This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Of course, this was very far from what officially accepted in dominant culture. And even farther from the actually ruling religious influence on science was the following conclusion that an infinitive reality rendered de facto impossible the hypothesis of an external "engine", an entity that from outside could give a soul, a power and a life to the World and to Human beings. No transcendence, the most evident inspiring theme of philosophy at that time, could find an explanation in such a cosmic system, none of the most basic dogmas of Christianism (but of other religions too, the same way) could be compatible with such a revolutionary theory; besides, this opened a way to immanence and immanentism, which remained and developed in modern philosophy.
Given that immanentism is the logical foundation of subjectivism, that finds inside the Man the principles that rule thought, history and reality, some find that Copernicanism demolished the foundations of medieval science and metaphysics, therefore giving a start to a general movement that would have brought modern thought to rebel against the objectivism and the authoritarism of traditional thought.
Correctly, his innovation has been quite unanimously defined as a real revolution (despite the unwanted calembour).
Immanuel Kant, for instance, caught the symbolic character of Copernicus' revolution (of which he put in evidence the trascendental rationalism) underlining that, in his vision, human rationality was the real legislator of the phenomenical reality; Copernicanism was in a winning opposition against the scientific and philosophical Aristotelism, a quite subjective position (in a Kantist sense) meant to fight against the ruling dogmatism.
More recent philosophers too have found in Copernicus a still valid and valuable philosophical meaning, properly used to describe the position of the modern man in front of cultural traditions. A so-called Homo Copernicanus was then by some described like that modern man whose central themes are to be found in ordinary human problems, as a general cultural reference.
I removed the following about Aristarchus:
None of these statements is based on fact, they are speculations -- we don't have Aristarchus' main work about heliocentrism, and we can only speculate that his conclusions about the mass of the sun may have led him to put it at the center, but such speculations are weak at best -- for all we know, Aristarchus' may have developed the entire Copernican theory. See Aristarchus for what we know and what we don't know.
Oh, and whether Aristarchus ever was in Alexandria is disputed, so I removed that, too. -- Eloquence
The text of de rev is great--the graphics don't come out on my screen.. could someone add something about the order of the planets and the concentric spheres of copernicus?
I can't read the graphic this morning ;-) - Smkatz 15:02, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
When this get unprotected, could someone put in this link? thanks ... JDR
Once upon a time, many people who approached this article from a pretty neutral POV decided to work together on this article. We had edit wars with POV people on both the German and Polish sides of the question, and eventually came up with a version, written mostly by
Gianfranco that was acceptable to most. No one was completely happy, but we could agree that the article was both neutral and accurate.
I notice that once again nationalist politics have entered the fray. The article is now written in considerably less correct and readable English, and has lost much of its overall quality. I hope you all are happy in destroying a superior example of wiki cooperation and replacing it with something much weaker, just to make your own petty points. It is both a shame and shameful. JHK
Now that the nationalist wars seem to have gone dormant for the moment, we might be able to work a little on the article's treatment of Copernicus and his work. Yeah, radical idea. Does anybody feel up to tackling the long philosophical Discussion with all its transcendence and the like? One feels that more things, and different ones, could be said. Meanwhile, not being a philosopher, I hope to get in some more material about the historical fate of his system. Dandrake 03:11, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
I have had to remove this interesting bit from the text concerning the Osiander preface:
(Doubts have been advanced regarding this volunteer addition in order to let the theory have a wider circulation before a foreseeable reaction - see text here [1]).
because the link appears to be dead. Dandrake 04:06, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
Having nothing to do with nationality... The "equant" link under Copernican Theory points to an unrelated corporate stub. Article and disambig needed here. Does anyone remember exactly what an equant is anyway? I think it's an off-center circular orbit but I'm not sure. Stay tuned. Mashford 18:40, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I recently made my first contribution to Wikipedia, by adding links to two digitized facsimiles of De revolutionibus here. I did this after noticing that links to translated text from the work and a scan of the title page were included in the list of the links. I knew these digitized full versions existed, so I added them. However, one of them was produced by my institution (hence my awareness) and I am now concerned whether this link would be appropriate or seen as promotional in nature. I added similar links to the De revolutionibus and Brahe articles. Could someone inform me of the proper etiquette? I have looked at the policy and etiquette pages, which only made me further conflicted and unsure about the matter. I feel these links would make helpful additions to these articles, but do not want to break any policies or accepted practices. Thanks much for the help.
