Jewish Responses to Copernican Thought: A Conceptual Replication of John Hedley Brooke’s Chapter on Scientific and Religious Reform

Abstract

This article explores how replication might work in the study of history through the presentation of a test case. Specifically, chapter 3 of historian John Hedley Brooke’s seminal book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991) was chosen for this experiment by an interdisciplinary team, as it is a cornerstone study in the history of science and religion. This article details the “conceptual replication” undertaken, that is, a study in which the research protocol of the original study was modified while the main research question stayed the same. Brooke studied the responses of Protestants and Roman Catholics to Copernican thought to examine the widely held belief that those who had recently gone through the Protestant Reformation would be more open to the new astronomy than Catholics. Our conceptual replication investigates what historians have written about Jewish responses to Copernican thought and how these findings impact the question of the relationship between religious and scientific reform. The preliminary conclusion of this replication study is that historians of the Jewish responses to the new astronomy seem to support Brooke’s view that such responses were determined by more than just theological or denominational considerations, since other factors (e.g., social ones) played a more constitutive role.