Flamsteed’s Stars: New Perspectives on the Life and Work of the First Astronomer Royal, 1646–1719 ed. Frances Willmoth (review)

104 Empire was the key to British unity: moments of its crisis, attrition and final disappearance in the twentieth century have been marked with our emergingplurality of voices from a unity which is now mainly historic.’’He should have been invited to write the introduction of A Union of MultipleIdentities,theeditorsofwhich move in a single paragraph from the Union (of Parliaments) to religious culture, linguistic diversity, economic integration and educationalreforms—thesameagenda or menu but without any mention of Mr. Pittock’s overarching marker of difference . Empire and its encounters may yet come to be seen as the crucible in which identities are forged (see review of Philip Morgan, above), but here the Jacobite movement is mentioned in the editors ’ Introduction and never again. Flamsteed’s Stars: New Perspectives on the Life and Work of the First Astronomer Royal, 1646–1719, ed. Frances Willmoth . Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1997. Pp. 288. $81. William Flamsteed has had a bad press ever since he became the Astronomer Royal and quarreled with Newton, Halley , and Hooke. In part it was a result of his bad temper; in part a rivalry among scientists competing for fame and profit; in part an alternativeviewofscience.This collection of essays tries to rehabilitate Flamsteed’s reputation and fix him in the development of astronomical science, without overlooking his personal and professional idiosyncrasies. The papers collected herearetheresultofa1995conference to celebrate Ms. Willmoth’s edition of Flamsteed’s letters. William Ashworth describes the first efforttorestoreFlamsteed’sreputationby Francis Baily, who recovered the manuscripts and compiled an invaluable work. Baily’s defense of Flamsteed replayed some of the issues that once divided him and Newton. Flamsteed’s principal model , we learn from the editor—who offers an Introduction and essay of her own—was Tycho Brahe, although he also had an important English predecessor in Jeremiah Horrocks; and his one desire was to map the position of the stars accurately for such practical purposes as navigation. He had a morbid distrust of ‘‘ye Whimsyes of Philosophy.’’ Halley and Newton, on the other hand, aimed at just those grand speculativeobjectivesfor which the data might be turned to further account. For Flamsteed it was the technology ofastronomy,thenecessityofprecise observations based on telescopesand clocks, that mattered most, and the Royal Observatory was in a way his greatest achievement. Flamsteed complained that ‘‘coarse observations,’’ however wellmeant , could only perplex thescienceand retard progress. He was profoundly irritated when the Principia appeared with so little notice of his contribution and observatory . On the other hand, it was Newton’simpatiencewithFlamsteed ,whenherefused to publish his observations, that led to the row that Baily first recounted and that is rehearsed here in severalessays.JimBennett suggests some additional social reasons that may have underlain the dispute; and Ian Stewart takes into account some similar problems in his description of Flamsteed’s troubled career as a teacher. Mordechai Feingold takes us step by step through Flamsteed’s arguments in the Royal Society that led to his isolation and final rejection there. And Adrian Johns supplies a close description of Flamsteed ’s argument with Hooke, Molyneux, and Newton over optics, suggesting that thismay havebeenonemotiveforhispreserving his notes as an archive by which to validate his claims. (There is a brief 105 essay by Adam Perkins outlining the subsequent career of these manuscripts.) Not least, Alan Cook describes Flamsteed’s rivalry with Halley, who went from student to enemy to successor. This is very much a work in progress. One of the afterthoughts is a brief piece by Owen Gingerich, who describesanannotated copy of Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis, which he was able to purchase for himself, and shows how it may be used to reconstruct the compilation of the astronomer’s catalog. To judge by these essays, the published letters (a third volume still to come) are already bearing much fruit. And there are obviously more manuscripts in the archives waiting to illuminate this difficult and narrow but undeniably important man and the science of his time. Joseph M. Levine Syracuse University LYNN HOLLEN LEES. The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1998. Pp. xiv ⫹ 373. $64.95. ‘‘To be alive is to be at risk,’’especially if you happen to...