Is anyone interested in a revision of this section? It's all about philosophical and religious implications, and it sounds, shall we say, idiosyncratic, and it seems to be unsupported by citations. Much of it seems just downright dubious.
If someone has an interest in the section, it would be nice to edit it so that one can tell what it's about and how it relates to what anyone other than the author thinks. If no one has, the best treatment for it might be excision. -- Dandrake 04:53, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
We have a section in the Scientific Mythology article that reads as below,
I wonder to what extent did Copernicus use epicycles; were there more or fewer epicycles than in the Ptolemaic system? As I understand, epicycles and other corrective mechanisms were added to the Ptolemaic system over time, so I would expect it to be more complex, if only because it is older, here (in the extract) we say the opposite.
There is also some confusion about the reasons for Copernicus withholding publication. Quite honestly, the link we are asked to follow didn't help me decide. Perhaps someone could here could clarify.
Finally a question of my own: was the Copernican system more or less accurate than the Ptolemaic? My understanding is that there was no great difference. -- Chris 08:58, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I removed the lengthy, duplicate "Discussion" section from the article. If it is important it should be folded into the main text. I also tried to clarify exactly what Copernicus's theory did and did not do. I'm not an expert on Copernicus thought I've read some of the major historical debates about his work; so I apologize in advance. -- Fastfission 14:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Looks like they found him in northern Poland, although it may take some days for them to determine how sure they are of this.
nature.com links to this article, see http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-3.html pretty fun isnt it? :) just wanted to let you know.. Foant 14:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
"Therefore alongside the ancient hypotheses, which are no more probable, let us permit these new hypotheses also to become known, especially since they are admirable as well as simple and bring with them a huge treasure of very skillful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it. Farewell."
This quote is from Andreas Osiander who wrote the preface to Copernicus' work without signing it as such. So it should most probably not be listed as a quote under the subheading Copernicus. --Neil 06.30, 16 January 2006 (GMT)
Although the present article mentions that two indian astronomers predated copernicus by a 1000 years, enough detail is not provided. Moreover, the article credits copernicus with presenting his theory in a 'scientifically useful way'. On further examination, i have found that Aryabhata and Bhaskara not only were pioneers in proposing a heliocentric concept, but also several other astronomical and geometric ideas. Even the 11th century arab traveler to India, Al-Beruni, writes about this concept in his book, which means that it had survived scrutiny and was accepted as common knowledge in India for about 700 Years. This makes copernicus' re-discovery very trivial and annoys me no end that He is credited with figuring this out. I highly dispute the veracity of this article and further that little if any serious acknowledgement has been made that Copernicus may have directly borrowed from the knowledge of Aryabhata and Bhaskara I. I am presently trying to dig up more to help restore credit where it truly belongs.
My Rebuttal: That is exactly my point. Dear sir, if you had read what i have written you would also have noticed that I mention that there isnt enough acknowledgement that he may have directly borrowed it from elsewhere. Arabia, India and China were quite advanced in mathematics by 1000CE, and although the arabs didnt believe that the earth revolved around the sun, there is evidence that the Indians and Chinese may have understood this very well and based most of their astronomical calculations on that fact. Indian and Chinese astronomy was advanced to the point of being able to predict the occurences of comet sweeps and meteor showers, which means they had a scientific basis for their beliefs. Aryabhata and bhaskara have detailed mathematical formulations about heliocentrism, which if it had been paid attention to, would have helped clear this major misconception much earlier. I am not criticizing Copernicus, but the the fact may just be that most discoveries attributed to the orient just gets swallowed up as mysticism until europe was ready for this new theory. Although Aryabhatas forumulations are in sanskrit, it is definitely not incomprehensible. The point of scientific departure arrived in europe in the 1400s, which is when people were willing to accept this new theory. A thousand years before that, europe was just not ready, so what ever advanced contribution is made before that is easily consigned to the exotic and mystical section of the library. In the same volume of Aryabhatas that i refered to, he also proposes Gravity, however, he doesnt elaborate much on that. So there is no argument there, but not with heliocentrism. Copernicus' just acknowledging the fact of the presence of other 'primitive' theories doesnt alleviate the fact that the whole of europe wished to exist in ignorance believing that the earth was the centre of the universe. Giri 18:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC) (More to come in the near future)
I think its irrelevant-especially as the city wasn't active it seems past 1403 within the alliance anyway. -- Molobo 01:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Of course, this was very far from what officially accepted in dominant culture. And even farther from the actually ruling religious influence on science was the following conclusion that an infinitive reality rendered de facto impossible the hypothesis of an external "engine", an entity that from outside could give a soul, a power and a life to the World and to Human beings. No transcendence, the most evident inspiring theme of philosophy at that time, could find an explanation in such a cosmic system, none of the most basic dogmas of Christianism (but of other religions too, the same way) could be compatible with such a revolutionary theory; besides, this opened a way to immanence and immanentism, which remained and developed in modern philosophy.
