Bibliography:FCR Bibliography 0059

From GATE

Raphael, Renée. Teaching Sunspots: Disciplinary Identity and Scholarly Practice in the Collegio Romano. (2014).

Name(s) Raphael, Renée
Title Teaching Sunspots: Disciplinary Identity and Scholarly Practice in the Collegio Romano
Year 2014
Language(s) English
Contained in History of Science, vol. 52/2
Bibliographic level Paper in journal
Catalogue description
Subject
Keyword(s) Astronomy; Collegium Romanum; History of Science
Cited in
Digitization


This article examines how Jesuit Gabriele Beati (1607–1673) taught the subject of sunspots in two textbooks commemorating his teaching of natural philosophy and mathematics at the Collegio Romano. Whereas Beati defended the incorruptibility of the heavens in his natural philosophical course, he argued that sunspots were located on the face of the sun itself and generated and corrupted like terrestrial clouds in his mathematical one. While it may be tempting to attribute these different presentations to censorship practices within the Jesuit Order, they are best understood as the result of disciplinary distinctions and scholarly practices shared widely by scholars across Europe.