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Just before his death in 1652, John Greaves (b. 1602), a professor of astronomy , published Astronomica quaedam ex traditione Shah Cholgii Persae, a bilingual, Persian-Latin edition of a late fifteenth-century astronomical work from Persia. To this work he attached a Persian-Latin astronomical dictionary, which was addressed to Latin-readers. The inspiration for this linguistic astronomical project came in 1637, when Greaves left his position at London’s Gresham College to travel for a few years in the Near East. In his travels, he conducted astronomical observations with local astronomers, measured the pyramids, looked for the perfect ancient cubit, and collected Arabic and Persian manuscripts on astronomy and geography. On his return to England in 1640, he was appointed to the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at Oxford University and, while there, published works on the pyramids, Persian language, ancient measurements, and Arabic geography—all unexpectedly addressed to Latin-readers. By the time Astronomica quaedam was published, Greaves was at the end of his academic career and near the end of his life. He had been ejected from Oxford , along with all other royalists, during England’s Civil War, and his two major patrons, Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645) and Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656), were either dead or unable to protect him from the parliamentarians who had taken over the government. Not only did the parliamentarians and their sympathizers reject royalist claims, but they also espoused a new experimentalist view of nature that advocated firsthand experience while disregarding traditional authority and history. Stranded and miserable, Greaves spent the rest of his life preparing publications on astronomy and geography that searched for true cosmology in medieval Islamic sources. At a time when traditional Islamic astronomy was pushed aside, Greaves—perhaps surprisingly—had in mind readers who would be interested in a Persian-Latin dictionary of an astronomy that had lost its historical authority. c h a p t e r f o u r Converting Measurements and Invoking the “Linguistic Leviathan” Converting Measurements and Invoking the “Linguistic Leviathan” 105 The interest in apparently anachronistic astronomical sources may seem extraneous to the development of post-Copernican astronomy. However, the linguistic reform in astronomy was situated at the heart of various cultural and political trends. The political events that took place in mid-seventeenth-century England sparked controversies over philosophy and political theology that captivated scholars such as Greaves, who started debating the question of philosophical demonstrations and authorities of truth in natural philosophy. The work of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer throws light on how politics was reflected in the approaches of Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes toward epistemological problems in natural philosophy. The question at stake was how to promote and integrate a community of natural philosophers that could resolve controversies in the best possible, most credible, way. On the one hand, we see Boyle, the parliamentary sympathizer, placing experiments under the scrutiny of trustworthy witnesses; on the other, we have Hobbes, the royalist, who held that there is a need for a “Leviathan,” a “meta-philosopher,” that might resolve controversies and establish credibility in natural philosophy. Greaves also played a central role in the establishment of English Orientalism . Historians working in that field tend to believe that the search for answers in the Near East was part of an increasingly global interest in the “Orient.” Here, however, we probe the seemingly anachronistic interests in Arabic and Persian sources of astronomy. Why, after the new Copernican and post-Copernican astronomical systems, which invalidated ancient Greek and Arabic astronomy, would English astronomers find Arabic and Persian sources to be so crucial to their work? The answers will emerge from a deeper social story about John Greaves (1602–52). The appeal of the “Near East” was not primarily to learn about the “Near East,” but was part of a search for the “primordial sources” needed to resolve various contemporary controversies in both political theology and natural philosophy. In his travels, Greaves interacted with material objects such as ancient monuments, coins, and manuscripts. As a by-product, he informed local astronomers about the new cosmologies and taught them the observational techniques of Tycho Brahe. Greaves’s travels—observing eclipses, measuring latitudes and ancient monuments, collecting and comparing texts—were set against the backdrop of a historical a priori: a “Linguistic Leviathan” (to coin a phrase). He searched for a primordial, divine language of words and units of measure that could be applied to descriptions of nature. The quest was motivated by his...

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