Assignment 2: The Copernican Revolution

Assignment 2: The Copernican Revolution

By: Yarlesha Anantharajah

999839340

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473 in Torun, Poland.  Copernicus developed his own celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system in Circa 1508.  Copernicus was given numerous titles such as diplomat (signed peace treaty), physician (advising dukes)
, economist (financial reform), classical scholar and translator, jurist Quadrilingual polyglot, astronomer, and lastly a mathematician.  Copernicus finally published his findings in 1514, about the Commentariolus. He had a second book published on the topic of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, but the Roman Catholic Church not long following his death on May 24, 1543 in Frauenburg, Poland banned it.

Pythagoras was the first person known to have discovered and taught that the earth was spherical.  He was also the one to conclude that the earth traveled around the sun.  His founding was primarily based on the mystic viewpoint, not on astronomical grounds. It is believed that Copernicus adopted parts of Pythagorean worldview.  Pythagoras also produced the notion of the “Music of the spheres” which can be comprehended by the human mathematical mind.  However, although Copernicus did refer to the work of Pythagoras, he adapted physics to the demands of astronomy which was not included in Pythagoras’ work, believing that the principles of his system were incorrect, not the math or observations.  Copernicus was the first individual in history to create a complete and general system, combining mathematics, physics, and cosmology to his framework. 

Regarding Copernicus’ work and models, he believed that the Sun was the center of the universe while the earth rotated on its axis along with revolving around the Sun.  Copernicus started doubting Ptolemy’s geocentric model dating back to his college days.  He wrote a book named Commentariolus, also referred to as Little Commentary in which was a forty-page manuscript.

Copernicus also wrote another book titled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres). This book was essentially finished by about 1532.

In the Copernican model, the earth moves faster along its orbit, instead of the planets that lie further off from the Sun. However, it periodically overtakes and passes these planets, and thus the same thing happens as the Earth passes a planet such as Mars. Although Mars has a steady motion along its orbit, it seems to slow down to a stop and move westward in relation to the background stars as Earth passes it with the eastward motion in precisely the same path it followed earlier.  Copernicus’s model was very simple and easily comprehendible compared to the Ptolemaic model.  The Copernican hypothesis was gradually accepted, and has been given an alternative name called the Copernican Revolution.  This revolution was not just the adoption of a new idea but a total change in the way astronomers and the rest of humanity thought about the place of Earth.  

Unlike other astrologists, Copernican was never scared of showcasing his work, and he was surprisingly strongly encouraged by his Church to publish his results and methods, because it was believed to be useful for predicting planet positions also for Church purposes. 
 His ideas were further conversed in seminars being taught at Vatican. 

In the end I believe that his first finding that "the Earth is spinning around its axis every day, while the immense distant world of stars is motionless" is indeed true.  As the earth spins, the starts remain motionless, and it is all about perspective in the end.  Through his mathematics, he can measure the rotation of the planets, among the solar system proving that the stars indeed were motionless and it is just an illusion from the perspective from the earth. 

References 

http://www.biography.com/people/nicolaus-copernicus-9256984

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Copernicus.html

Lecture 5/6 Slide