Copernicus II

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8 Copernicus II:

Is Copernican Theory True ?


For Whom, Under What Circumstances
- Another Look at the Scorecard
In the last Chapter we were trying to form a judgement about the ‘goodness’ of
Copernicus’ theory compared to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory. We did this using
facts and beliefs, current in the 16th century, because we were trying to understand the
basis of their judgment without using the benefit of 200 years of hindsight. That is, we
wanted to avoid Whig history. We found that we cannot simply read off the truth or
falsity of Copernican or Aristotle-Ptolemaic system from the collection and weightings
of facts they explain or predict, because they each have slightly different collections of
facts, slightly different weightings of facts and also truth is not something that can be
read directly off a theory, because you can only make out the truth of the theory by
judging it upon some criteria, such as accuracy, simplicity, consistency with accepted
knowledge, and confirmed novel predictions. Even then the meaning, the number and
the weighting of those criteria can themselves be argued about. We tried to evaluate
the two theories, and we found that Copernicanism was very probably in difficulties in
the 16th century. It had nothing in accuracy or simplicity over Aristotle-Ptolemy. It
was going against what was accepted knowledge, some of that being basic
commitments in Natural Philosophy or physics. It made some interesting new
predictions, but they did not seem to be supported by the evidence, so therefore they
were viewed as false predictions.

Obviously, Copernicus was not pretending to have the benefit of the argument so far.
He obviously felt that the argument so far was not very important, for there was another
criterion, which Copernicus considered to be the overwhelmingly important one. It
amounted to something like this: “Does your theory, taken as a whole, have any point
of mathematical beauty or elegance about it ?. If it were a work of architecture, would
you say it was beautiful, or ramshackle and Gerry-built ?” If it is beautiful, it is true; if
it is not beautiful, it is not true. Now this sounds a very subjective judgement, but then,
some of these criteria were thoroughly subjective. This criterion is what we are going
to explore in this Chapter.

Before we examine this issue, we have to be reminded of one or two things. If you are
an astronomer like Ptolemy or Copernicus your basic concern is to get an accurate
model for the motion of the planets, one planet at a time. As an astronomer you would
match up the predicted positions of the planet with the available data. You would wind
up with a model on paper having perhaps an eccentric, a deferent, a few epicycles and
specified speeds of rotation so that you could manipulate the model to predict the
planet’s positions over time. Imagine Copernicus could put the model of each of his
planets on a modern overhead transparency; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn. If you set them down one on top of the other you have a cosmos. Now, what if
you take the assemblage of the transparencies (the superimposing of which constitutes
the cosmos); what if you look at it and can see elegant mathematical features in this
cosmos that you did not realise were there and that are beautiful in terms of
astronomical theory. If you did that, then you would be doing something similar to
what Copernicus was doing.

Now these points of mathematical elegance in the total picture Copernicus calls
Cosmic Harmonies. ‘Cosmic’ because they pertain to the total cosmic theory, that is all
of the models superimposed together, and ‘harmonies’ because he is thinking in terms
of Greek musical and architectural theory, where simple mathematical relations are
called harmonious. For example, the Greeks had discovered how to interpret the
existence of nice, pleasing musical consonances, such as the octave, in terms of simple
ratios of lengths of a sounding chord or string -- an octave is sounded by a chord
plucked in a 2:1 ratio of lengths. Plato and his school, and before them, the
8: Copernicus II: Is Copernican Theory True ?

Pythagorean philosophers, had been especially impressed by the way simple


mathematical relations seemed to govern such beautiful physical phenomena. This idea
had carried over into Greek and Roman architectural theory and was revived in the
European Renaissance. A beautiful building was defined by embodying simple ratios
and proportions of size and shape -- and the beautiful, in this mathematical sense, was
what was sought in a good building.

Now we shall see that this element of Platonic philosophy plays a large role in the
early story of Copernicanism, for what Copernicus and his early followers stressed was
the presence in his cosmos of almost architectural mathematical relations which made it
not only pretty, but necessarily true--in their view! The Copernican cosmos was a
beautiful building made by God the architect, whereas the Ptolemaic cosmos was, in
their view, a mess, not embodying harmonies, and thus not the sort of cosmic building
that God would have bothered in fact to create! So Copernicus’ key contention was that
if his cosmos had these mathematical harmonies in them, then his cosmos must be the
true one.

Figure 1, diagrams I to VII, outline the architectural points or Cosmic Harmonies


that Copernicus discerns in his cosmos: The fine mathematical relations that he
thought his cosmos possessed, that the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmos did not have.

Let us look at just two of these cosmic harmonies, you can study the others from the
diagram, with the help detailed analysis in Kuhn's, The Copernican Revolution.

