Abstract
The historiographical category of Copernicanism is here discussed from the viewpoint of the reception of Copernicus’s work in the cultural debates of the Renaissance. First, an account of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (1543) is offered. Then, different strands of reception and the most visible actors of this cultural process are considered: mathematical and astronomical (Reinhold and the Wittenberg School), natural philosophical and physical (Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler), and ethical and theological (up to the effects of the Catholic censure of 1616).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
General accounts on the historical meaning and early reception of Copernicus’s work:
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1957. The Copernican revolution: planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Koyré, Alexandre. 1961. La révolution astronomique. Paris: Hermann.
Goddu, André. 2010. Copernicus and the Aristotelian Tradition: Education, Reading, and Philosophy in Copernicus’s Path to Heliocentrism. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Westman, Robert S. 2011. The Copernican question: prognostication, skepticism, and celestial order. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
Omodeo, Pietro Daniel. 2014. Copernicus in the cultural debates of the renaissance: reception, legacy, transformation. Leiden: Brill.
A useful deepening of the Kuhnian perspective is Noel M. Swerdlow, “An Essay on Thomas Kuhn’s First Scientific Revolution, The Copernican Revolution,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148/1 (2004): pp. 64–120.
A fundamental instrument for the investigation of Copernicus’s reception is Owen Gingerich, An Annotated Census of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566) (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2002). On the epistemological tension between Ptolemy and Aristotle, cf. Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Irina Tupikova, “Aristotle and Ptolemy on Geocentrism: Diverging Argumentative Strategies and Epistemologies,” Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 422 (2012).
The standard source on the technical aspects of Copernicus’s achievement is N. M. Swerdlow and Otto Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus’s ‘De revolutionibus’ (New York-Berlin, 1984). See also N. M. Swerdlow, “The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus’s Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117/6 (1973): 423–512. On the axioma astronomicum, cf. Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (New York-London: Walker, 2004), pp. 53–55. On the mathematical reception of Copernicus, in particular on Reinhold and Kepler, see: Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler (New York: American Inst. of Physics, 1993), and “Reinhold, Erasmus,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography xi (1975): pp. 365–367.
On the natural and physical issues related to Copernican astronomy, see Seidengart, Jean: Dieu, l’univers et la sphère infinie (Paris: Michel, 2006). Earlier studies on these topics are: Alexandre Koyré, Études galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1939), and idem, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore, 1957).
On neo-Platonic and Plutarchan influences on Copernicus’s natural views, see Dilwyn Knox, “Ficino, Copernicus and Bruno on the Motion of the Earth,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 5 (1999): pp. 333–366, idem, “Copernicus’s Doctrine of Gravity and the Natural Circular Motion of the Elements,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 48 (2005): pp. 157–211, and Anna De Pace, “Plutarco e la rivoluzione copernicana,” in L’eredità culturale di Plutarco dall’Antichità al Rinascimento, ed. Italo Gallo (Naples: D'Auria, 1998), pp. 313–351. On Bruno’s cosmology, see Paul-Henri Michel, La Cosmologie de Giordano Bruno (Paris: Hermann, 1962) and Miguel A. Granada, “Synodi ex mundis,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 13 (2007): pp. 149–156. For Descartes, see Eric John Aiton, The Vortex Theory of Planetary Motions (London-New York: MacDonald-Elsevier, 1972).
On Galileo’s and Kepler’s roles in the reception of Copernicus, see Massimo Bucciantini, Galileo e Keplero: Filosofia, cosmologia e teologia nell’Età della Controriforma (Turin, 2003), and the sources quoted in the entry Astronomy.
Concerning the ethical dimension of post-Copernican cosmology, it is useful to consult two classics of intellectual history:
Cassirer, Ernst. 1927. Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance. Leipzig: Teubner.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The great chain of being: a study of the History of an idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter IV.
Among countless sources on the theological debates on Copernicus, it is worth mentioning Reijer Hooykaas, G. J Rheticus’ Treatise on Holy Scripture and the Motion of the Earth (Amsterdam-New York: North-Holland Publ. Comp., 1984); Heinrich Bornkamm, “Kopernikus im Urteil der Reformatoren,” in Das Jahrhundert der Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), pp. 177–185, Walter Thüringer, “Paul Eber (1511–1569): Meanchthons Physik und seine Stellung zu Copernicus,” in Melanchthon in seinen Schülern, ed. Heinz Scheible (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), pp. 285–321; Michel-Pierre Lerner, “Aux origines de la polémique anticopernicienne (I). L’Opusculum quartum de Giovanni Maria Tolosani [1547–48],” in Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques 86/4 (2002): pp. 681–721. On the Catholic censure and the events preparing it, cf. Richard Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible (Notre Dame, IN: UP, 1991); Massimo Bucciantini, Contro Galileo: Alle origini dell’affaire (Florence: Olschki, 1995), Ernan McMullin (ed.), The Church and Galileo (Notre Dame, IN: UP, 2005), and Luigi Guerrini, Galileo e la polemica anticopernicana a Firenze (Florence: Polistampa, 2009).
Giordano, Bruno. 1995. In The Ash Wednesday supper [La cena de le Ceneri], ed. E.A. Gosselin and L.S. Lerner, 87. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press.
Georg Joachim, Rheticus. 1959. Narratio prima. In Three Copernican treatises, ed. Rosen Edward, 107–196. New York: Dover Publications, pp. 109–110.
Kepler, Johannes. 1992. New astronomy (trans: Donahue, William H.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 47.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this entry
Cite this entry
Omodeo, P.D. (2015). Copernicanism. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_55-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_55-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities