Edward Grant describes the extraordinary range of themes, ideas, and arguments that constituted scholastic cosmology for approximately five hundred years, from around 1200 to 1700. Primary emphasis is placed on the world as a whole, what might lie beyond it, and the celestial region, which extended from the Moon to the outermost convex surface of the cosmos.

Excerpt from The Orbs Around Us: A Series of Familiar Essays on the Moon and Planets, Meteors and Comets, the Sun and Coloured Pairs of Suns The paper on the Gamut of Light' presents the subject of spectroscopic analysis in a way which I have found effective with those readers who are not desirous of discussing the details of this mode of research. In the next two papers on Other Habitable Worlds and Other Inhabited Worlds, ' a sketch is given on the subject of the Plurality of Worlds. The fourth paper relates to the application of the Rosse Telescope to determine the heat of the lunar surface. Then follow papers on Venus, Mars, and Jupiter; two essays on Meteors, one relating to the past history and the other to the present condition of meteoric researches; a paper on Tyndall's Theory of Comets (a subject de serving close examination), and another on the general phenomena of comets and comets' tails. The three papers on the Solar Corona might have been added, almost as they stand, to my chapter on What we learn from the Sun, m Other Worlds, ' but for the requirements of Space. Lastly, there is a paper on the Colours of the Double Stars, a subject which the same cause compelled me to leave almost untouched in that work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.