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List of Illustrations | p. xi |
Acknowledgments | p. xv |
Introduction | |
Shared Culture, Separate Spaces | p. 3 |
High and Low Culture | p. 5 |
The Verbal and Visual in Popular Culture | p. 10 |
The Culture of Comets | p. 12 |
Signs of the Times | p. 15 |
Ancient Signs | p. 17 |
Physical Theories of Comets | p. 17 |
Tokens of Doom | p. 20 |
Political Messages and Means | p. 24 |
Monsters and the Messiah | p. 27 |
Popular and Patristic Views of Comets | p. 27 |
Monsters and Their Messages | p. 30 |
Monstrous Comets in Scripture | p. 31 |
Star of Bethlehem, Herald of Judgment | p. 38 |
Time of the End | p. 46 |
Reformation in Religion | p. 47 |
Divination | p. 51 |
Color | p. 51 |
Conjunctions | p. 53 |
Passage through Zodiac and Prominent Constellations | p. 53 |
Astrological Houses and Cardinal Orientations | p. 56 |
Pointing of Tail | p. 58 |
Position of Nucleus | p. 58 |
Shapes and Sizes | p. 58 |
Motion | p. 60 |
Duration | p. 61 |
Historical Induction | p. 65 |
Portents and Politics | p. 66 |
In Streets and Alehouses | p. 66 |
God on Their Side | p. 68 |
Prophecies and Propaganda | p. 70 |
Natural Causes | p. 89 |
From Natural Signs to Proximate Causes | p. 91 |
New Attitudes toward Nature and the Recovery of Classical Science | p. 91 |
Aristotle and Terrestrial Corruption | p. 92 |
Ptolemy and the Power of Mars | p. 94 |
Stepping-StOnes from Symptoms to Causes | p. 96 |
Critics and Strategies | p. 99 |
The Decline of Cometary Divination | p. 104 |
Astronomical Reforms | p. 104 |
Epistemological Critics | p. 114 |
Shift in Priorities and Signs of Decline | p. 117 |
Social Reasons for the Decline | p. 123 |
TwoRld Reformation | p. 131 |
Comets, Transmutations, and World Reform in Newton's Thought | p. 133 |
Celestial Mechanics of Comets | p. 135 |
Pristine Truths and Political Corruption | p. 138 |
Transmutations and Perpetual Interchange | p. 142 |
Fire, Water, and a Heavenly Physiology | p. 148 |
"Revolutions in the Heavenly Bodies" | p. 149 |
Comets, Teleology, and Newton's Appropriation of Comet Lore | p. 153 |
Halley's Comet Theory, Noah's Flood, and the End of the World | p. 156 |
Interest in Orbits | p. 156 |
Halley's Theory of the Deluge | p. 162 |
The End of the World | p. 164 |
The Benefits of Comets | p. 166 |
The Scientific Response | p. 167 |
Ecclesiastical Criticism | p. 168 |
Halley's Alleged Freethinking in Political Context | p. 171 |
The Satirists' Barbs | p. 174 |
Comet Lore and Cosmogony | p. 179 |
Refueling the Sun and Planets | p. 181 |
Circulation of Vital Matter | p. 181 |
Critics | p. 183 |
Stoking the Stellar Fires | p. 186 |
Revolution and Evolution within the Heavens | p. 188 |
Come Hell or High Water | p. 189 |
From Creation to Cosmogony | p. 198 |
Concluding Remarks Popular Culture and Elite Science | p. 216 |
Appendix Recent Resurgence of Cometary Catastrophism | p. 222 |
Notes | p. 225 |
Bibliography | p. 309 |
Index | p. 353 |
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