Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology  9956

• Introduction: Shared Culture, Separate Spaces
  • High and Low Culture
  • the Verbal and Visual in Popular Culture
  • The Culture of Comets

Part I: Sings of the Times

1. Ancient Signs
   • Physical Theories of Comets
   • Tokens of Doom
   • Political Messages and Means
2. Monsters and the Messiah
   • Popular and Patristic Views of Comets
   • Monsters and Their Messages
   • Monstrous Comets in Scripture
   • Star of Bethlehem, Herald of Judgment
   • Time of the End
   • Reformation in Religion
3. Divination
   • Color
   • Conjunctions
   • Passage through Zodiac and Prominent Constellations
   • Astrological Houses and Cardinal Orientations
   • Pointing of tail
   • Position of Nucleus
   • Shapes and Sizes
   • Motion
   • Duration
   • Historical Induction
4. Portents and Politics
   • In Streets and Alehouses
   • God on Their Side
   • Prophesies and Propaganda

Part II: Natural Causes

5. From Natural Signs to Proximate Causes
   • New Attitudes towards Nature and the Recovery of Classical Science
   • Aristotle and Terrestrial Corruption
   • Ptolemy and the Power of Mars
   • Stepping-Stones from Symptoms to Causes
   • Critics and Strategies
6. The Decline of Cometary Divination
   • Astronomical Reforms
   • Epistemological Critics
   • Shifts in Priorities and Signs of Decline
   • Social Reasons for the Decline

Part II: World Reformation

7. Comets, Transmutations, and World Reform in Newton’s Thought
   • Celestial Mechanics of Comets
   • Pristine Truths and Political Corruption
   • Transmutations and Perpetual Interchange
   • Fire, Water, and a Heavenly Physiology
   • “Revolutions in the Heavenly Bodies”
   • Comets, Teleology, and Newton’s Appropriation of Comet Lore
8. Halley’s Comet Theory, Noah’s Flood, and the End of the World
   • Interest in Orbits
   • Halley’s Theory of the Deluge
   • The End of the World
   • The Benefits of Comets
   • The Scientific Response
   • Ecclesiastical Criticism
   • Halley’s Alleged Freethinking in Political Context
   • The Satirists’ Barbs

Part IV: Comet Lore and Cosmogony

9. Refueling the Sun and Planets
   • Circulation of Vital Matter
   • Critics
   • Stoking the Stellar Fires
10. Revolution and Evolution within the Heavens
    • Come Hell or High Water
    • From Creation to Cosmogyny

• Concluding Remarks: Popular Culture and Elite Science
• Appendix: Recent Resurgence of Cometary Catastrophism

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