Copernicus's Theory Research Articles

Трансформация ренессансной картины мира в купольной архитектуре Италии в XV–XVI вв.

Monuments of the Italian Renaissance are considered as the symbols of cosmological ideas. The space of the temple is likened the universe in categories developed by the intellectuals of the Renaissance, given the astronomical model of AristotlePtolemy. Discoveries in science, the struggle of ideas and worldviews reflected in the church architecture and construction of country houses. The article was proven that the crisis of anthropocentrism caused by the consequences derived from the theory of Copernicus, reflected in the architectural practice of the 16st century.

Ludwik Antoni Birkenmajer and Curtis Wilson on the Origin of Nicholas Copernicus's Heliocentrism.

What moved Copernicus to switch from the time-honored geocentric to a heliocentric setup for the planetary system? He himself did not explain this momentous move in any detail--his only comments about it suggest that Ptolemy's complete solution to the problem of nonuniform motion, the equant model, led him to propose. Earth's annual motion around the Sun. The most widely accepted accounts of the origin of Copernicus's theory dismiss or dispute any direct relation between the principle of uniform motion and the heliocentric theory. Two scholars, the Polish expert on Copernicus Ludwik Antoni Birkenmajer (1855-1929) and the American historian of astronomy Curtis Wilson (1921-2012), constructed detailed arguments about how Copernicus's rejection of Ptolemy's solution led him to his theory. The principal aim of this essay is to reintroduce Birkenmajer's and Wilson's voices to the discussion of the origin of Copernicus's heliocentrism.

Pioneers in Optics: James Bradley and August Köhler

James Bradley was an English astronomer most famous for his discovery of the aberration of starlight. The finding was an important piece of evidence supporting Copernicus's theory that the Earth moved around the sun and also provided an alternative way to estimate the velocity of light.

The Post-Copernican Reception of Ptolemy: Erasmus Reinhold's Commented Edition of the Almagest, Book One (Wittenberg, 1549)

In years immediately following publication of Copernicus's De revolutioni- bus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543), illustrious Renaissance astronomer Erasmus Reinhold of Saalfeld (or Rheinholt Salveldensis, 1511-53) issued a com- mented Greek-and-Latin edition of first book of Ptolemy's Almagest under title Ptolemaei Mathematicae constructionis liber primus. It first appeared in Wit- tenberg, in 1549, from academic printer Johannes Lufft, and was reprinted in 1569 under variant title Regulae artis mathematicae. The 'cosmological' book of Almagest, presenting famous arguments in favour of terrestrial centrality and immobility, appeared thus in a university centre that played a deciding role in early dissemination of Copernicus. Reinhold himself was one of astronomers who most significantly contributed to Copernicus's reputation.1 The printer Guilliaume Cavellat reissued Reinhold's translation of Ptolemy (without original text) in Paris several times (1556,1557 and 1560), probably for students of College de Cambrai.2Erasmus Reinhold has been regarded as the leading mathematical astronomer of sixteenth century, second only to Copernicus.3 He was appointed as a profes- sor of mathematics at in years in which Melanchthon attracted and forged there an entire generation of Lutheran humanists. As a colleague of Nicholas Copernicus's only pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-74), Reinhold was one of first readers of De revolutionibus and also contributed to its success thanks to his Prutenicae tabulae (Tiibingen, 1551), based on it. These constituted an alternative to tradition of ephemerides computed from Alfonsine Tables.4 Most of sixteenth-century compilers of new tables and many ephemerists relied on Reinhold's tables - among them John Field (1520-87) in England, Johannes Stadius (c. 1527-79) in Flanders, Michael Mastlin (1550-1631) and David Origanus (1558-1628) in German Empire, and Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555-1617) south of Alps. Thus, Reinhold's tables facilitated a wide dissemination of Copernicus's numerical parameters and, indirectly, of his geometrical models and theories.5Still, unlike his colleague, Reinhold kept silent about heliocentric theory and limited his reception of De revolutionibus to celestial parameters and geometrical modelling. His approach became quite common for mathematicians belonging to network of Lutheran universities gravitating about and it is currently known as Wittenberg interpretation.6 In Prutenicae tabulae, Reinhold did not make his 'cosmological' presuppositions explicit, i.e., he did not express his opinion about terrestrial motion and solar immobility and centrality. As a matter of fact, these tables could be employed for sake of prediction independ- ently of any commitment concerning reality of terrestrial motion and of solar centrality and immobility. A computational approach had already been advocated by theologian Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), in his anonymous introduction to Copernicus's major work. However, his outlook was not embraced by most scholars belonging to Melanchthon's environment.Reinhold's silence about heliocentric hypotheses should not be confused with agnosticism or modern conventionalism. As Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein argued, school was not composed by Duhemian conventionalists trying to save phenomena independently of real structure of world. By contrast, they accepted those aspects of Copernicus's theory that suited their special understanding of natural order. In particular, they appreciated fact that Coperni- cus's geometrical models respected so-called astronomical axiom, according to which planetary motions are to be circular and uniform around their centres.7German and northern European scholars, such as Reinhold's pupil Kaspar Peucer (1525-1602), Konrad Dasypodius (1531-1601) and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), were even convinced that Copernicus's models could be translated into a 'physi- cally acceptable' geocentric framework. …

An Early Eighteenth-Century Discussion of Musical Acoustics by Étienne Loulié

An Early Eighteenth-Century Discussion of Musical Acoustics by Étienne Loulié. Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Numéro 2, 1981, p. 1-240) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Plausibility of Research Programs

Feyerabend, Kuhn, and Lakatos have held that no objective reasons can be given for entertaining or working on a particular new theory, paradigm, or research program. I shall examine one of the-main cases they appeal to and argue that, although Copernicus's theory was not superior to the Ptolemaic theory according to any of the usual criteria for comparing theories, it did have features which provided the early Copernicans with good reasons for entertaining it and trying to develop it further.Let us begin with Feyerabend. He has been a vigorous advocate of a “principle of proliferation” according to which scientists should always be considering alternatives to the theories currently accepted. Indeed, Feyerabend holds that scientists should strive to “invent and elaborate theories which are inconsistent with the accepted point of view, even if the latter should happen to be highly confirmed and generally accepted” ([4] , p.26).