8vo (160 x 110 mm), pp [xvi including initial blank] 192, with a few woodcut diagrams in text; a fine copy, uncut in its original carta rustica binding. £4250
First edition of this treatise on comets by Chiaramonti (1565-1652), one of the last pieces of polemic in the literature of the ‘controversy of the comets’. It is in two parts, in the first of which is a defence against the attacks of Niccolo Cabeo, and in the second of which is an attack on the theories of Fortunio Liceti. Much of it is also devoted to criticising the ‘errors’ of Kepler.
The work concerns the interpretation of comets and of the supernova which appeared in Cassiopeia in 1572 and was observed by Brahe. Brahe determined that the 'new star' exhibited no parallax and that it must be in the vicinity of the other stars in Cassiopeia; therefore, it was not an 'atmospheric exhalation and was not attached to the sphere of a planet, since it did not move contrary to the direction of the diurnal rotation, but that it was situated in the region of the fixed stars... His records of its variations in color and magnitude identify it as a supernova' (DSB).
The appearance of the supernova, and the determination of comets as superlunary objects provided powerful ammunition in the attack on Aristotelian notions of the heavens. The appearance of three comets in 1618 intensified this debate and the present work is a descendant of the 'controversy of the comets'. In 1621 Chiaramonti had his Antitycho printed, in which, using Tycho’s own observations, he defended the Aristotelian notion of comets being sublunar phenomena. Kepler replied with his Tychonis Brahei Dani Hyperaspistes, adversus Scipionis Claramonti... Anti-Tychonem (1624).
Chiaramonti also engaged Liceti and Glorioso in the comet debate, as well as Niccolo Cabeo, a Jesuit mathematician who wrote an important work on magnetism and, in 1646, a commentary on Aristotle’s meteorology which was dismissive of Chiaramonti’s theories and which provoked the present work.
Chiaramonti ‘studied at Ferrara and for a time taught mathematics at Perugia, becoming then professor of philosophy at Pisa from 1627 to 1636. He wrote against Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo, who, after having mentioned him favorably in the Assayer, criticized him sharply in the Dialogue’ (Stillman Drake).
Carli and Favaro 224; Riccardi I 349; OCLC record Harvard, Linda Hall, and Cornell
GBP 4250.00
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