Book Review: Pedro Nunes on Peurbach: Pedro Nunes — Obras, in Theoricas planetarum Georgii Purbachii annotationes

Abstract

PEDRO NUNES ON PEURBACH Pedro Nunes - Obras, ?: In Theoricas planetarum Georgii Purbachii annotationes. Edited by a Scientific Commission of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences coordinated by Henrique Sousa Leitao (Fundacâo Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2012). Pp. ? + 465. euro25 (paperback). ISBN 978-972-31-1422-5.Georg Peurbach's Theoricae novae planetarum is one of the fundamental contributions in pre-Copernican Latin astronomy. Written as a support for Peurbach's lectures in 1454 at the Collegium civium in Vienna, it was printed by Regiomontanus in Nuremberg and would enjoy a broad diffusion up to the middle of the seventeenth century with no fewer than fifty editions printed between 1472 and 1653, either of Peurbach's work alone or with commentaries or even in vernacular translation (French, Hebrew or Italian).In 1900,L. A. Birkenmajer published Albert deBrudzewo's commentary. In 1972 F. Schmeidler presented an incomplete facsimile of the editio princeps in his edition of Regiomontanus's works. And in 1987, an English translation was published by E. J. Alton. But even if the importance of the Theoricae novae planetarum has been widely acknowledged, the work has never been exhaustively studied until now.This edition of Pedro Nunes's In Theoricas planetarum Georgii Purbachii annotationes, as a part of the Complete works of this renowned Portuguese mathematician, offer modern readers tangible evidence of the crucial importance of Peurbach's astronomy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Theoricae novae planetarum influenced many theoretical and practical fields, from reflection about the role of mathematics as the foundation of scientific knowledge to support for emerging interests like cartography or navigation. This influence continued many years after the publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus (the second edition of which is very often bound with Nunes's Annotationes) and of Reinhold's Tabulae prutenicae.Nunes's Annotationes, preceded by the De arte atque ratione navigandi, was published for the first time in 1566 at Basel, then in 1573 at Coimbra and in 1592 at Basel. This edition contains the Latin text of the Annotationes (pp. 3-140) followed by a Portuguese translation (pp. 143-294) and notes to the text (pp. 297-453). The Latin text has been prepared from the 1573 edition. The diagrams, edited by Bruno Almeida, reproduce the images of that edition which, even if inferior from a typographical point of view, are more accurate from a scientific point of view and correct some errors of the 1566 version.The Portuguese translation, edited by Antonio Guimaraes Pinto, pays close attention to the technical terms, always a delicate problem when trying to render in a modern language the specific vocabulary of late medieval Latin astronomy. So the choice has been made to resort to the contemporary Portuguese translations, among which the most reliable is A theorica do Sol e da Lua tirada de Latim em Lingoagem made by Nunes himself and published in 1537.Leitao's notes to the Annotationes present a general introduction to the work and a detailed commentary on various passages of Nunes's text. Leitao places Nunes's discussion of the Theoricae novae planetarum into that author's wider scientific work and sets these results in a broader Portuguese and European context. …