De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
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Nicolai Copernici Torinensis De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Libri VI (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, by Nicolaus Copernicus of civitas Torunensis, Six Books). Title page of 2nd edition, Basel, Officina Henricpetrina, 1566.

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, is the seminal work on heliocentric theory and the masterpiece of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The book offers an alternative model of the universe to the Ptolemaic system that had been universally accepted since antiquity.

History

Copernicus initially wrote up an outline of his system in a short, untitled, anonymous, manuscript text that Copernicus distributed to several friends, referred to as the Commentariolus. A physician's library list dating to 1514 includes a manuscript whose description matches the Commentariolus, so Copernicus must have begun work on his new system by that time. However, most historians believe that he wrote the Commentariolus after his return from Italy, and possibly only after 1510. At this time, Copernicus anticipated that he could reconcile the motion of the Earth to the perceived motions of the planets quite easily, with fewer motions than were necessary for the Alfonsine Tables, the version of Ptolemaic astronomy popular at the time.

Observations of Mercury by Bernhard Walther (1430–1504) of Nuremberg, a pupil of Regiomontanus, were made available to Nicolaus Copernicus by Johannes Schöner, 45 observations in total, 14 of them with longitude and latitude. Copernicus used three of them in De revolutionibus, giving only longitudes, and erroneously attributing them to Schöner. Copernicus' values differed slightly from the ones published by Schöner in 1544 in Observationes XXX annorum a I. Regiomontano et B. Walthero Norimbergae habitae, [4°, Norimb. 1544].

Heliocentric model of the solar system

Remarkably, the manuscript of De revolutionibus in Copernicus' own hand has survived. Close examination of the manuscript, including the different types of paper used, has helped scholars to construct an approximate timetable for its composition. Apparently, Copernicus began by making a few astronomical observations to provide new data to perfect his models. He may have begun writing the book while still engaged in observations. By the 1530s a substantial part of the book was completed.

Copernicus was still completing his work in 1539, when Georg Joachim Rheticus, a young mathematician from Wittenberg, arrived in Frombork to study with him. Rheticus read Copernicus' manuscript and immediately wrote a non-technical summary of its main theories in the form of an open letter addressed to Johannes Schöner, his astrology teacher in Nürnberg; he published this letter as the Narratio Prima in Danzig in 1540. Rheticus' friend and mentor Achilles Gasser published a second edition of the Narratio in Basel in 1541. In 1542, in Copernicus' name, Rheticus published the second book of the still unpublished De revolutionibus as treatise on trigonometry.

Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been unfavorable, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend Tiedemann Giese, bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing by Johannes Petreius at Nürnberg (Nuremberg). It was published just before his death, in 1543.

Contents

The major work of Copernicus is the result of decades of labor. It rewrote Ptolemaic theory for a moving Earth, and incorporates over a thousand years of accounts of astronomical observations of varying accuracy. In its standard English edition, it contains 330 folio pages, 100 pages of tables, and over 20,000 tabulated numbers.

The book is dedicated to Pope Paul III in a preface that argues that mathematics, not physics, should be the basis for understanding and accepting his new theory.

De revolutionibus is divided into 6 books (actually sections or parts):

• Book I is a general vision of the heliocentric theory, and a summarized exposition of his cosmology.
• Book II is mainly theoretical and describes the principles of spherical astronomy and a list of stars, as a basis for the arguments developed in the following books.
• Book III describes the apparent movements of the Sun and related phenomena.
• Book IV is a similar description of the Moon and its orbital movements.
• Books V and VI are the concrete exposition of the new system and explain how to calculate the positions of astronomical objects based on the heliocentric model.

Copernicus argued that the universe is made up of eight spheres. The outermost sphere consisted of motionless, fixed stars, and the Sun was motionless at the centre. The known planets revolved around the Sun, each in its own sphere, in this order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Moon, however, revolved in its sphere around the Earth. What appeared to be the daily revolution of the Sun and fixed stars around the Earth was really the daily rotation of the Earth on its own axis.

For theological and philosophical reasons, Copernicus clung to the belief that all the orbits of celestial bodies must be perfect circles and to belief in the unobserved crystalline spheres. This forced Copernicus to retain the complex system of epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, to account for the observed deviations from circularity and to make his calculations agree with observations.

