A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel

From The Week of November 12, 2012 Insight is a strange and mysterious quality. As unquantifiable as love and as elusive as freedom, it comes and goes as it pleases, subject to no man's whim. It cannot be summoned. It cannot even be channeled. It is a blessing that is as quick to leave us as it is to come to us. Such characteristics would normally bestow a bad reputation on just such a force. And yet, so welcomed are its truths, so treasured is its warmth, that we plead for its caresses, considering ourselves fortunate to have spent time in its luminocity. For insight brings enlightenment, knowledge that can alter the future and change the lives of millions. That is a power that should be respected, not quibbled with. Ms. Sobel demonstrates in her short but edifying biography.

Of all the giants who contributed to the ignition of the scientific revolution, none stands higher than Nicolaus Copernicus. A 15th-century son of Poland who spent most of his life as a canon in the Catholic church, he is responsible for early astronomy's most central insight, that the Earth, rather than be the fixed point around which the universe turned, was merely one world orbiting one star in a much greater, sun-filled cosmos. This shattering revelation not only ran counter to the scientific understanding of the time, it deeply undermined the most fundamental conceit of Catholicism, in particular, and Christianity in general, that Earth was the crown jewel of the home of life in the universe and that the star-filled heavens were simply that, the heavens in which god, his angels, and those most worthy human souls resided.

Though Copernicus, unlike Galileo, largely escaped Church sanction for holding such heretical views, this was merely a sad twist of fate. For Copernicus only published his revolutionary work in the months prior to his tragic death, after which he was safe from the narrow minds of the men who would seek to judge his genius. Here, Ms. Sobel reconstructs those final few, dramatic years of Copernicus' life, imagining his homelife, sketching out his duties and pondering the blockades that might have stood in the way of the publication of a book that would eventually transform the lives of untold millions. In this, she channels jealousies and suspicions, loves and secrets, to reconstruct a life the likes of which comes around but once in a century, a life that only a few of us will be blessed to touch.

Though A More Perfect Heaven is far from a thorough biography of Nicolaus Copernicus, it is a read as smooth as it is moving. Ms. Sobel foregoes a dry recitation of the accepted facts of her subject's life and, instead, revivifies him with a small play sown neatly into the heart of her otherwise non-fictional chronicle. Reasoning out who the man might've loved and feared, protected and conflicted with, she animates his central genius with a series of scenes that concern his final months. In this, she rescues him from both the dryness of history and the remoteness of legend. She gives us a man with needs and flaws, with troubles and torments, a man who was as certain of his scientific conclusions as he was concerned about the consequences they would have on a world enshrouded in the darkness of ignorance.

Much of this is supposition, but the author sandwiches her play with enough biography to grant her version of events the sheen of plausibility, perhaps even probability. Time has a habit of eroding the truth of the way of things. The passage of five centuries has a habit of obliterating them altogether. This is, then, a welcome snapshot of one of the most critical moments in our recent history, one that we will look back upon for as long as we have science.

If you are looking for a well-rounded biography of Copernicus, look elsewhere. Ms. Sobel leaves off much of the detail that would have characterized his every day life. However, if you're interested in the ways and means of early scientific insight, and how that insight might affect the minds of 15th-century humans who knew only faith and war, then look no further. Charming work... (3/5 Stars)