Copernicus and Mechanics

Abstract

Copernicus overthrew the medieval conception of the solar system by starting from the scanty reports on heliocentric theories in antiquity, by specifying the implications of these geometrically in every detail, and by thus furnishing the exact foundations for ephemerides that far surpassed the exactness of the older tables of planetary movements based on the theory of Ptolemy. ‘ His outstanding contribution to astronomy was a mathematico-geometrical one. It is, however, sometimes not sufficiently noticed how far removed Copernicus still is from modern physical and especially mechanical thinking. A few remarks on this point, therefore, may be useful. They refer to the first book of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543), in which Copernicus explains the basic ideas of his theory and where, consequently, Pythagorean and Scholastic ideas predominate. Ancient and medieval philosophic ideas recede into the background in the following five books (II–VI) in which the mathematical details are explained.