Given that immanentism is the logical foundation of subjectivism, that finds inside the Man the principles that rule thought, history and reality, some find that Copernicanism demolished the foundations of medieval science and metaphysics, therefore giving a start to a general movement that would have brought modern thought to rebel against the objectivism and the authoritarism of traditional thought.
Correctly, his innovation has been quite unanimously defined as a real revolution (despite the unwanted calembour).
Immanuel Kant, for instance, caught the symbolic character of Copernicus' revolution (of which he put in evidence the trascendental rationalism) underlining that, in his vision, human rationality was the real legislator of the phenomenical reality; Copernicanism was in a winning opposition against the scientific and philosophical Aristotelism, a quite subjective position (in a Kantist sense) meant to fight against the ruling dogmatism.
More recent philosophers too have found in Copernicus a still valid and valuable philosophical meaning, properly used to describe the position of the modern man in front of cultural traditions. A so-called Homo Copernicanus was then by some described like that modern man whose central themes are to be found in ordinary human problems, as a general cultural reference.
I removed the following about Aristarchus:
None of these statements is based on fact, they are speculations -- we don't have Aristarchus' main work about heliocentrism, and we can only speculate that his conclusions about the mass of the sun may have led him to put it at the center, but such speculations are weak at best -- for all we know, Aristarchus' may have developed the entire Copernican theory. See Aristarchus for what we know and what we don't know.
Oh, and whether Aristarchus ever was in Alexandria is disputed, so I removed that, too. -- Eloquence
The text of de rev is great--the graphics don't come out on my screen.. could someone add something about the order of the planets and the concentric spheres of copernicus?
I can't read the graphic this morning ;-) - Smkatz 15:02, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
When this get unprotected, could someone put in this link? thanks ... JDR
Once upon a time, many people who approached this article from a pretty neutral POV decided to work together on this article. We had edit wars with POV people on both the German and Polish sides of the question, and eventually came up with a version, written mostly by
Gianfranco that was acceptable to most. No one was completely happy, but we could agree that the article was both neutral and accurate.
I notice that once again nationalist politics have entered the fray. The article is now written in considerably less correct and readable English, and has lost much of its overall quality. I hope you all are happy in destroying a superior example of wiki cooperation and replacing it with something much weaker, just to make your own petty points. It is both a shame and shameful. JHK
Now that the nationalist wars seem to have gone dormant for the moment, we might be able to work a little on the article's treatment of Copernicus and his work. Yeah, radical idea. Does anybody feel up to tackling the long philosophical Discussion with all its transcendence and the like? One feels that more things, and different ones, could be said. Meanwhile, not being a philosopher, I hope to get in some more material about the historical fate of his system. Dandrake 03:11, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
I have had to remove this interesting bit from the text concerning the Osiander preface:
(Doubts have been advanced regarding this volunteer addition in order to let the theory have a wider circulation before a foreseeable reaction - see text here [1]).
because the link appears to be dead. Dandrake 04:06, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
Having nothing to do with nationality... The "equant" link under Copernican Theory points to an unrelated corporate stub. Article and disambig needed here. Does anyone remember exactly what an equant is anyway? I think it's an off-center circular orbit but I'm not sure. Stay tuned. Mashford 18:40, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I recently made my first contribution to Wikipedia, by adding links to two digitized facsimiles of De revolutionibus here. I did this after noticing that links to translated text from the work and a scan of the title page were included in the list of the links. I knew these digitized full versions existed, so I added them. However, one of them was produced by my institution (hence my awareness) and I am now concerned whether this link would be appropriate or seen as promotional in nature. I added similar links to the De revolutionibus and Brahe articles. Could someone inform me of the proper etiquette? I have looked at the policy and etiquette pages, which only made me further conflicted and unsure about the matter. I feel these links would make helpful additions to these articles, but do not want to break any policies or accepted practices. Thanks much for the help.