Despite Copernicus' adherence to these aspects of ancient astronomy, Copernicus' radical shift from a geocentric model to a heliocentric cosmology was a serious blow to Aristotle's science—and helped to usher in the scientific revolution.

Foreword to the first edition

The first edition of De revolutionibus begins with a foreword that states that the work should be regarded as a mere "hypothesis". Hypothesis was not used here in its modern meaning of a proposed scientific theory that is to be tested by experiment. Rather, it implied that the whole work might be only a bold speculation. The foreword represented Copernicus' theory as a simpler, more convenient mathematical method for calculating the positions of astronomical objects, which did not necessarily represent physical reality.

At the time of publication, those who were not intimately familiar with Copernicus' work assumed that Copernicus had written the foreword. Copernicus' friends, on the other hand, were furious when they saw the preface to the first edition, because it diminished the historic breakthrough that De revolutionibus was.

In fact, it was Lutheran philosopher Andreas Osiander who wrote and inserted the infamous foreword. Rheticus had entrusted Osiander with supervising the printing and publication process. The most knowledgeable astronomers of the time realized that the foreword was Osiander's doing. Johannes Praetorius (1537–1616), for example, wrote Osiander's name in the margin of the foreword in his copy of De revolutionibus. Johannes Kepler demonstrated methodically that Osiander added the preface.^[1]

All subsequent editions of De revolutionibus excluded Osiander's foreword.

Reception

The book caused only mild controversy at the time, and provoked no fierce sermons about contradicting holy scripture; Osiander's preface, therefore, may have had some success. In 1546, however, a Dominican, Giovanni Maria Tolosani, wrote a treatise denouncing the theory and defending the absolute truth of scripture. Tolosani also claimed that Bartolomeo Spina, the Master of the Sacred Palace, had intended to condemn the theory but had been unable to press the issue because of ill health.

According to Olivier Thill's 2002 update of a biography written in 1654 by Pierre Gassendi, many astronomers, theologians and others knew about Copernicus' theory before 1615. Their stance is given as follows:^[2]

Identification of "Copernicans" or "anti-Copernicans" will vary depending on the criteria used. For instance, Gassendi apparently considered Tycho Brahe to be a supporter of Copernicus, even though Tycho plainly believed that the Earth did not move. Tycho performed many of the essential measurements which Johannes Kepler used to advance Copernicus' position.

It has been much debated why sixty years would pass before Copernicus' work would come under serious attack. The alleged reasons range from the personality of Galileo Galilei to the availability of actual evidence (such as observations with the telescope) which could make it practical for the first time to settle the truth or falsity of the theory. Whatever the reason, in 1616 Cardinal Bellarmine gave Galileo an order from the Pope to take the position that the system was purely hypothesis. After that, De revolutionibus was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books along with two less important works (but none of Galileo's, at that time). It was not formally banned but merely withdrawn from circulation pending "corrections" which would clarify the status of the theory as hypothesis (nine sentences, by which the heliocentric system was represented as certain, had to be either omitted or changed). Such corrections were prepared by Francesco Ingoli and others, and were formally approved in 1620; the reading of the book was then allowed.^[3] But the book was never reprinted with these changes, and was available in Catholic jurisdictions only by special request of suitably qualified scholars.^{citation needed} It remained on the Index until 1758, when Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) removed the uncorrected book from his revised Index.^[4]

A few years after the death of Copernicus, Erasmus Reinhold developed the Prutenic Tables (Prussian Tables, Latin: Tabulae prutenicae, German: Preußische Tafeln), based on Copernicus' observations. Reinhold's Prutenic Tables were used as a basis for the calendar reform instituted under Pope Gregory XIII. The tables were also used by sailors and sea explorers, who during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had used the Table of the Stars by Regiomontanus.

Mocking of Lactantius

In De revolutionibus, Nicolaus Copernicus mocked Lactantius, an early Christian author (ca. 240 – ca. 320):

Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault with my undertaking and censure it. I disregard them even to the extent of despising their criticism as unfounded. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, otherwise an illustrious writer but hardly an astronomer, speaks quite childishly about the Earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the Earth has the form of a globe. Hence scholars need not be surprised if any such persons will likewise ridicule me. Astronomy is written for astronomers.

