Abstract
A methodology of historical or higher criticism and of stylometry/stylochronometry known from Biblical and literary studies is applied to the examination of Nicolaus Copernicus’s writings. In particular, his early work Commentariolus is compared at the level of the Latin language with his later ones (Meditata, Letter against Werner and De revolutionibus) as well as the texts of some other authors. A number of striking stylistic dissimilarities between these works have been identified and interpreted in the light of stylometry/stylochronometry, historical criticism and the history of Copernican research. The conducted research allowed to draw some plausible conclusions about the Sitz im Leben (historical context), the dating of Commentariolus and related matters.
Highlights
Meetings with a history of interpretations) by Michał Kokowski is an attempt to establish what might properly be called the science of metacopernicology – the research of all research ever produced on Nicolaus Copernicus and Science beyond borders his writings made from the perspective of history of ideas1
The upper bound for probability of the style markers selected by us occurring simultaneously is the product of the corresponding values: p0 ≤ pquidem * ptunc * phic * CUBsed-autem * CUBergo-igitur = 0.000016 * 0.000427 * 0.007699 * 0.194 * 0.077 ≈ 7.86 * 10–13, so it is vanishingly small
These differences have normally been explained by referring to the texts as belonging to different literary genres and/or by pointing to several decades transpiring between these works
Summary
Birkenmajer’s speech “Zakres filologicznych prac typu analityczno-komentatorskiego” [The scope of philological works of the analytical and commentary type] delivered at the General Assembly of the Polish Philological Society in Toruń in 1952 and published for the first time after his death in 1968 that he pointed to three elements, fruitful for future research: examination of the autograph, improved translations into Polish and what he called “analytical studies”3 He primarily understood the latter as locating Latin sources. Since the genuinely new documentary evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to find, searching for more subtle clues seems to be the only way forward When developing this influential line of thought, it can be constructively suggested that a deeper investigation into Copernicus’s writings could be done by adopting the well-known (from Biblical and literary studies) methodology of historical (higher) criticism as well as the modern science of stylometry. The present paper focuses on the analysis of Copernicus’s use of Latin language – i.e. his writing style
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