Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicholas Copernicus (born Niklas Koppernigk; Latin, Nicolaus Copernicus; Polish, Mikołaj Kopernik; German, Nikolaus Kopernikus; Thorn, Royal Prussia, Kingdom of Poland February 19, 1473 – Frauenburg, Royal Prussia, Kingdom of Poland May 24, 1543) was a Polish-Prussian astronomer, of the Renaissance who formulated the heliocentric theory of the solar system, first conceived by Aristarchus of Samos. His book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the celestial spheres) is usually considered the starting point or founder of modern astronomy, as well as being a key piece in what was called the Scientific Revolution at the time of the Renaissance. Copernicus spent about twenty-five years working on the development of his heliocentric model of the universe. At that time it was difficult for scientists to accept it, since it was a real revolution.
Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist, physicist, Catholic cleric, governor, diplomat, and economist. Along with his extensive responsibilities, astronomy figured as little more than a distraction. Because of his enormous contribution to astronomy, in 1935 he gave the name "Copernicus" to one of the largest lunar craters, located in the Mare Insularum.
The heliocentric model is considered one of the most important theories in the history of science.
Copernicus did not publish his work in which he defended heliocentrism until 1543, the year of his death; however, his books would be included in the Index librorum prohibitorum , many years after his death, with the Galileo case.
Life and work
Nicholas Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473 in Thorn, Royal Prussia belonging to the Kingdom of Poland. His parents were Niklas Koppernigk and Barbara Koppernigk (born Barbara Watzenrode). He studied at the University of Kraków (1491-1494) probably under the guidance of the mathematician Wojciech Brudzewski. He traveled around Italy and enrolled at the University of Bologna (1496-1499), where he studied Law, Medicine, Greek, Philosophy, and worked as an assistant to the astronomer Domenico da Novara.
In 1500 he went to Rome, where he took a course in science and astronomy, and in 1501 he returned to his homeland and was made a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg, a position obtained thanks to the help of his uncle Lucas Watzenrode.
Despite his position, he returned to Italy, this time to Padua (1501-1507), to study Law and Medicine, making a brief stay in Ferrara (1503), where he obtained a doctorate in Canon Law.
Reinstated definitively in his country (1523), he dedicated himself to the administration of the diocese of Warmia, practiced medicine, held certain administrative positions and carried out his immense and essential work in the field of astronomy.
He died on May 24, 1543 in Frauenburg, Royal Prussia belonging to the Kingdom of Poland.
In 2005 a team of Polish archaeologists claimed to have found his remains in Frombork Cathedral, a theory that was verified in 2008 by analyzing a tooth and part of the skull and comparing it with a hair of his found in one of his manuscripts. Starting from the skull, police experts reconstructed his face, coinciding with that of his portrait.
On May 22, 2010, he received a second funeral at a Mass conducted by Józef Kowalczyk, Papal Nuncio to Poland and newly appointed Primate of Poland. His remains were reburied in the same place, in Frombork Cathedral. A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory and also bears the representation of Copernicus's model of the solar system, a golden sun surrounded by six of the planets.
Inspirers, according to Copernicus, of his theory
Copernicus was not the inventor of the heliocentric theory. According to Archimedes and Plutarch, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was a supporter of heliocentrism, since the 3rd century BC. Copernicus mentions, on the other hand, his predecessor, as well as the ancient sources that inspired him the hypothesis of the movement of the Earth. According to his own testimony, he began his research, as a good humanist, reading the texts of the Ancients:
For that reason I have taken the job of reading the books of all the philosophers I have been able to obtain, to find out if any of them had ever thought that the movements of the spheres of the world are different from those that admit those who teach mathematics in schools. And I found first in Cicero that Nicetus thought the Earth moved. Later I also found in Plutarco that some others had that same idea.Nicholas Copernicus of Revolutionibus orbium coelestium
In a quote from [pseudo] Plutarch, he named Philolaus the Pythagorean (for whom the Earth revolved, like the Sun and all the stars, around a central fire), Heracleides Pontus and Ekphantus the Pythagorean (who admitted the rotation of the Earth around its axis). And he continues:
From there, I myself have begun, too, to think of the mobility of the Earth
.
