Inside the Stargazer's Palace

Auteur

Violet Moller is a critically acclaimed and award-winning historian, who has written four previous books, including The Map of Knowledge. She presents the "Travels Through Time" podcast, one of the Guardian’s five best podcasts for the curious-minded and lives in Oxford.

Texte du rabat

Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories.

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view – one guided by observation, technology and logic.

But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening brass instruments and leather-bound tomes. The line between the natural and supernatural remained porous, yet to be defined.

From the icy Danish observatory of Tycho Brahe, to the smoky, sulphur-stained workshop of John Dee, Violet Moller tours the intellectual heart of early European science. Exploring its rich, multidisciplinary culture, Inside the Stargazer’s Palace reveals a dazzling forgotten world, where all knowledge, no matter how arcane, could be pursued in good faith.