To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science
by Steven Weinberg · 17 Feb 2015 · 532pp · 133,143 words
variation in the distance of the Moon from the Earth that had afflicted Ptolemy’s lunar theory. The early work of Copernicus reported in his Commentariolus presents a lunar theory that is identical to Ibn al-Shatir’s, and a planetary theory that gives the same apparent motions as the theory
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after he came to Frombork, Copernicus wrote a short anonymous work, later titled De hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus, and generally known as the Commentariolus, or Little Commentary.1 The Commentariolus was not published until long after its author’s death, and so was not as influential as his later writings
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it gives a good account of the ideas that guided his work. After a brief criticism of earlier theories of the planets, Copernicus in the Commentariolus states seven principles of his new theory. Here is a paraphrase, with some added comments: 1. There is no one center of the orbits of
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apparent annual motion of the stars caused by the Earth’s motion around the Sun. But the problem of parallax is nowhere mentioned in the Commentariolus.) 5. The apparent daily motion of the stars around the Earth arises entirely from the Earth’s rotation on its axis. 6. The apparent motion
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, occurring when the Earth passes Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn, or is passed in its orbit by Mercury or Venus. Copernicus could not claim in the Commentariolus that his scheme fitted observation better than that of Ptolemy. For one thing, it didn’t. Indeed, it couldn’t, since for the most part
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theory can be selected on aesthetic criteria, with no experimental evidence that favors it over other theories. The case for the Copernican theory in the Commentariolus was simply that a great deal of what was peculiar about the Ptolemaic theory was explained at one blow by the revolution and rotation of
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truth if he had not bothered with epicycles, and had left the small inaccuracies of the theory to be dealt with in the future. The Commentariolus did not give much in the way of technical details. These were supplied in his great work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium,5 commonly known as
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together that in no portion of it can anything be shifted without disrupting the remaining parts and the universe as a whole. As in the Commentariolus, Copernicus was appealing to the fact that his theory was more predictive than Ptolemy’s; it dictated a unique order of planets and the sizes
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; this had to wait for Galileo’s observations of planetary phases. Most of De Revolutionibus is extremely technical, fleshing out the general ideas of the Commentariolus. One point worth special mention is that in Book 1 Copernicus states an a priori commitment to motion composed of circles. Thus Chapter 1 of
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views of Geminus around 70 BC (quoted here in Chapter 8), but it was quite contrary to the evident intention of Copernicus, in both the Commentariolus and De Revolutionibus, to describe the actual constitution of what is now called the solar system. Whatever individual clergymen may have thought about a heliocentric
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(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1939), or Noel M. Swerdlow, “The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’s Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, 423 (1973). 2. For a review, see N. Jardine, Journal of the History of Astronomy 13
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, trans. A. M. Duncan (Barnes and Noble, New York, 1976). , Three Copernican Treatises, trans. E. Rosen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1939). Consists of Commentariolus, Letter Against Werner, and Narratio prima of Rheticus. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th ed. (John Murray, London
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and, 182, 186, 205 Halley’s, 247, 250 Kepler and, 161 Newton and, 237, 244, 247 Tycho and, 159–60, 168 commensurable lines, 282–85 Commentariolus (Copernicus), 117, 148–51, 153–54, 157 complex numbers, 163 cone, volume of, 19 conic section, 40, 194, 235, 237 ellipse and, 318–19 parabolas
More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos
by Dava Sobel · 1 Sep 2011 · 271pp · 68,440 words
is not the center of the universe, but only the center towards which heavy things move and the center of the lunar sphere. —FROM THE Commentariolus, OR Brief Sketch, BY COPERNICUS, CA. 1510 In 1510, when Copernicus, at thirty-seven, assumed his position in residence as a canon of Varmia in
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are intended for a larger book.” Then he proceeded to count and clarify all the individual planetary motions, arriving, in the final paragraph of the Commentariolus, at the grand total: “Mercury runs on seven circles in all; Venus on five; the earth on three, and round it the moon on four
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the most excellent Almighty.” Beyond the periphery of the stars, God and His Angels hovered in the invisible heavens of the Empyrean. After completing the Commentariolus around 1510, Copernicus began the slow work of elaborating his theory. The thirty-four circles of the planetary ballet now required exact design specifications, such
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along the tree line, and rode high in the sky, easily sighted through countless cloudless nights. Everything Copernicus knew about Ptolemy when he prepared the Commentariolus, he learned from an abridged interpretation of Ptolemy’s work, called the Epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest, published in Venice in 1496. Now, as he
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for the book he wanted to write, in which he would rebuild astronomy in a framework as impressive and enduring as Ptolemy’s. Meanwhile the Commentariolus, his prequel to On the Revolutions, was already making his name as an astronomer. This growing recognition no doubt accounted for the invitation Copernicus received
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, I have combined their translations. Astronomer and historian Noel Swerdlow, now a visiting associate at Caltech, translated several Copernican documents, including the Brief Sketch, or Commentariolus, and printer Johann Petreius’s open dedication letter to Rheticus. CHAPTER 1 p. 3 “The cricket … the wayfarers.” Rosen, Minor Works, 30. p. 4 “marvelous