It should be noted that, if Copernicus recognized that these ancient astronomers had the idea of the movement of the Earth, he does not point out that Heraclides had imagined, in addition to the rotation of the Earth on itself, that Mercury and Venus revolved around the Sol, nor that Aristarchus was at the origin of a heliocentric system: he is content to write that, according to some, Aristarchus, like Philolaus, had admitted the mobility of the Earth. This single mention of Aristarchus, on the other hand, was struck out in the manuscript and did not appear in the printed version of De Revolutionibus.
Copernicus refers to Martianus Capella, as well as some other Latins, who estimated, in effect, that Venus and Mercury revolve around the Sun, which is in the center, and for this reason they cannot be separated from it more than the convexities of their orbits allow them. The Capella system (which he calls the Egyptian system, and which is that of Heraclides), in which only Venus and Mercury revolve around the Sun, and the latter and the other planets revolve around the Earth, could have led Copernicus to the path of heliocentrism.
Heliocentric model
In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter sent a series of letters to Rome summarizing Copernicus's theory. These were heard with great interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals.
By 1536, Copernicus's work was close to its final form, and rumors about his theory had reached the ears of all Europe. Copernicus was urged to publish from different parts of the continent.
In an epistle dated November 1536, the Archbishop of Capua, Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, asked Copernicus to communicate his ideas more widely and requested a copy for himself. Some have suggested that this letter may have made Copernicus suspicious of publishing, while others have suggested that this indicated the Church's desire to ensure that his ideas were published.[citation needed]
Despite pressure from various groups, Copernicus delayed the publication of his book, perhaps out of fear of criticism. Some historians consider that, if so, he was more concerned with the impact on the scientific world than on the religious one.
The main ideas of his theory were:
- The celestial movements are uniform, eternal, and circular or composed of different cycles (epiciclos).
- The center of the universe is near the Sun.
- Orbiting around the Sun, in order, there are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (they were not yet known as Uranus and Neptune).
- Stars are distant objects that remain fixed and therefore do not orbit around the Sun.
- The Earth presents three movements: the daily rotation, the annual revolution, and the annual inclination of its axis.
- The retrograde movement of the planets is explained by the Earth movement.
- The distance from Earth to the Sun is small compared to the distance to stars.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
His masterpiece, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the celestial spheres), was written over twenty-five years of work (1507-1532) and was published posthumously in 1543 by Andreas Osiander, but many of the basic ideas and observations it contains circulated through a booklet entitled De hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus (not published until 1878); which, despite its brevity, is of great precision and clarity.
Copernicus studied the writings of the Greek philosophers looking for references to the problem of the earth's movement, especially the Pythagoreans and Heraclides Ponticus, who believed in this theory. As for the heliocentric theory itself, as far as is known today, it was first conceived by Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC), whom he curiously does not name in his work. It is necessary to focus on the real value of his studies in the fact of reimposing theories already rejected by "common sense" and giving them a coherent scientific structure.
The basic break that it represented for medieval ideas, the replacement of a closed and hierarchical cosmos, with man as the center; by a homogeneous and indeterminate universe, located around the Sun, he made Copernicus hesitate to publish his work, being aware that this could lead to problems with the Church. Unfortunately, due to an illness that caused his death, he did not manage to see it published.
