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Coprevte, English Translation) De Revolutionibus Orbium O™ www.octavo.com ■ Nicolaus Copernicus De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI Nuremberg, 1543 The Edward Rosen translation of De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publications, 1978), copyright © Edward Rosen, 1978, is used with permission of Sandra Rosen. Professor Rosen’s book includes Copernicus’ original manuscript, mathematical expan- sions, notes, and emendations. This Octavo Edition uses only that part of Rosen’s text referring to the first edition of De Revolutionibus (with the exception of text clarifying Copernicus’ original meanings), references to texts of Ptolemy and Euclid, and references that direct the reader to other parts of De Revolutionibus. Using this Translation The pages of this translation have two columns: the larger left column con- tains the translated text; the narrow right column contains page references and thumbnails of the book. Clicking on a reference (displayed in red), or the Thumbnail, will open that view in the Read version of the digital book.This translation file has been designed to be printed on letter-size paper. About the translation The following note, kindly provided by Owen Gingerich, explains the dif- ficulties encountered by translators and readers of De Revolutionibus. Any translator of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus faces three major challenges. First, Copernicus lived before the equals sign was invented. All his math- ematical steps are described in words, not equations. Should the text be rendered in mathematically modern but anachronistic style? Likewise, the punctuation, sentence lengths, and paragraphing are much different from modern styles. How literally should the translation follow the sixteenth- century conventions? ©1999 Octavo Corporation. All rights reserved. Second, this is a technical treatise, and various interpreters will not agree on™ the technical translation of certain critical terms.O For example, near the end of Book I, Chapter 10, the cosmological climax of the book, Copernicus uses a word derived from the Greek, symmetria. Professor www.octavo.comRosen has trans- lated it simply as “symmetry,” whereas others would look to the Greek root ■ and make it “commensurability.” In Book III, Chapter 20, where Copernicus treats the technical details of his models, he distinguishes between epicyclus and epicyclius. Professor Rosen carefully maintains this difference between “epicycle” and “epicyclet,” whereas others have blurred this nuance. Finally, the word orbis appears in the title and throughout the early part of the book; Copernicus sometimes uses it in the sense of “sphere” and at other times in the sense of “circle.” Which translation should be used has generated in- tense and sometimes acrimonious controversy. Third, the printed book itself is not free from errors and inconsistencies. It seems that Copernicus proofread the printed sheets as they were sent back to Poland, and those errors he found were included in a printed errata sheet issued by the printer in Nuremberg. By the time the printing was com- pleted, not all of the sheets had been corrected by Copernicus, but a hand list of later errors was provided, presumably by Copernicu himself, and used by an inner circle of scholars in Nuremberg and Wittenberg – errors that of course remained uncorrected in the great majority of copies. Other astute readers, such as Erasmus Reinhold, the astronomy professor in Wittenberg, caught still other errors, such as 182 in place of 183 on page 171v (6 lines from the bottom) of the printed book. Errors such as these have been corrected in the present translation, and explaining discrepancies between the printed Latin edition and the English translation. Other discrepancies are more subtle. For example, it seems that Copernicus’ disciple Rheticus reworked some of the tables to bring them in line with the numbers that Copernicus had in the text as a result of revisions he made after his earlier calculation of the tables. The Polish scholars who created the Latin text that Professor Rosen used for his translation believed that such changes were not the original work of Copernicus – they suppressed the changes even though a more perceptive examination shows that in such cases the printed text is actually to be preferred. To the original publisher’s title page blurb, Eme, lege, fruere (“Buy, read, en- joy!”), might well be added, Caveat lector! Nicolaus Copernicus title page of Toru´n Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres Diligent reader, in this work, which has just been created and published, you have the motions of the fixed stars and planets, as these motions have been reconstituted on the basis of ancient as well as recent observations, and have moreover been embel- lished by new and marvelous hypotheses. You also have most convenient tables, from which you will be able to compute those motions with the utmost ease for any time whatever. Therefore buy, read, and enjoy. Let no one untrained in geometry enter here. Nuremberg Johannes Petreius 1543 To the Reader foreword Concerning the Hypotheses of this Work. There have already been widespread reports about the novel hypotheses of this work, which declares that the earth moves whereas the sun is at rest in the center of the universe. Hence certain scholars, I have no doubt, are deeply of- fended and believe that the liberal arts, which were established long ago on a sound basis, should not be thrown into confusion. But if these men are willing to examine the matter closely, they will find that the author of this work has done nothing blameworthy. For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study. Then he must conceive and devise the causes of these motions or hypotheses about them. Since he cannot in any way attain to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of geometry for the future as well as for the past. The present author has per- formed both these duties excellently. For these hypotheses need not be true nor 3 Nicolaus Copernicus. De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI. Nuremberg, 1543. THE WARNOCK LIBRARY O even probable. On the contrary, if they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough. Perhaps there is someone who is so igno- rant of geometry and optics that he regards the epicycle of Venus as probable, or thinks that it is the reason why Venus sometimes precedes and sometimes follows the sun by forty degrees and even more. Is there anyone who is not aware that from this assumption it necessarily follows that the diameter of the planet at perigee should appear more than four times, and the body of the planet more than sixteen times, as great as at apogee? Yet this variation is re- futed by the experience of every age. In this science there are some other no less important absurdities, which need not be set forth at the moment. For this art, it is quite clear, is completely and absolutely ignorant of the causes of the ap- parent nonuniform motions. And if any causes are devised by the imagination, as indeed very many are, they are not put forward to convince anyone that they are true, but merely to provide a reliable basis for computation. However, since different hypotheses are sometimes offered for one and the same motion (for example, eccentricity and an epicycle for the sun’s motion), the astronomer will take as his first choice that hypothesis which is the easiest to grasp. The phi- losopher will perhaps rather seek the semblance of the truth. But neither of them will understand or state anything certain, unless it has letter been divinely revealed to him. Therefore alongside the ancient hypotheses, which are no more probable, let us permit these new hypotheses also to become known, especially since they are admirable as well as simple and bring with them a huge treasure of very skillful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect any- thing certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it. Farewell. Nicholas Schonberg, Cardinal of Capua, to Nicholas Copernicus, Greetings. Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which every- body constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you, and also to congratulate our contemporaries among whom you enjoyed such great prestige. For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discov- eries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies 4 Nicolaus Copernicus. De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI. Nuremberg, 1543. THE WARNOCK LIBRARY O the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe; that the eighth heaven remains perpetually motionless and fixed; and that, together with the elements included in its sphere, the moon, situated between the heavens of Mars and Venus, revolves around the sun in the period of a year. I have also learned that you have written an exposition of this whole system of astronomy, and have computed the planetary motions and set them down in tables, to the greatest admiration of all. Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject. Moreover, I have instructed Theodoric of Reden to have everything copied in your quarters at my expense and dispatched to me.
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