This open access volume focuses on the cultural background of the pivotal transformations of
scientific knowledge in the early modern period. It investigates the rich edition history of
Johannes de Sacrobosco's Tractatus de sphaera by far the most widely disseminated textbook on
geocentric cosmology from the unique standpoint of the many printers publishers and
booksellers who steered this text from manuscript to print culture and in doing so transformed
it into an established platform of scientific learning. The corpus constituted of 359
different editions featuring Sacrobosco's treatise on cosmology and astronomy printed between
1472 and 1650 represents the scientific European shared knowledge concerned with the
cosmological worldview of the early modern period until far after the publication of
Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. The contributions to this volume show
how the academic book trade influenced the process of homogenization of scientific knowledge.
They also describe the material infrastructure through which such knowledge was disseminated
and thus define the premises for the foundation of modern scientific communities.