A German TV documentary on "The world's 7 greatest lies" [1] states that medieval scholars knew full well that the Earth was a sphere. Copernicus is blamed for having omitted to say that Lactantius had been the exception rather than the rule, and thus for having contributed to the flat-Earth myth.

Recent research

Historians long believed that the book was not widely read at the time of its first publication. Owen Gingerich, a widely recognized authority on both Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, disproved that belief after a 35-year project to examine every surviving copy of the first two editions. Gingerich showed that nearly all the leading mathematicians and astronomers of the time owned and read De revolutionibus; however, his analysis of the marginalia shows that they almost all ignored the cosmology at the beginning of the book and were only interested in Copernicus' new equant-free models of planetary motion in the later chapters.

Gingerich's efforts and conclusions are recounted in The Book Nobody Read, published in 2004 by Walker & Co. That book and the research behind it earned its author the Polish government's Order of Merit in 1981 [?!]. Due largely to Dr. Gingerich's scholarship, De revolutionibus has been researched and catalogued better than any other first-edition historical text except for the original Gutenberg Bible.^[5]

Editions

• 1543, Nuremberg, by Johannes Petreius
• 1566, Basel, by Henricus Petrus
• 1617, Amsterdam, by Müller of Göttingen [2]
• 1854, Warsaw, with Polish translation and the authentic preface by Copernicus.
• 1873, Thorn (Toruń), by the local Copernicus Society, with all Copernicus' textual corrections given as footnotes.

English translations

• On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres [translated] with an introd. and notes by A. M. Duncan. Newton Abbot : David & Charles; New York : Barnes and Noble, 1976 ISBN 0-7153-6927-X (David & Charles) ISBN 0-06-491279-5 (Barnes and Noble)

• On the revolutions ; translation and commentary by Edward Rosen. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-8018-4515-7 (Foundations of natural history) (originally published Warsaw, 1978)

• On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres ... transl. by C. G. Wallis. First published Annapolis : St John's College Bookstore, 1939. Later republished in v. 16 of the set Great Books of the Western World (Chicago : Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952); in the series of the same name published by the Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Philadelphia, 1985; in v. 15 of the second edition of Great Books (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990); and in 1995 by Prometheus Books (Amherst, NY.) in its Great minds series - Science (ISBN 1-57392-035-5).

Notes

1. ^ Robert Westman, "Three Responses to Copernican Theory," in Robert Westman, ed., The Copernican Achievement, 1975.
2. ^ Gassendi 2002.
3. ^ "Nicolaus Copernicus", Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04352b.htm.
4. ^ "Benedict XIV." Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04352b.htm
5. ^ Peter DeMarco. "Book quest took him around the globe". Boston Globe. April 13, 2004

References

• Gassendi, Pierre: The Life of Copernicus, biography (1654), with notes by Olivier Thill (2002), ISBN 1-59160-193-2 [3]
• Gingerich, Owen: An annotated census of Copernicus' De revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566). Leiden : Brill, 2002 ISBN 90-04-11466-1 (Studia copernicana. Brill's series; v. 2)
• Gingerich, Owen: The Book Nobody Read : Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. New York : Walker, 2004 ISBN 0-8027-1415-3
• Hannam, James (2007). "Deconstructing Copernicus". Medieval Science and Philosophy. Retrieved on 2007-08-17. Analyses the varieties of argument used by Copernicus.
• Heilbron, J.L.: The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999 ISBN 0-674-85433-0
• Swerdlow, N.M., O. Neugebauer: Mathematical astronomy in Copernicus' De revolutionibus. New York : Springer, 1984 ISBN 0-387-90939-7 (Studies in the history of mathematics and physical sciences ; 10)
• Vermij, R.H.: The Calvinist Copernicans: The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750. Amsterdam : Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002 ISBN 90-6984-340-4 [4]
• Westman, R.S., ed.: The Copernican achievement. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1975 ISBN 0-520-02877-5
• Zinner, E.: Entstehung und Ausbreitung der coppernicanischen Lehre. 2. Aufl. durchgesehen und erg. von Heribert M. Nobis und Felix Schmeidler. München : C.H. Beck, 1988 ISBN 3-406-32049-X

Links

• De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, from Harvard University.
• De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, from Jagiellon University, Poland.
• De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, from Rare Book Room.
• On the Revolutions, from WebExhibits. English translation.
• in Latin: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Norimbergae, J. Petreium, 1543 (at Wikisource (Vicifons))