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’s Letter to Rheticus.” Isis 83:2 (June 1992): 273–74. ———. “The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’s Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 6 (December 1973): 423–512. ———. “Pseudodoxia Copernicana.” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 26, no
Big Bang
by Simon Singh · 1 Jan 2004 · 492pp · 149,259 words
11/2 publications. Even more surprising, these 11/2 publications were hardly read during his lifetime. The 1/2 refers to his first work, the Commentariolus (‘Little Commentary’), which was handwritten, never formally published and circulated only among a few people in roughly 1514. Nevertheless, in just twenty pages Copernicus shook
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, which was at the root of Aristarchus’ philosophy, and it was Aristarchus who had first posited the Sun-centred model 1,700 years earlier. The Commentariolus was a manifesto for an astronomical mutiny, an expression of Copernicus’s frustration and disillusionment with the ugly complexity of the ancient Ptolemaic model. Later
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a small observatory and concentrated on fleshing out his argument, adding in all the mathematical detail that was missing in the Commentariolus. Copernicus spent the next thirty years reworking his Commentariolus, expanding it into an authoritative two-hundred-page manuscript. Throughout this prolonged period of research, he spent a great deal of
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230-5, 231 Columbia University 424 comets 147, 170, 180 computers 326 Comte, Auguste 229,237 Copernicus, Nicholas 37-47, 71,129, 367,401,485; Commentariolus 37-9; De revolutionibus 41-4, 42, 46,49,53, 63,70; errors exposed 53-4; planetary phases predicted 63-6; Sun-centred universe 38
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
by David Wootton · 7 Dec 2015 · 1,197pp · 304,245 words
. But we know that Copernicus had first formulated his views by 1514, for at that date at least one copy of his preliminary sketch, the Commentariolus, or Little Commentary, was in existence.49 He gives us two accounts of the development of his thinking, one at the beginning of the Little
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Translations of Primary Sources’. Perspectives on Science 20 (2012): 353–78. ———. ‘The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’s Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary’. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117 (1973): 423–512. ———. ‘An Essay on Thomas Kuhn’s First Scientific Revolution: The Copernican Revolution’. American
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, 184 rejecting the ancients 73 social status 283 comets 191–3, 303, 619–20n59 ‘Comment on Grünbaum’s Claim, A’ (W. V. O. Quine) 514n Commentariolus (Nicolaus Copernicus) 137–8, 139, 142 common sense 529, 532, 533, 537, 543 Common Sense (Thomas Paine) 20 compasses 327–30 deviation and dip 481
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
by Timothy Ferris · 30 Jun 1988 · 661pp · 169,298 words
MacCurdy, 1939, p. 276. CHAPTER FOUR: THE SUN WORSHIPERS 1. Copernicus, On the Revolutions, Duncan translation, preface. 2. In Panofsky, 1969, p. 10. 3. Copernicus, Commentariolus, in Rosen, 1959. 4. Copernicus, On the Revolutions, John Dobson and Selig Brodetsky, translators, Occasional Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 2, No. 10
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. A.M. Duncan. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976. —————.On the Revolutions, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. —————. Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus, the Letter Against Werner, the Narratio Prima of Rheticus, ed. and trans. Edward Rosen. New York: Dover, 1959. Shorter works of Copernicus not
The Ages of Globalization
by Jeffrey D. Sachs · 2 Jun 2020
Florence published The Prince, his handbook of power for European princes. In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus, in Krakow, circulated an early draft of his heliocentric theory, Commentariolus, which was formally published three decades later. In the following year, 1515, Sir Thomas More published Utopia, focusing European minds on the possibilities of political
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Code of Hammurabi, 66 coffee, 119–20 cold zones, 24 colonial era, 163–64 Columbian exchange, 100–103, 101 Columbus, Christopher, 11, 99, 99, 108 Commentariolus (Copernicus), 105 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 27, 112, 113 communications, 15 competitive exclusion, 37 computers, 4–5, 170–71, 175 Conference of Berlin (1885
Life Is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe
by Johnjoe McFadden · 27 Sep 2021
much of the complexity that heliocentricity had eliminated. Despite this setback, in 1514, the year Rheticus was born, Copernicus posted a short astronomical treatise entitled Commentariolus (Little Commentary) to a select group of European scholars. His paper created a ripple of curiosity that even reached Rome where it received a positive
Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science
by Jim Al-Khalili · 28 Sep 2010 · 467pp · 114,570 words
Medieval Planetary Theory’, Isis, 57 (1966), pp. 365–78. 11. Noel Swerdlow, ‘The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’ Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117 (1973), p. 426. 12. Willy Hartner, ‘Copernicus, the Man, the Work, and its History’, Proceedings of
The Book: A Cover-To-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time
by Keith Houston · 21 Aug 2016 · 482pp · 125,429 words
Publishing, 2005), 15–18. 31. Davies, Aldus Manutius, 14–15. 32. Ibid., 20–26. 33. Ibid., 33–39; “Cornucopiae Linguae Latinae (Ed: Aldus Manutius). Add: Commentariolus in Prohemium Historiae Naturalis Plinii. Cornelius Vitellius: Epistola Parthenio Benacensi,” Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, British Library, accessed November 1, 2014, http://istc.bl.uk/search
Labyrinths
by Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James E. Irby, William Gibson and André Maurois · 1 Jan 1962 · 276pp · 91,719 words
elaborate apparatus of hollow, transparent and gyrating spheres (one system required 55 of them) had come to be an intellectual necessity; De hypothesibus motuum coelestium commentariolus is the timid title which Copernicus, denier of Aristotle, placed at the head of the manuscript that transformed our vision of the cosmos. For one
Leonardo Da Vinci
by Walter Isaacson · 16 Oct 2017 · 799pp · 187,221 words
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
by Rebecca Boyle · 16 Jan 2024 · 354pp · 109,574 words