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Historical context • We are now moving about 200 years from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in the 15th & 16th centuries. • Major changes in this period: ! Voyages of discovery 5.Copernicus ! Protestant Reformation and weakened Roman Church ! Invention of movable type & printing press ! Rise of a middle class ! Humanist movement in scholarship and education • The problem of celestial motions is one of the outstanding problems in natural philosophy. Copernicus Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) • Copernicus was born in Poland. • Got a degree from the Univ of Crakow. • Then studied medicine and canon law in Padua & Bologna. • Returned to Poland in 1503, and worked as a church administrator under his uncle, a Bishop. • He was clearly fascinated with astronomy, but felt Ptolemy’s eccentrics and especially the equant, violated Aristotle’s principles of motion. • Thought that he could return to a more Aristotelean solution by putting the Sun at the center of the solar system. • Wrote a short description of his ideas in the Commentariolus ca. 1514 which circulated in manuscript form. Copernicus’ helio-centric model Copernicus, cont’d • Astronomy professor Georg Rheticus from Wittenberg visited and persuaded Copernicus to publish his ideas. • Copernicus’ objection to the Ptolemaic system was that it had got away from the fundamental principles of • Finally, in 1543, Copernicus published On the Aristotle’s dynamics, and not that it was inaccurate in its Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies, a proposal that the Sun predictions of celestial events. is at the center of the solar system, rather than the Earth. • However it turned out that Copernicus still required epicycles and eccentric motion to account for things like the retrograde motion of the planets, and he needed 46 circular motions for his model. • So, it was still quite complicated to do astronomical calculations with Copernicus’ model, but much more simple to calculate with than the Ptolemaic model that required 70 circular motions. Copy of De Revolutionibus in Vilnius Library Publication history •Commentariolus (Little Commentary) circulated in MS form after 1514 •Narratio Prima (First Account) by Georg Joachim Rheticus, 1540 •De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus (foreword by Osiander), 1543 Copernican model (greatly exaggerated) Copernicus: summary • But Copernicus’ model did require many fewer circles ---Earth’s orbit than the Ptolemaic model, and so it was easier to calculate with. • It was used for calculating the astronomical tables that were the basis of the Gregorian calendar. ---Center of Earth’s orbit • But the Sun-centered model was largely regarded as an algorithm for calculation, and the Ptolemaic model was Sun considered the actual description of reality--it “made sense.” (How could birds ﬂy, for example, if the Earth were moving so fast round the Sun?) There was no theory of mechanics to explain how the Earth & other planets could go round the Sun. N.B. Copernicus still required epicycles and eccentric motion. • The Aristotelean idea of natural motion in the heavens was what “made sense.“.

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The Copernican Revolution Setting Both the Earth and Society in Motion
4/21/2014 The Copernican Revolution Setting both the Earth and Society in Motion David Linton EIU Physics Department November 5, 2013 Drawing an ellipse The Modern Picture of the Solar System . A planet moves in an ellipse with the Sun at one focus. A planet moves fastest when closest to the Sun, slowest when furthest. A planet would travel in a straight line were there not a force to hold it to the Sun – this force is supplied by “Gravity” – an attraction Focus Focus between masses, and weakens with increasing distance. A planet’s axis is “fixed’ in space. (Orbital Period)2 = (Semimajor Axis)3 (This derives from the Law of Gravitation and Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion) 1 4/21/2014 Drawing an ellipse Drawing an ellipse Focus Focus Sun For a planetary orbit, one focus is unoccupied. For a planetary orbit, one focus is unoccupied. 2 4/21/2014 Some Other Things We Now Know . Every planet beyond Earth has more than one moon. Both planets closer to the Sun than Earth have no moons. Comets orbit the Sun also. They are dirty icebergs (or icy dirtballs) orbiting along extremely stretched-out (meaning, highly eccentric) ellipses. Many of the comets we see as they pass near the Sun take many thousands of years to orbit one time. Retrograde Motion – the Heliocentric View Astronomy at Copernicus Birth (1473) . Ancient Greek Philosophers held that Earth was the center of Creation, that everything in the sky must wheel in circles about us. Circles were considered the perfect geometric form, and the Greeks had felt the Heavens to be perfect.
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The Reception of the Copernican Revolution Among Provençal Humanists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries*
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Copernicus's Heliocentric System a Thesis Submitted T
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