Abstract
One of the most important and enduring philosophical issues in the history of science has been the purpose and status of scientific theories. It is an issue with a long history; but in its modern form it can be traced back to the publication of Copernicus’s major work, De Revolutionibus Coelestium Orbium (1543). The appearance of that work generated a continuing controversy, both by the nature of its central claim — terrestrial mobility — and by the discrepancy between Copernicus’s novel claim for the truth of his theory and the then-prevailing view of the hypothetical nature of all such theories. The latter point of view was expressed in the anonymous letter to the reader prefixed to the beginning of the printed work by its editor, Andreas Osiander.2 Between these two points of view about the status of scientific theories lies the root of the modern Realist-Instrumentalist debate and the more recent discussions concerning the rationality of scientific theories.
Earlier versions of this paper were given at the Midwest Junto of the History of Science Society, at the University of Western Ontario, to a Philosophy Colloquium at Nottingham University, England, and informally to members of the Copernicus Research Institute in Warsaw, Poland, during a sabbatical fellowship in 1977.
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Notes and References
Earlier versions of this paper were given at the Midwest Junto of the History of Science Society, at the University of Western Ontario, to a Philosophy Colloquium at Nottingham University, England, and informally to members of the Copernicus Research Institute in Warsaw, Poland, during a sabbatical fellowship in 1977.
On О slander’s involvement with Copernicus, see my Andreas Osiander’s Contribution to the Copernican Achievement in R. S. Westman (ed.), The Copernican Achievement, Univ. of California Press, Los Angeles, 1975.
A good survey of the issue may be found in A. Mugrave and I. Lakatos (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1970, and in F. Suppe (ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd ed., Univ. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1977.
I use the word discovery in a qualified way, since Copernicus, of course, did not discover terrestrial mobility.
Bessel discovered stellar parallax in 1818. In 1616 Galileo observed the phases of Venus, which are predicted by Copernicus’s theory, but that has no bearing on his discovery or his own justification of it.
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, op. cit., pp. 33, 56–57, 93–118. Feyera- bend’s views are summarized in his Problems of Empiricism, in R. Colodny (ed.), Beyond the Edge of Certainty, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965.
This distinction was first formulated by Hans Reichenbach in his Experience and Prediction, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1938.
From the title of N. R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cam-bridge, 1958.
Jerome Ravetz, The Origin of the Copernican Revolution, in Scientific American 236 (August, 1977), 88–98.
At most, the reform initiated by the council and coordinated by Paul of Middelburg gave additional impetus to the investigations he already had in progress. His Commen- tariolus appeared before the report of Paul to Leo X was issued, in which Paul reports receiving an opinion from Copernicus. Copernicus refers to this briefly, near the end of his letter of dedication.
Contrary to Edward Rosen, I do not believe Copernicus differentiates his position from the Pythagorean belief in a moving earth. What he says is, Let no one suppose that I have gratuitously (ie., rashly or without reasons) assumed, with the Pythagoreans, the motion of the earth That this is not a disassociation of his belief from theirs, as Rosen believes, is supported by the places in the Revolutions where he clearly states his indebtedness to them for their ideas of terrestrial mobility, and not just for their policy of private disclosure - for example, the passage in the middle of the dedication and two separate references in Bk. I, Chap. 5.
Rosen, in Three Copernican Treatises, 3rd. ed., has convincingly documented the beginning of Copernicus’s doubts about Ptolemy as early as 1496–1501 in Bologna, when, as a student, he assisted the astronomer Novara, who publicly demonstrated inaccuracies in latitudinal figures in Ptolemy’s Geography, indicating that the earth may not be motionless. He was also familiar with Regiomontanus’s Epitome (1496) and his criticisms of Ptolemy’s lunar theory, criticisms which are reflected in Copernicus’s earliest astronomical writing, the Commentariolus.
These references to divine revelation are found in two places in the letter of dedication and three times in Book I, Chaps. 9–10, but the entire introduction to Book I (which was deleted from the first published text in 1543) conveys that theological point. Whether the theological justifications contained in Rheticus’s Narratio Prima were stimulated by Copernicus cannot be known; but they are consistent with his views.
After all, Metaphysics was not the title Aristotle gave to the work; it acquired that title because it came right after his Physics; hence, after-Physics. He called it Wisdom or Theology, which, for him was First Philosophy.
The tradition of Natural Theology which these beliefs reflect came to be expressed in western Christendom by the concept of nature as a secondary revelation of God and is also to be found in numerous references to the Book of Nature in the literature of the sixteenth century. The first explicit reference to this is in the writings of John Scotus Erigena in the fourteenth century, although the concept goes back to Augustine.
In this respect, it is potentially superior to Ptolemy in that it explains the anomaly of retrograde motion, as well as the order and periods of the planets.
That Copernicus is dissembling is shown by the fact that he expressed such fears in a letter to Andreas Osiander. This letter has vanished, but we know of its contents from Kepler’s citation of portions of Osiander’s reply to Copernicus. If Kepler’s report is accurate, then Copernicus was not as confident as he sounded in his dedication. For that reason, I suspect, he tactfully but pointedly refrained from making any comment about biblical interpretation which could be used against him.
It should be noted that, in one sense, this is in accordance with Aristotle’s basic distinction between celestial and terrestrial motion (in 1:8). It is by placing the earth itself among the planets that it acquires rotational motion while leaving the physics of the earth intact.
