Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer

It's sometimes hard to remember that once upon a time, astrology was state-of-the-art science. It was inextricably wound up with astronomical observation, after all, and good Renaissance men often pursued both avocations. Preeminent among astrologers and natural philosophers of the 16th century was Girolamo Cardano, the subject of Anthony Grafton's scrutiny in Cardano's Cosmos. Cardano is a prime biographical subject, having lived a life of extraordinary proportions. He pursued careers in medicine, mathematics, palmistry, and writing in addition to astrology, and eventually ended up on the wrong side of the Inquisition. Forbidden to teach publicly, Cardano nevertheless continued his investigations, played politics, and wrote a wicked, tell-all autobiography.

Cardano considered himself a "master of time," and this theme winds through Grafton's narrative as it must have wound through the astrologer's life. Astrology was a tool for both predicting the future and for explaining the past.

As an astrologer--and as an autobiographer--he struggled with time, trying to uncover the hidden logic of his past and to show how accurate predictions could yield valuable therapies for his own and others' futures.... More than once, however, Cardano tried to replace this perspective with a radically different one: one in which time past and future mattered little or not at all.

Unlike many a modern astrologer, Cardano's scientific bent allowed him to acknowledge that other factors were often at work in matters of fate. To keep up with these influences, he became an expert in occult matters as well as a keen observer of the natural world.

Grafton's biography artfully exposes the everyday life of an extraordinary man. Cardano comes alive as a brilliant, egotistical eccentric whose desire for order and truth was satisfied by the complex systems of astrology. --Therese Littleton