Is anyone interested in a revision of this section? It's all about philosophical and religious implications, and it sounds, shall we say, idiosyncratic, and it seems to be unsupported by citations. Much of it seems just downright dubious.
If someone has an interest in the section, it would be nice to edit it so that one can tell what it's about and how it relates to what anyone other than the author thinks. If no one has, the best treatment for it might be excision. -- Dandrake 04:53, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
We have a section in the Scientific Mythology article that reads as below,
I wonder to what extent did Copernicus use epicycles; were there more or fewer epicycles than in the Ptolemaic system? As I understand, epicycles and other corrective mechanisms were added to the Ptolemaic system over time, so I would expect it to be more complex, if only because it is older, here (in the extract) we say the opposite.
There is also some confusion about the reasons for Copernicus withholding publication. Quite honestly, the link we are asked to follow didn't help me decide. Perhaps someone could here could clarify.
Finally a question of my own: was the Copernican system more or less accurate than the Ptolemaic? My understanding is that there was no great difference. -- Chris 08:58, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I removed the lengthy, duplicate "Discussion" section from the article. If it is important it should be folded into the main text. I also tried to clarify exactly what Copernicus's theory did and did not do. I'm not an expert on Copernicus thought I've read some of the major historical debates about his work; so I apologize in advance. -- Fastfission 14:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Looks like they found him in northern Poland, although it may take some days for them to determine how sure they are of this.
nature.com links to this article, see http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-3.html pretty fun isnt it? :) just wanted to let you know.. Foant 14:40, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
"Therefore alongside the ancient hypotheses, which are no more probable, let us permit these new hypotheses also to become known, especially since they are admirable as well as simple and bring with them a huge treasure of very skillful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it. Farewell."
This quote is from Andreas Osiander who wrote the preface to Copernicus' work without signing it as such. So it should most probably not be listed as a quote under the subheading Copernicus. --Neil 06.30, 16 January 2006 (GMT)
Although the present article mentions that two indian astronomers predated copernicus by a 1000 years, enough detail is not provided. Moreover, the article credits copernicus with presenting his theory in a 'scientifically useful way'. On further examination, i have found that Aryabhata and Bhaskara not only were pioneers in proposing a heliocentric concept, but also several other astronomical and geometric ideas. Even the 11th century arab traveler to India, Al-Beruni, writes about this concept in his book, which means that it had survived scrutiny and was accepted as common knowledge in India for about 700 Years. This makes copernicus' re-discovery very trivial and annoys me no end that He is credited with figuring this out. I highly dispute the veracity of this article and further that little if any serious acknowledgement has been made that Copernicus may have directly borrowed from the knowledge of Aryabhata and Bhaskara I. I am presently trying to dig up more to help restore credit where it truly belongs.
My Rebuttal: That is exactly my point. Dear sir, if you had read what i have written you would also have noticed that I mention that there isnt enough acknowledgement that he may have directly borrowed it from elsewhere. Arabia, India and China were quite advanced in mathematics by 1000CE, and although the arabs didnt believe that the earth revolved around the sun, there is evidence that the Indians and Chinese may have understood this very well and based most of their astronomical calculations on that fact. Indian and Chinese astronomy was advanced to the point of being able to predict the occurences of comet sweeps and meteor showers, which means they had a scientific basis for their beliefs. Aryabhata and bhaskara have detailed mathematical formulations about heliocentrism, which if it had been paid attention to, would have helped clear this major misconception much earlier. I am not criticizing Copernicus, but the the fact may just be that most discoveries attributed to the orient just gets swallowed up as mysticism until europe was ready for this new theory. Although Aryabhatas forumulations are in sanskrit, it is definitely not incomprehensible. The point of scientific departure arrived in europe in the 1400s, which is when people were willing to accept this new theory. A thousand years before that, europe was just not ready, so what ever advanced contribution is made before that is easily consigned to the exotic and mystical section of the library. In the same volume of Aryabhatas that i refered to, he also proposes Gravity, however, he doesnt elaborate much on that. So there is no argument there, but not with heliocentrism. Copernicus' just acknowledging the fact of the presence of other 'primitive' theories doesnt alleviate the fact that the whole of europe wished to exist in ignorance believing that the earth was the centre of the universe. Giri 18:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC) (More to come in the near future)
I think its irrelevant-especially as the city wasn't active it seems past 1403 within the alliance anyway. -- Molobo 01:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)