First, Why are Mercury and Venus never very far away from the Sun? (diagram I).
This was a ‘fact’ accepted in astronomy since the Babylonians, and well known by the
Greeks, and Medieval and Renaissance Europeans as well. Mercury and Venus follow
the Sun around the sky or sometimes the Sun follows them, but these planets are never
far away from the Sun. Each of these two planets has a rather small angle beyond
which it is never further away from the sun in angular terms. Ptolemy knew this and
accepted this as a fact. Ptolemy explained it by as usual having the Earth in the middle
of the cosmos and making up a rule for constructing the model of Venus’ motion: The
centre of the epicycle of Venus must always lie on the line joining the Earth and the
Sun. This is why Venus has an orbital time around the Earth, west to east, of 365 days
on average. And, this means that it is never very far from the Sun; it can be at one end
of the epicycle or the other and the angle as seen from the Earth is within the angle beta
in the diagram. Therefore, Ptolemy accepts the fact and explains it theoretically.

Copernicus also accepts as a fact that Venus is never very far from the Sun, but, he
disagrees with the rule for Venus’ epicycle. Copernicus states that Venus is never very
far from the Sun because the Earth is in the third orbit around the Sun and Venus is in
the second orbit. So, when we look in toward the Sun we inevitably look towards
Venus as well because of our larger orbit. Copernicus has the same facts as Ptolemy,
but in his view this fact is explained simply and directly by the architecture of the orbits
of the earth and Venus--provided the earth has an orbit! Copernicus considers this more
stylish and harmonious than the Ptolemaic rule of Venus’ epicycle, because Ptolemy
has to add an extra rule or aspect to his model to account for the agreed fact. There is
no difference in their observed facts or in the accuracy with which they can predict the
facts, but there is a difference in architectural elegance. You have to almost be a
student of aesthetics to see the difference in their views -- but there is a difference.
Copernicus, acting in a rather ‘Platonic’ manner believes his model must be true
because of its mathematical elegance.

The second cosmic harmony to be discussed involves the retrogression of the planets.
(diagram III). We have already seen in Chapter 6 how Ptolemy explains the
retrogressions and retrogression periods of the planets by using one largish epicycle for
each planet for this purpose. This is recapped in diagram III. For his part, Copernicus
has a rather daring claim to make. He states that if you relate the Earth’s orbit to those
of the other planets you will immediately see that the planets do not actually retrogress,
they only seem to do so! (diagram III). The illusion of retrogression appears when the

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The Scientific Revolution: An Introduction to the History & Philosophy of Science

Earth, moving in its orbit, comes up from behind an outer (slower) planet, like Mars,
Jupiter, or Saturn, and passes the planet like a runner lapping a slower runner. As we
observe Mars, Jupiter and Saturn from the moving Earth, the planets seem to slow
down, back up, slow down, stop and then resume their normal course. This also applies
to the inner planets, Venus, and Mercury -- they are faster than the Earth and therefore,
lap the Earth. As we observe them lapping us, we see them apparently slow down,
move backwards, then slow down and resume their normal path. So, there are no
retrogressions, no loops in space, there are only geometrical relationships between the
planets in their orbits, which when viewed from the moving earth make the loops
appear to us. Copernicus therefore also adds that he can remove five of Ptolemy’s
epicycles, the ones used by Ptolemy to explain retrogressions; although, as discussed
later, he has to add other new epicycles for other reasons.

This is one of the best examples of what Copernicus considers an architectural or a


mathematical elegance in his theory. Copernicus does not have a more accurate
prediction of apparent retrogression; he does not have more accurate prediction of the
data of planetary positions; he has in his view, a more elegant theory. That is because
(apparent) retrogression is now explained simply as arising from the geometry of the
relations of the orbits (provided the earth moves on an orbit!), whereas Ptolemy needed
a special epicycle for each planet to explain its (real) looping.

Copernicus has other harmonies as well, which also follow from the relationship of the
orbits of the planets in his system. These are fully discussed in Kuhn The Copernican
Revolution., and outlined in the rest of Figure 1.

In sum, Copernicus is telling us that this criterion of elegance is the whole emphasis of
his system. His attitude is that he wins the game on this basis of the cosmic harmonies.
But that is only on his scorecard. The Aristotelian answer to this is that the Copernican
theory is false: his new predictions are false and the entire theory is inconsistent with
the way the world is known to be -- the earth does not move, there is no evidence for
that at all. To an Aristotelian the elegance of Copernicus’ theory is unimportant,
because in fact, in reality the Earth does not move. The so-called harmonies are
artefacts on paper -- how can they make a physically impossible theory true? Indeed!
So, recalling the last Chapter, we see again that what is unimportant to one side is
essential to the other, and interestingly, major debates over scientific theories are often
something like this.

