QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

philosophers, including Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC), had proposed that the earth was
moving. No-one had developed this hypothesis to its ultimate astronomical and mathematical
conclusion. When the Scholastics at the universities started to criticise Aristotle and antique
tradition supported the position of the sun as advocated by the Neo-Platonists, Copernicus was
emboldened to abandon the geocentric tradition which had dominated astronomy for almost 2000
years. Convinced that the earth was actually moving, he proposed a heliocentric universe and
provided mathematical consequences of this hypothesis. Copernicus did not, however, rush to
publicise his revolutionary ideas. He had written a brief manuscript on the subject in 1514, and
circulated this among his acquaintances. Two decades later, in the presence of the Pope,
Copernicus gave a lecture on his principles and received formal permission to publish a book.
Despite the encouragement of his friends, he continued to delay matters and only agreed to the
publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, a book dedicated to the Pope, shortly
before his death. 164
It is often thought that fear of the Inquisition was the cause of Copernicus’ unwillingness to
publish his thoughts. 165 In fact, he was never the personal target of persecution of any kind. In
the preface to De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, he explains that his unwillingness to
publish his insights into the mysteries of nature derived from the Pythagorean tradition of
keeping such things secret – since among the uninitiated they might only arouse mockery. After
all, his proposition that the earth both turned on its own axis and moved around the sun was in
such contrast to everyday observation that most people could not take them seriously in any way
at all. To counter many apparent objections, Copernicus could plead only that his conception
threw the facts of astronomy into a simpler and more harmonous mathematical order 166 .
In 1543, in the very last days of his life, Copernicus was able however to handle a printed copy
of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. This work consists of two parts which differ widely in
their aim and character. The first part provides a lucid and simplified exposition of the new
world system and is designed for the general reader, the second part is written for the
professional astronomer. The second part provides the highly-complicated details of the system
and constitutes a text of the same grade of difficulty as Ptolemy’s Almagest. It has been claimed
that apart for the application of the new methods of trigonometrical calculation, there is nothing
in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium that could not have been equally well written by a
164
Tarnas 1998, 218, 248-251.
165
Esim. White 1998, 73.
166
Burt 1980, 38.
69