arthur koestler "The Sleepwalkers"

[hawkinthesnow]

This is a question for James in his capacity as a historian of science. I have had for a while, a copy of the above book, and started to read it sometime ago. In your opinion, is it worth reading all the way through? In your opinion, is it a reliable account as a history of our understanding of cosmology?

[James Hannam]

I thought Sleepwalkers was rather good.

There are two kinds of amateur historian. The kind who read lots of secondary sources and write a condensed version of conventional wisdom. And there are the ones who read the primary sources and interpret them without the baggage accumulated from spending too long listening to professors. Koestler is definitely the latter.

I'd actually say that his book is much closer to the current scholarly consensus than it was fifty years ago. It surely remains the best account of early modern cosmology for the general reader. He is not wholly reliable in ancient and medieval cosmology but for the trinity of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo I find him pretty good.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

James