A More Perfect Heaven:
How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos
by Dava Sobel
exclusive extract
Posted on 09/03/2011 11:16:21 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
In September 1496, at his uncle's command, Copernicus travelled to Italy to study canon law, concerning the rights and duties of the clergy, at the University of Bologna... The death of one of the 16 Varmia canons created a vacancy, and Bishop Watzenrode used his connections to win Copernicus the office in absentia. As the 14th canon of the cathedral chapter -- in effect a trustee in the powerful governing body of the Varmia diocese -- Copernicus could now collect an income independent of his allowance.
He lodged in Bologna with the local astronomy professor, Domenico Maria Novara, whom he assisted in nightly observations... Copernicus encountered an ordained exception in Tiedemann Giese, a fellow canon seven years younger than he. Giese came from a well-known family in Danzig and shared with Copernicus an abiding interest in astronomy. Giese was almost certainly the first to hear Copernicus confess his secret knowledge of the cosmos.
By 1510, Copernicus had leapt to his Sun-centred conclusion via intuition and mathematics. No astronomical observations were required. He wrote out a short overview of his new heavenly arrangement, also probably in 1510, and sent it off to at least one correspondent beyond Varmia. That person, in turn, copied the document for further circulation, and presumably the new recipients did, too, because by May of 1514, when the Krakow physician and medical professor called Matthew of Miechow inventoried his private library, it contained "a manuscript of six leaves containing a Theorica [astronomy essay] in which the author asserts that the Earth moves while the Sun stands still".
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
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What?
An ancient Greek scientist, Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century B.C.), is known to have proposed the heliocentric theory ("the fixed stars and sun remained unmoved...the earth revolves around the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit"), and also assumed that the earth rotates on its own axis.
Ironically, Aristarchus' only surviving work is based on the geocentric theory.
Copernicus was aware of Aristarchus.
You’re kidding.
Kidding about what? That the sun is in motion?
The sun and the solar system are revolving around the center of the Milky Way, moving along at about 135 miles per second, while the earth is revolving around the sun in its orbit at about 18 miles per second. The Milky Way galaxy as a whole is also in motion.
Stock up on Dramamine.
You need a funny bone transplant. What on earth made you think that an old lady, who was educated before the leftists took over the schools, has no idea about the order of the solar system and the universe?
You have inserted yourself pedantically into a conversation between me and my friend, SunkenCiv. You have failed miserably to notice the tongue-in-cheek nature of my responses, and you have been a pedantic nit picker, lecturing someone to whom what you have to say is very, very old news.
Get another life, for you’re not doing very well in this one.
Damn Copernicus! I liked the world the way it was!
I learned that Copernicus, who is considered a national hero in Poland, might not have even spoken Polish, but German, and of course Latin.
Kind of like we man-caused global warming “skeptics.”
Don’t look at me, I love you both. :’) “A Study in Scarlet —
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it...
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Damned busybody, that’s what he was.
the full excerpt (this is a clip from an excerpt of the book) has some details about Copernicus’ only astronomy student, who besides being a Lutheran to C’s R Catholicism, was in the manner of the young all fired up about his received philosophy about astronomy. Aristotle’s writings on the subject helped hold back the science of astronomy until the present day — the last blow to one of his idiocies was struck in 1994, when the fragments of SL-9 crashed one by one into Jupiter, leaving Earth-sized scars in the Jovian atmosphere.
Could you elaborate? Which of Aristotle’s idiocies was disproven by the comet fragments crashing into Jupiter?
Aristotle’s claim that stones don’t fall from the sky; even though his underlying basis of belief had been abandoned (a sphere with holes in it, orbiting the Earth the holes let the light from outside twinkle in), the idea that one celestial body can just barrel on into another body had been pushed off into an early period, the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment, which was comfortably billions of years in the past, never to be repeated. Even the fact that meteorites have killed people and animals continues to be widely denied, and there’s still a small, loud, and kinda angry lynch mob that is after the Alvarez model.
What puzzles me is that when the Left usurped the “scientific method” to install their secular faith into all things academic they did not re-adopt the Ptolemaic System as it too had the potential to make man the center of the universe like socialism does.With a minor fabricated “peer reviewed” fib,a talent ubiquitous in Leftist academia,the original promotion of God’s affectionate focus on man that made the original Geocentric Model attractive to the ruling priestly class could not only be dismissed and it’s proponents shunned and sued to bankruptcy as violating the nonexistent constitutional separation of church and state— The “Man as Satan” Gaia and Gore theological misanthropy could then logically take the place of God at the center of the universe thus making ALL opposition to the church of environmentalist wackos heretical,treasonous and felonies against humanity—all CAPITAL CRIMES.
Socialism doesn’t do that — socialism sez you’re just like the things you produce, and easily replaced, hence, unimportant. It’s a breakdown of individualism, in order to keep the elite in power. The only real competition in socialist systems is internal to the political class (and not part of the phony democratic process), and there it is complete ruthlessness.
Individualism and free will and free markets are antithetical for people who liked everything spoonfed from a can.
There is also the western European variety of socialism which uses only mild forms of coercion, no concentration camps or secret police, allows free elections, etc. Their problem, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out, is sooner or later you run out of other people's money, which is why the EU is in crisis now.
I don't think the American socialists like Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas would have emulated Lenin or Stalin--they seem to have been genuinely repelled by what they knew of Stalinism--but of course they never were in a position of political power. Given human nature, I don't think they would have had much success--to the extent that FDR and other Democrats were influenced by them, the impact has been negative (prolonging the Depression and creating unfunded liabilities for entitlements).
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