We are therefore presented with two immediate historical and biographical problems:
Why is Copernicus emphasising these ‘harmonies’? And, why would anyone agree
with him? The first thing we need to say about Copernicus is he was Polish. In the 16th
century Poland was the 'wild east' of European civilisation, distant from the
cosmopolitan centres of Italy and Southern Germany. After all, next to Poland was
Tsarist Russia which had not even begun to become the half-Europeanised country that
it became in the 18th and 19th centuries. Poland was the end of European civilisation
so perhaps, because Nicholas Copernicus came from a distant part of Europe he had a
different attitude to what was happening in Europe than perhaps people from more
cosmopolitan centres.

Nicholas Copernicus, as a young man, went to Italy to finish his education, where he
stayed for 8 years until he returned to Poland. He took minor orders in the Church and
became a Canon (Church Official) in a Cathedral. In Italy he was exposed to the best
of both worlds. At the University of Padua, near Venice, he polished his Aristotelian
education (Padua was the leading centre of Aristotelian discussion and debate). In
Italy, which was about to be invaded by the great powers--the French, Spanish and
Austrians--Copernicus was also exposed to the tail-end of Italian Renaissance culture.

The Renaissance means many things, but for our purpose, in trying to understand the
young Copernicus, it has two main aspects. The first is Humanism. One way of
looking at Humanism in the Renaissance is to say that it was a serious and concerted
attempt to reach back across the Middle Ages, back to Greek and Roman authorities

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8: Copernicus II: Is Copernican Theory True ?

(writers) especially in the so-called human studies such as: Philosophy, Rhetoric,
Classical Latin, Ancient Greek, Ethics, Ancient Political History. The purpose of
Humanism was to have something to teach to young Italian gentlemen (this is before it
spread all over Europe) that they could not get from their Scholastic professors in the
Universities. Humanism was supposed to be a relevant body of learning that enabled
gentlemen to function in the real world as a diplomat, administrator, a person of affairs,
and so on.

A key aspect of 16th century Humanism was that Humanist scholars were beginning to
run out of ancient literary, historical and poetical texts to examine, so they had started
to look at some of the unstudied or understudied scientific and philosophical works of
antiquity, something that the earlier Italian Humanists had not done very much. So,
right about the time of Copernicus, some astronomers, who had been touched by the
Humanist outlook in culture and scholarship, were saying that it would be interesting to
go back to something like the original (Greek) text of Ptolemy, to try to reconstruct the
original text and to discover whether what the great Ptolemy had really said had been
preserved or distorted by the long intervening tradition of Moslem and Christian
Medieval scholarship.

Among the Humanists of the Renaissance, Aristotle was not the favoured philosopher
because his philosophy was the heavily entrenched foundation of the Scholastic
Universities. The Humanists’ hero was Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, for he had been a
philosopher of art, had written elegant dialogues and was seriously interested in
politics. To them Plato had a wisdom and an artistry that Aristotle, who seemed to
them a stodgy pedant, did not seem to have.

Plato’s philosophy differed from that of Aristotle in many aspects; but; the crucial one
here is that as far as Plato was concerned Nature was constructed on a mathematical
blueprint. Plato and Aristotle disagreed strongly on this point. As far as Aristotle was
concerned, mathematics was not fundamental to reality: mathematics was a human
abstraction made by looking at and observing everyday objects. Plato’s own treatise of
Natural Philosophy, the dialogue titled The Timaeus, had emphasised that the cosmos
was divinely constructed on the basis of an elegant mathematical blueprint, full of
simply mathematical harmonies. To be a Platonist in the Renaissance involved some
sort of commitment, at least in general, vague terms, to the correctness of this rather
non-Aristotelian faith in the mathematical structure of reality. So clearly, there was a
Platonist streak in Copernicus and he was expecting to win the debate over
astronomical theory on the basis of a Platonist’s interpretation of the ‘score’.

Let’s then consider for a moment what kind of person Copernicus was, and ask, “Why
and how a certain Platonic philosophical perspective shaped his astronomy?” Well he
was in many ways still an Aristotelian (we see this in some of his subsidiary arguments
for his system), but he was also strongly tinged with Humanism, and Platonism, from
his Italian University days. Given this, there are several viable hypothetical stories of
how he arrived at his theory and its justification and this is just one of them:

Like other young humanistically influenced astronomers of his time, the young
Copernicus examined the versions of Ptolemy that had been supposedly cleansed of
their layers of Medieval/Scholastic interpretation. He was disappointed in the results.
As far as he could tell, getting close to Ptolemy’s original system was no better than the
Medieval version of his system which had come through the Universities. Many people
had realised this after examining what was considered an improved text (or version) of
Ptolemy.

