Apian

Peter Apian
Cosmographia

Peter Apian (1495-1552) was a German humanist who worked in many different areas.  He is especially well-known for his work on cartography and astronomy.  He held positions as a professor of mathematics at the Universities of Ingolstadt and Innsbruck.  Thought the patronage of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Apian became enormously influential.  The book displayed here was published in twenty-nine different editions prior to 1600.

His Cosmographicus Liber was published in 1524, twelve years before Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus.  This means it can give a clear sense of the consensus view of what the universe looked like before the Scientific Revolution.  Apian displays a geocentric universe, with the moon, sun, and other planets all orbiting in perfect circles around a stationary earth.  This usefully illustrates the longevity of the Ptolemaic worldview.  Apian depicts a universe almost identical to that described in Ptolemy’s Almagest almost fourteen hundred years earlier.