Copernicus was still working on De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (although not yet convinced that he wanted to publish it) when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a mathematician from Wittenberg, arrived in Frombork. Philipp Melanchthon had arranged for Rheticus to visit and study with various astronomers. Rheticus became a pupil of Copernicus, living with him for two years. Rheticus read Copernicus' manuscript and immediately wrote a non-technical summary of his main theories, in the form of an open letter to Schöner, his astrology professor at Nuremberg, and later published this letter as a book entitled Narratio Prima (first description), in Danzig in 1540. Rheticus's friend and mentor, Gasser Achilles, published a second edition of the Narratio in Basel in 1541. In 1542 Rheticus published a treatise on trigonometry written by Copernicus (later included in the second book of De revolutionibus).
Under great pressure from Rheticus, and having seen the favorable public reaction to his work, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend, Tiedemann Giese, Bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), to be delivered to Rheticus, and to be printed by Johannes Petreius, in Nuremberg. The first edition of De Revolutionibus appeared in 1543 (the same year as the author's death), with a long introduction in which he dedicated the work to Pope Paul III, attributing his ostensible motive for writing it to the inability of previous astronomers to reach agreement on an adequate theory of the planets and noting that if his system increased the accuracy of astronomical predictions, this would allow the Church to develop a more accurate calendar (a topic then of great interest and one of the reasons for financing astronomy by the Church).
The work itself was divided into six books:
- General vision of heliocentric theory, and a short explanation of its conception of the world.
- Basically theoretical, it presents the principles of spherical astronomy and a list of stars (as a basis for the arguments developed in following books).
- Dedicated mainly to the apparent movements of the Sun and related phenomena.
- Description of the Moon and its orbital movements.
- Specific explanation of the new system.
- Specific explanation of the new system (continued).
Editions
- From revolutionibus orbium coelestium (in Latin). Amsterdam: Willem Jansz Blaeu. 1617.
- From revolutionibus orbium coelestium (in Latin). Nürnberg: Johann Petreius. 1543.
Meaning of the work
The importance of Copernicus's work is that it is a revolutionary work, a precursor of great scientific changes. Said revolutionary character is not only in his writings but in setting in motion paths that will break down the barriers of thought. We must not forget that the work of Copernicus is still linked to the Ancient World, since certain Platonic premises are still valid in his thought as the two great principles of uniformity and circularity. However, with his work another great idea typical of modernity is consolidated: nature is losing its theological character, man is no longer the center of the universe, but Copernicus moves him to a mobile position, like that of any other planet..
From Copernicus the idea is unleashed that man is now governed by his Reason, which will be the faculty of the human being that makes him take part in the ordering of the Universe. Thus, man becomes an autonomous being that bases said autonomy on his reasoning capacity. Human reason can now take over Nature: dominate and control it. Thus man ceases to be the physical center of the Universe to become the rational center of the Universe. From now on we face the world, not contemplating it, but constructing hypotheses through man's capacities, which, when contrasted with nature, can be considered valid or not.
In this particular case, Copernicus had against the Christianity of the time that endorsed the Aristotelian assumptions of the ancient world. Aristotle wrote about literary theory, politics, ethics, metaphysics, logic, meteorology, physics, biology, astronomy... and all of it integrated coherently, which made it very difficult to attack a part without attacking the whole. At the same time, it made it possible, for that very reason, to set aside small difficulties that might arise in partial aspects. That is the fundamental reason for its permanence as a vision of the world over two thousand years. If we also add that, after its discovery by the medieval world, this system was Christianized and assumed by the Catholic Church through the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, we will better understand the resistance that he put up against its overcoming and to what extent it determined, not only the history of astronomy, but of science and culture.
The dissemination of the Copernican theory is carried out on a political and historical background, in which the religious problem existing since 1517 with the appearance on the scene of Lutheranism is of fundamental importance. In 1545 the Council of Trent began, which after three sessions, ending in 1563, established the radical reform of the Church and imposed a program of recovery and defense of the dogma against the reformist world. Pius V and Gregory XIII, between 1566 and 1585, will culminate the process of recovery of the Catholic Church in the second half of the XVI century, solved the problems of internal dissension and hierarchy. They spread ecclesiastical teaching and regained importance and influence in countries where the Protestant belief had become strong. But events in the heavens at the end of the XVI century, and Copernicus' observations of them, certainly undermined the authority and credibility of the philosophy behind Ptolemaic astronomy. The Protestant Church gradually surrenders to the situation and its opposition to heliocentrism disappears. The situation is turned around. From the end of the century it will be the Catholic Church that, using its organized power in the Inquisition, will turn heliocentrism into the most immediate enemy.
