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
