Galileo in early modern Denmark, 1600-1650

TL;DR

This paper explores how Galileo's astronomical ideas spread to Denmark between 1600 and 1650, highlighting the delayed adoption and the dominance of Tycho Brahe's cosmology in Danish astronomy.

Contribution

It provides a detailed historical analysis of the dissemination and reception of Galileo's ideas in Denmark and compares it with Sweden's response during the early modern period.

Findings

Galileo was mainly known for his telescope and astronomical discoveries.

It took about thirty years for Danish astronomers to adopt Galileo's telescope for observations.

Galileo's ideas did not challenge the Tychonian cosmology in Denmark during this period.

Abstract

The scientific revolution in the first half of the seventeenth century, pioneered by figures such as Harvey, Galileo, Gassendi, Kepler and Descartes, was disseminated to the northernmost countries in Europe with considerable delay. In this essay I examine how and when Galileo's new ideas in physics and astronomy became known in Denmark, and I compare the reception with the one in Sweden. It turns out that Galileo was almost exclusively known for his sensational use of the telescope to unravel the secrets of the heavens, meaning that he was predominantly seen as an astronomical innovator and advocate of the Copernican world system. Danish astronomy at the time was however based on Tycho Brahe's view of the universe and therefore hostile to Copernican and, by implication, Galilean cosmology. Although Galileo's telescope attracted much attention, it took about thirty years until a Danish astronomer actually used the instrument for observations. By the 1640s Galileo was generally admired for his astronomical discoveries, but no one in Denmark drew the consequence that the dogma of the central Earth, a fundamental feature of the Tychonian world picture, was therefore incorrect.