The work of Copernicus and the changes he proposes are projected on the previous state of astronomy and on the scientific and philosophical framework associated with it. In the text that we are now commenting on, the author makes a brief review of all those parts of astronomy prior to him that have become obsolete as a result of his discoveries: insecurity about the movements of the Sun and the Moon (since their annual movements are not could be established with certainty), the explanation of the movement of the planets was not acceptable either, since the same assumptions were not used for all (since in some cases homocentric circles are used, in other eccentric ones, epicycles, etc.), and above all, that the Universe was taken as a system of parts that lacks unity. In this way, at the end of the text, the author reflects and explains that the astronomy that preceded him was confusing in the sense that safe principles were not followed, but that in some cases some explanations were used, in others others, and that for the most part This leads to an incomplete "method" (since if the hypotheses that were raised were true, they could certainly be easily demonstrated).
The main ideas of Copernicus's work, which are opposed to those before him, are, among others, his idea of preserving the unity of movements and creating a more rational system of circles. Heliostatism and heliocentrism are not the premises but the conclusion. Also, he removes equants from astronomy because they don't seem to respect Plato's basic principles. He also changes his hypothesis and takes the one that the Sun remains still and the Earth moves (with a series of different movements: the movement of rotation, the movement of translation and the movement of declination that serves to explain the equinoxes). For this, Copernicus hypothesizes that there is no single center of all celestial spheres, and that the center of the Earth is not the center of the Universe (but the lunar center and the center of gravity).
All the spheres revolve around the Sun, which is their center of rotation, and the Sun is in the vicinity of the center of the World; it overcomes the parallax problem if we think that the stars are at a much greater distance than previously thought. In addition, any movement that seems to be carried out in the sphere of the stars is not such, but what is moving is the Earth (which rotates every day and makes a complete turn, while the sphere of the stars is immobile). In the same way, the movements of the Sun are not due to it, but to the Earth, which revolves around it just like the rest of the planets; and the retrograde and direct movements of the planets are not due to them, but to the movement of the Earth. We see, therefore, that proposing the hypothesis that the Earth moves serves to explain many of the irregularities in the movements of the Universe: it eliminates old problems and complicated tools such as equants, celestial spheres, etc.
Legacy
Copernicus is considered the precursor of modern astronomy, providing the foundations that allowed Newton to culminate the astronomical revolution, by moving from a geocentric universe to a heliocentric cosmos and irreversibly changing the view of the cosmos that had prevailed until then.
Thus, what is known as the Copernican revolution is his formulation of the heliocentric theory, according to which the Earth and the other stars revolve around the Sun. Despite the merits of his discovery, Copernicus did not fully realize the consequences that such a system necessarily implied. It would be Giordano Bruno, a philosopher, who would later complete the theoretical revolution that this hypothesis entailed: beyond the mathematical and quantitative field, from a logical point of view, the traditional Aristotelian and scholastic notions about finiteness and uniqueness would be discarded. of a universe ordered according to concentric spheres.
Acknowledgments
- His name appears in the Calendar of Saints Lutheran.
- The moon crater Copernicus received this name in his honor.
- The asteroid (1322) Coppernicus also owes it its name.
- The ESA Copernicus Space Program (in English, Copernicus Programme) also owes its name to astronomer.
- In the state of New York there is the Kopernik Observatory and Science Centre (in English, Kopernik Observatory " Science Center "), designated in his honor.
- In memory of Nicolas Copernico, on February 19, 2010, IUPAC named element 112 of the periodic table as a copernicio.