In this fascinating work, Jean Dietz Moss shows how the scientific
revolution begun by Copernicus brought about another revolution as
well--one in which rhetoric, previously used simply to explain
scientific thought, became a tool for persuading a skeptical public of
the superiority of the Copernican system.
Moss describes the nature of dialectical and rhetorical discourse in the
period of the Copernican debate to shed new light on the argumentative
strategies used by the participants. Against the background of Ptolemy's
Almagest, she analyzes the gradual increase of rhetoric beginning with
Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and Galileo's Siderius nuncius,
through Galileo's debates with the Jesuits Scheiner and Grassi, to the
most persuasive work of all, Galileo's Dialogue. The arguments of the
Dominicans Bruno and Campanella, the testimony of Johannes Kepler, and
the pleas of Scriptural exegetes and the speculations of John Wilkins
furnish a counterpoint to the writings of Galileo, the centerpiece of
this study.
The author places the controversy within its historical frame, creating
a coherent narrative movement. She illuminates the reactions of key
ecclesiastical and academic figures figures and the general public to
the issues.
Blending history and rhetorical analysis, this first study to look at
rhetoric as defined by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century participants
is an original contribution to our understanding of the use of
persuasion as an instrument of scientific debate.
