Inside the stargazer's palace : the transformation of science in 16th-century Europe
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the Earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view -- one guided by observation, technology and logic. But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening brass instruments and leather-bound tomes. The line between the natural and supernatural remained p...