The clarity of Copernicus’s assertions of the immobility of the stellar sphere and the sun make it all the more surprising to read in O. Neugebauer’s The Transmission of Planetary Theories in Ancient and Medieval Astronomy, New York, 1955, p. 27: The question as to which body is ‘at rest’ is of course without any interest, particularly when no such physical body existed in the whole Copernican system.
In 1:7, while refuting Ptolemy’s arguments against a moving earth, Copernicus attributes an argument to Ptolemy that if the earth rotated on its axis, it would have disintegrated long ago. In 1:8 he refutes this argument by reference to his doctrine that rotation is natural to a sphere. The mystery here is that, as far as I can determine, Ptolemy never argued specifically against the diurnal rotation of the earth nor ever wrote in terms that could even vaguely be construed as a concept of centrifugal force, which Copernicus ascribes to him. It is true that he argued against 4hose who advocated terrestrial motion on the grounds that such motion would leave animals and other objects hanging in the air, and even that such motion would cause the earth to fall out of the cosmos. But, and this fact seems to have escaped Copernicus, Ptolemy did not differentiate between diurnal rotation and annual revolution and did not argue that the earth would dissipate under diurnal rotation. To date, I have found no reference in contemporary literature calling attention to this curious misstatement on the part of Copernicus. It could be that it was then a popular impression that Ptolemy had taught some concept of centrifugal force, considering the way Ptolemy was taught (usually at third-hand) in the universities. If that were so, Copernicus would naturally have felt the necessity of rebutting this argument. It would have been more advantageous for him to have cited Ptolemy’s precise words, however. This would have showed his opponents that even his greatest predecessor had not mentioned any possible dissipation of the earth, thus strengthening his own physical arguments.
Physics, IV:4 (212a, 20-21), trans, by P. H. Wickstead and F. M. Cornford, Loeb Classical Library, 1929, Vol. I.
His Letter Against Werner (1524) contains his early arguments against the motion of the eighth sphere. It is not often noticed that, inasmuch as it was also Aristotle’s belief that immobility is more noble and divine, the fact that the earth as a whole is immobile in his system represents a serious inconsistency, which Copernicus must have been pleased to eliminate
In the Christian tradition, God is pre-eminently the creator of the universe, a concept entirely absent in Aristotle. For him, matter was co-eternal with the Unmoved Mover and was thus uncreated. Moreover, the biblical conception of God is everywhere of a God who acts in continual creative and redemptive fashion. Aristotle’s God had no motion. As Prime Mover, God was defined as pure Actuality and, therefore, unmoved. As Aristotle argued in his Metaphysics, the Prime Mover moves others by being their final cause, that is, by simply being the object of their love and desire. As a Christian, Copernicus had to modify the theology of Aristotle’s system to be consistent with biblical conceptions of God. In this, he is following Thomas Aquinas, whose first argument for the existence of God is a carbon copy of Aristotle’s Physics, Book 8, and the Metaphysics, Books Lambda and Beta. Their respective concepts of deity thus share some functions; for both, deity defines place by providing a final cause and limit to account for change and motion. Thus, for both Aristotle and Copernicus, God is the First Principle of Being and Becoming and thereby establishes the rationality of the universe, which makes knowledge possible.
Examples may be found in Deuteronomy 33:27; the place where I cause my Name to dwell; Psalm 90:1; Lord, you have been our dwelling place (cf Psalm 132:5, 7). In the Targums (Aramaic paraphrases of the Bible), the targum of Exodus 25:8 (which reads; Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them) is rendered by; … that I may let my Shekhina dwell among them. For a further development of these themes, see Max Jammer, Concepts of Space. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1954.
Clear statements of the immobility of the sun can be found in 1:10 of the Revolutions: I also say that the sun remains forever immobile; and later, In the center of all rests the sun.
The associations of the sun and light with deity in the biblical tradition are numerous, beginning with the first creation account in Genesis 1 where the first thing to be created is light, signifying the visible manifestation of God, who was present before the ordering of the cosmos began.
Gerald Holton has documented in his study of Kepler that what was implicit in Copernicus becomes explicit in Kepler, for whom the sun fulfills three functions: it functions as mathematical reference point, as physical mover, and as theological center. See Johannes Keplers Universe: Its Physics and Metaphysics, in R. M. Palter (ed.), Toward Modern Science, Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, New York, 1961, Vol. II.
Among the few who have noted that the basis of Copernicus’s confidence is primarily theological are: E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, Humanities Press, New York, 1952, Ch. II; A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, New York, 1960, p. Ill; Werner Heisenberg, Tradition in Science, in O. Gingerich (ed.), The Nature of Scientific Discovery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D. C., 1975; C. F. von Weizsacker, Die Einheit Der Natur, Munich, 1971. Once could go further and argue for the importance of meditation to Copernicus, a word Copernicus twice uses in his letter of dedication. On its significance for Copernicus, see Karol Gorski, Mikotaj Kopernik Srodowisko Spoteczne I Samotnosc, Ossolineum, Warsaw, 1973. An English precis will soon be published under the title, The Social Background of Copernicus and His Solitude.
Thomas Kuhn, whose earliest writings were about the phenomenon of discovery, has had something helpful to say about that in his Objectivity, Value Judgment and Theory Choice, reprinted in The Essential Tension, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977.
I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton, The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1956, Chap. XXVI, pp. 190, 657.
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Wrightsman, B. (1980). The Legitimation of Scientific Belief: Theory Justification By Copernicus. In: Nickles, T. (eds) Scientific Discovery: Case Studies. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9015-9_4
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