Poetic Structure of the World : Copernicus and Kepler

In this major reconsideration of a crucial turning point in Western thought and culture - the heliocentric revolution of Copernicus and Kepler - Fernand Hallyn applies a theory of rhetoric to the philosophy and history of science to show how the new sun-centered universe is inseparable from the aesthetic epistemological, theological, and social imperatives of both Neoplatonism and Mannerism in the sixteenth century. Fernand Hallyn is Professor in the Department of French Literature at the University of Ghent.