The Man in the Moone

About This Book

The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and Anglican bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633), describing a "voyage of utopian discovery". Long considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The work is notable for its role in what was called the "new astronomy", the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus. Although Copernicus is the only astronomer mentioned by name, the book also draws on the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert. Godwin's astronomical theories were greatly influenced by Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuncius (1610), but unlike Galileo, Godwin proposes that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many parallels with Kepler's Somnium sive opus posthumum de astronomia lunari of 1634.

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