TychoBrahe

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See WikiPedia:Tycho_Brahe for background information.

Tycho Brahe was a forerunner of so many advancements in the communications of science. He more than any other character fully grasped the significance of the printing press and PrintCulture? on how science should be conducted.

Self-taught. Rather than wait for lecturers to read books to him, he snuck them away from lecturers and read them himself. He had been reading since he was young, taught himself mathematics. He clearly understood the meaning of having all this information available for him--or anyone--to read themselves, individually, without the limiting intermediate hand of others.

Self-published. When he was given the island of Hven by the Danish king to conduct his astronomical experiments, he demanded both his own press and paper mill to feed it, in order to publish his observations accurately and then distrbute them across Europe. This alone gave his voice a resonnance that other scientists did not, so while many voices were arguing about the nova of 1572, it was his that ultimately got credit for understanding "Tycho's star" simply because his voice had more amplitude.

Self-promoting. The frontispiece for the Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica featured a portrait of Tycho and his noble ancestry, thus wrapping up his ego with his scientific contributions.

Comparative. When he was young, he could see the Ptolemaic system set against the Copernican system. This inspired him to collect new data, as the old data was obviously incomplete.

Disciplinary. He collected data in a systematic fashion, dedicating himself to collecting observations as his full-time occupation; that is, his profession. While making dedicated, systematized astronomical observations, he imprinted (almost literally) his professionalization on the rest of Europe. He printed forms and distributed them to observatories throughout Europe to systematize their method of recording data. He then brought all that data back into his laboratory, as did many others throughout Europe, giving many access to the same data organized in the same process, which all had to follow. By this process, he then inspired his fellow astronomers to confirm observations amongst each other, thus triangulating new data to improve its accuracy and validity. In essence, he built a scientific discipline of astronomy, all because he used the press to his advantage.

Information management. With all this collected data from around Europe in one place, he went about setting it all against each other. Without the benefit of new instruments like the telescope, he made far-reaching conclusions simply because he had better information management than was available before.

But on the other hand...

Information monopoly. Tycho Brahe kept a lot of his valuable experimental data secret. Even his assistents - like Johannes Kepler - had access just to data subsets. Only when he died - before his time and under unclear circumstances - Kepler gained access to the complete astronomical data and was then able to develop his theory of planetary motion.

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