Johanne Kepler's "Harmonice mundi" was planned in 1599 as a sequel to the "Mysterium cosmographicum." In 1618 Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion relating to the periodic times of the planets to their mean distances from the sun - a crowning achievement that enabled him to bring the "Harmonice mundi" to completeion. The authors have presented and interpreted Kepler's Latin text to readers of English, by putting it into "the kind of clear but earnest language which we suppose Kepler would have used if he had been writing today."

Kepler is a key figure in the development of modern astronomy. His work is also important in the history of philosophy and methodology of science as a whole. The present study is concerned with one of Kepler's major preoccupations, namely his search for the geometrical plan according to which God created the Universe. The author discusses how Kepler's cosmological theories, which embrace music and astrology as well as astronomy, are related to his other work. The subject will be of great interest to historians of science, mathematicians and astronomers as well as to historians of the late Renaissance.

Renaissance and Revolution is a collection of fifteen essays on some of the problems presently seen to be associated with the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The topics treated include the dissemination of Greek science, medical empiricism, natural history, the relations of scholars and craftsmen from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the so-called 'mechanical philosophy' in France and England, the work of Isaac Newton, and the difficulties encountered by Newtonianism in Italy in the early eighteenth century. Figures discussed include Leonardo Fioravanti, Jan Swammerdam, Piero della Francesca, Johannes Hevelius, Jonas Moore, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens, Francesco Algarotti and Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli. There is an introduction by the editors and an afterword by A. Rupert Hall. The authorship is international, including scholars with established reputations as historians of science.

As any student of art will tell you, one of the chief accomplishments of the Renaissance was the development of perspective in painting--the introduction of spatial perception that led to the legendary beauty and majesty of works by Giotto, Botticelli, and da Vinci. In The Invention ofInfinity, Dr. J. V. Field, a noted historian on math and the arts, tells the remarkable story of how the "practical" mathematics of Renaissance artists actually influenced the development of "proper" mathematics--a true story of life imitating art.
Here is the fascinating history of the emergence of modern mathematics during the Renaissance, and its intimate relationship with the artisan and artistic traditions of the time. The book covers the period from 1300 to 1650, when craftsmen were educated in "practical mathematics," and when the field of mathematics was gradually taking up a more significant place on the intellectual landscape. Field traces the influence of the mathematics of perspective in the arts, and shows how this led to the invention of a new kind of geometry in the 17th century--the new projective geometry of Desargues--which proved to be a highly significant contribution to the development of modern mathematics. Additionally, the author explores the 14th and 15th-century "abacus" schools popular among merchants and craftsmen, and the contrast between these practical, widely used tools and the abstract arithmetic and geometry taught in the universities of the time, and their application in the theory of music and elementary astronomy.
Extensively illustrated with superb color and black and white plates, and including selected extracts from the original mathematical texts, this clear and entertaining account will delight anyone interested in the history of mathematics and art, as well as in the multi-layered social history of the Renaissance.