The eclipse started shortly after daybreak in London (just after 8:00
A.M.), and an hour later, totality occurred nine minutes after 9:00 A.M. For
the next three minutes, darkness reigned over London, exactly as Halley
had predicted, and precisely when he said it would happen. Because so
many astronomers and scientists were poised with their equipment and
recording devices, important observations were made about the surface of
the moon and the exact duration of totality.
To the fortunate catechumens at Crane Court that day, what optimism
must have filled their hearts and minds? Yes, there was certainly gratitude
and more than a little awe directed toward Halley; those gathered must
have reveled in their newfound powers of prediction, but the more
significant contemplation must have been, is there nothing we cannot
predict, experience, and conquer?
David Wootton has concluded, “A basic description of the Scientific
Revolution is to say that it represented a successful rebellion by the
mathematicians against the authority of the philosophers, and of both
against the authority of the theologians.”^2
It was a fundamental principle of Aristotelian philosophy that there
could be no change in [the heavens],^3 yet the last of the “naked eye”
astronomers—Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler—were able
to observe exploding stars and to predict the motions of the planets. David
Wootton argues that Tycho’s nova (two stars fusing together in a
thermonuclear reaction, eight thousand light years away) marks, quite
precisely, the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. It was not the cause
of the revolution, but it is the signpost that signals the start of the
insurrection. Whereas Aristotle was preoccupied with qualities to explain
the world (the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water), Tycho
painstakingly gathered data and charted the skies. Instead of sophisticated
dialogue and intellectual guile, the leaders of the revolution would use
measuring instruments, numbers, data tables, and calculations. In short,
they would mathematize nature, and the world.^4
When Galileo Galilei’s book Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger)
arrived in Prague a few weeks later, in April 1610, Kepler was desperate to
digest what Galileo had seen. The book announced on the title page that
Galileo was a “Patritio Florentino,” a gentleman from Florence, and that
he was a “Patauini Gymnasii Publico Mathematico,” a mathematics