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Jean-Baptiste Morin, arguably Europe’s most noted astrologer and anti-Copernican, was a key figure in a bitter controversy involving Pierre Gassendi, Ismaël Boulliau, and a dozen other notable savants. News of the dispute captivated Learned Europe for two decades (1630-1650). It was not a backwater affair. After a humiliating quarrel on longitude, Morin expressed his anger by publicly pitting astrology against Copernicanism, by counterpointing the Copernican Question and the Astrology Question in matters of theology and cosmology. His strategy failed. Capitalizing on Morin’s challenge, the New Science not only turned a bitter personal dispute into a fruitful public debate, it firmly established its autonomy and authority. In the end, astrology was not simply marginalized – it did not die from collateral damage – and it did not die a natural death. The death of astrology was by public execution.
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On Morin, see William Hine, “J.B. Morin: The Last ‘Official’ Court Astrologer,” Cahiers du dix-septième siècle, 2 (1988), 121-134. Hine is clear that Morin looked past astrologue de la Cour; Morin saw himself as a professor of the “most high and divine science,” later insisting he was not professor of astrology. Pierre Gassendi, Recueil de lettres des sieurs Morin, de La Roche, de Neuré et Gassendi: En suite de l’Apologie du sieur Gassendi, touchant la question De motu impresso à motore translato (Paris, 1650), 44. See also Saul Fisher, s.v. “Pierre Gassendi,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 edition) URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/gassendi/>; and Carl Boyer, “Boulliau, Ismael,” in Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed. in chief, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, NY, 1970-1980), vol. 2, 348-349.
[Tronson], La vie, 54-57. The best account on longitude is Jean-Baptiste Delambre, Histoire de l’astronomie moderne (Paris, 1821), vol. 2, 236-274, which defends Morin but ignores later disputes. Jean Pares, “Jean Baptiste Morin (1583-1656) et la querelle des longitudes de 1634 à 1647,” dissertation (University of Paris, 1976), is an enduring but uneven source. See also Monette Martinet, “Gassendi, J.B. Morin et le secret des longitudes,” in [Société scientifique et littéraire des Alpes-de-Haute-Provence], eds., Quadricentenaire de la naissance de Pierre Gassendi (1592–1992) (Digne-les-Bains, 1994), vol. 2, 397-410.
In March 1632 (BnF, N.a.L. 2643, f. 49r) Gassendi wrote Galileo again confirming his friendship with Morin.
[Tronson], La vie, 111. See also Astrologia Gallica, XX; Noyerium was actually known as Nucerius.
On 10 September 1656, having twice mentioned Morin’s astrological revolution for the Queen, Des Noyers wrote of Morin’s astrology, and later, with a touch of battlefield humor, alluded to the dispute between Morin and Gassendi, 22 June 1659. See Robert Alan Hatch, “Hevelius’s Europe: Astronomy, Community & The Republic of Letters,” unpublished paper, International Conference, Quadricentennial of the Birth of Johannes Hevelius (Gdansk, September 2011).
BnF, N.a.L. 2643, f. 100v.
Gassendi to Gaultier, 10 August 1643, in Gassendi, Opera omnia, vol. 6, 167; MS not located. As background, Morin had published an extract of a letter by Gassendi to support his views on longitude; Lettres escrites au Sr. Morin, (Paris, 1635), esp. 29-30; see also Gassendi’s pointed response in Gassendi, Recueil, 134-135.
See [Gassendi], Vanity, 2; 56; 76; 147; see especially ch. 12.
Boulliau to Cunitz, 25 April 1652, BnF, f.fr. 13043, ff. 29r-30v, 30r-v.
Morin, Tycho Brahaeus, 8. After embracing that code of honor, Morin claims that Copernicans, “devoid of natural light,” will recognize in Boulliau’s work a “worthless gush of unfounded logic” that forces him now to “descend into the arena a second time” to oppose a moving earth and to defend Tycho.
Morin, Tycho Brahaeus, 74-76. Morin did not accept the possibility of a rotating earth, an ancient opinion adopted by some geo-heliocentric contemporaries, and a view that later supported axial rotation of Jupiter and Mars. On the place of simplicity and scholastic arguments, see Edward Grant, “In Defense of the Earth’s Centrality and Immobility: Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 74 (1984), 57-64.
Boulliau, Philolaïca, 16-18; the equation of time was an important, subtle, and rightly contested issue.
Morin, [A]b Ismaelis Bullialdi conultiis iniquissimis iuste vindicatus, 3.
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Jean-Baptiste Morin, arguably Europe’s most noted astrologer and anti-Copernican, was a key figure in a bitter controversy involving Pierre Gassendi, Ismaël Boulliau, and a dozen other notable savants. News of the dispute captivated Learned Europe for two decades (1630-1650). It was not a backwater affair. After a humiliating quarrel on longitude, Morin expressed his anger by publicly pitting astrology against Copernicanism, by counterpointing the Copernican Question and the Astrology Question in matters of theology and cosmology. His strategy failed. Capitalizing on Morin’s challenge, the New Science not only turned a bitter personal dispute into a fruitful public debate, it firmly established its autonomy and authority. In the end, astrology was not simply marginalized – it did not die from collateral damage – and it did not die a natural death. The death of astrology was by public execution.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 555 | 193 | 14 |
Full Text Views | 81 | 8 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 105 | 22 | 0 |