent portents of plague, flood, civil disorder, and other calamities.

Although these beliefs became spurned as "vulgar superstitions" by the elite before the end of the century, she shows that they were nonetheless absorbed into the science of Newton and Halley, contributing to their theories in subtle yet profound ways."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 309-351) and index.