But there was something about the ‘real’ Ptolemy that especially annoyed the young
Copernicus (whereas it did not bother other astronomers). What disturbed Copernicus
was that the Ptolemy of the 'improved texts' used equants within his planetary models,
just as the traditional versions of Ptolemy did (cf Chapter 6). Copernicus was aghast at
Ptolemy using equants, instead of uniform circular motion about the centre of deferent
circles, and he considered the equants a ‘cheat’, a violation of the original rule of Plato

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The Scientific Revolution: An Introduction to the History & Philosophy of Science

(cf Chapter 6) that astronomical models use only combinations of uniform circular
motions. He seems to have thought that uniform circular motion around a point not in
the centre of the deferent circle violated the rule. He was determined to build an
astronomy without equants.

But why? In the whole astronomical tradition nobody else had reacted so against the
equant. Well, perhaps it was a combination of a kind of devotion to Platonism,
combined with a kind of rough and ready, “bush” attitude to the literal meaning of
Plato’s famous rule for astronomy. Perhaps being from the frontiers of Europe and
suddenly being thrust into the middle of a great, sophisticated humanist search for the
‘real’ Ptolemy prompted this oddly insistent attitude.

Now, Copernicus was a clever astronomer and he saw that the equants can be
removed, but the catch is, that every equant you remove mathematically has to be
replaced by two epicycles, or an epicycle on an eccentric, therefore, Copernicus ends
up with more epicycles than the Ptolemaic system. At this point, Copernicus
remembered something out of the ancient literature about astronomy; There had been
an ancient Greek astronomer named Aristarchus who had suggested a Sun-centred
system. Copernicus tried, for purposes of model building putting the Sun in the centre
of his cosmos and by doing so he rid the system of retrogressions, meaning that he can
get rid of 5 epicycles, which is nice, since he has had to add extra ones to get rid of the
nasty equants!

So, Copernicus assumes the Sun is in the centre of the system as a hypothesis and
spends many years figuring out Sun-centred models for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter and Saturn. This takes an enormous amount of time because they have to be
worked out to be as accurate as the Ptolemaic models. When the models are assembled
into a cosmos, it begins to dawn on him that not only are the retrogressions explained
but there is a whole harmonic structure to this total system. (Remembering that
Copernicus is a bit of a Platonist) he thinks that his blueprint is so elegant, that
therefore, it must be true. (This path to the discovery is summarised in figure 2).

Some historians of science think that this is a plausible story of Copernicus, the
‘backwoods’ Humanist and Platonist, spurred by the desire to get rid of the equant,
stumbling upon the beautiful blueprint, which to his somewhat Platonist viewpoint
must seem, therefore, to be True. If he went through a process like this then that would
explain his peculiar viewpoint: He never worried much about consistency with accepted
knowledge or confirmed new predictions because he knew what he thought was
important, he had experienced this process of ‘discovery’ and this seemed to be almost
a revelation; for in Christian Platonic terms, God who is great ‘architect’ drew the
blueprint, therefore, Copernicus’ theory is God’s own blueprint finally revealed to a
human beings. Minor difficulties, for instance the fact that there is no shred of
evidence to prove that the Earth can or does move, will iron themselves out!

Well, Copernicus may have thought that; and he may have liked his version of the
‘score’, but the historical fact of the matter is that few people in the 16th century
agreed. Between 1543 and about 1600 you can count the number of true believers in
Copernicanism in Europe on less than two hands. Copernicanism did not look like a
winner in the two generations after its publication. We shall see that this was not
because people were stupid or biased in the 16th century. Rather, it’s because the
theory did not have a good score in the view of the overwhelming majority of educated-
-and smart--people! This makes the historical problem look rather different. Our
problem becomes one of figuring out who ever agreed with Copernicanism, and why,
and how it did become established much later in the 17th century.

These questions will be probed in Chapters 12 to 14, and in Chapters 17 and 18 which
deal with Galileo’s troubles with the Catholic Church 90 years later. But, before
returning to the history of the Copernican debate we are going to stop and assess in
Section 3, the next three Chapters, the issue of whether the idea of scientific method
(and the Whiggish view of science that it promotes) can help us understand this history,

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8: Copernicus II: Is Copernican Theory True ?

or whether it obscures and hides our access to a reasonable historical understanding. If


we can free ourselves of the grip of the ‘story of science’ as the Whiggish ‘story of
method’, we shall be well on the way to a demystified understanding of the origins of
modern science.

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The Scientific Revolution: An Introduction to the History & Philosophy of Science

graphic 1

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8: Copernicus II: Is Copernican Theory True ?

graphic 2

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The Scientific Revolution: An Introduction to the History & Philosophy of Science

graphic 3

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8: Copernicus II: Is Copernican Theory True ?

Figure 2

Try Sun-Centred
System as
Hypothetical Model

Build
Planetary
Models

Harmonies Sun-Centred
Fall Out model
is
therefore
TRUE!
Platonisnm
and
Humanism

69

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