The gradual acceptance of the Copernican theory of the universe Part 4

[Footnote 125: Copernicus: _De Revolutionibus_, I. "To the reader on the hypotheses of this book."]

[Footnote 126: "For it is not necessary that these hypotheses be true, nor even probable, but this alone is sufficient, if they show reasoning fitting the observations."]

[Footnote 127: Kepler: _Apologia Tychonis contra Ursum_ in _Op. Om._: I, 244-246.]

[Footnote 128: Prowe: II, 251, note.]

[Footnote 129: Ibid: II, 537-9.]

It remains to ask whether people other than Copernicus's intimates had known of his theory before 1543. Peucer, Melancthon's nephew, declared Copernicus was famous by 1525,[130] and the invitation from the Lateran Council committee indicates his renown as early as 1514. In Vienna in 1873[131] there was found a _Commentariolus_, or summary of his great work,[132] written by Copernicus for the scholars friendly to him. It was probably written soon after 1530, and gives a full statement of his views following a series of seven axioms or theses summing up the new theory. This little book probably occasioned the order from Pope Clement VII in 1533 to Widmanstadt to report to him on the new scheme.[133] This Widmanstadt did in the papal gardens before the Pope with several of the cardinals and bishops, and was presented with a book as his reward.

[Footnote 130: Ibid: II, 273.]

[Footnote 131: Ibid: II, 286-7.]

[Footnote 132: A second copy was found at Upsala shortly afterwards, though for centuries its existence was unknown save for two slight references to such a book, one by Gemma Frisius, the other by Tycho Brahe. Prowe: II, 284.]

[Footnote 133: Ibid: II, 273-4.]

In 1536, the Cardinal Bishop of Capua, Nicolas von Schonberg, apparently with the intent to pave the way for the theory at Rome, wrote for a report of it.[134] It is not known whether the report was sent, and the cardinal died the following year. But that Copernicus was pleased by this recognition is evident from the prominence he gave to the cardinal's letter, as he printed it in his book at the beginning, even before the dedication to the Pope.

[Footnote 134: Prowe: II, 274, note.]

The most widely circulated account at this time, however, was the _Narratio Prima_, a letter from Georg Joachim of Rhaetia (better known as Rheticus), written in October, 1539, from Frauenburg to Johann Schoner at Nurnberg.[135] Rheticus,[136] at twenty-five years of age professor of mathematics at Wittenberg, had gone uninvited to Frauenburg early that summer to visit Copernicus and learn for himself more in detail about this new system. This was rather a daring undertaking, for not only were Luther and Melancthon outspoken in their condemnation of Copernicus, but Rheticus was going from Wittenberg, the headquarters of the Lutheran heresy, into the bishopric of Ermeland where to the Bishop and the King his overlord, the very name of Luther was anathema. Nothing daunted, Rheticus departed for Frauenberg and could not speak too highly of the cordial welcome he received from the old astronomer. He came for a few weeks, and remained two years to return to Wittenberg as an avowed believer in the system and its first teacher and promulgator. Not only did he write the _Narratio Prima_ and an _Encomium Borussae_, both extolling Copernicus, but what is more important, he succeeded in persuading him to allow the publication of the _De Revolutionibus_. Rheticus returned to his post in 1541, to resign it the next year and become Dean of the Faculty of Arts. In all probability the conflict was too intense between his new scientific beliefs and the statements required of him as professor of the old mathematics and astronomy.

[Footnote 135: Prowe: II, 426-440.]

[Footnote 136: Ibid: II, 387-405.]

His colleague, Erasmus Reinhold, continued to teach astronomy there, though he, too, accepted the Copernican system.[137] He published a series of tables (_Tabulae Prutenicae_, 1551) based on the Copernican calculations to supersede the inaccurate ones by Regiomonta.n.u.s; and these were in general use throughout Europe for the next seventy-odd years. As he himself declared, the series was based in its principles and fundamentals upon the observations of the famous Nicolaus Copernicus. The almanacs deduced from these calculations probably did more to bring the new system into general recognition and gradual acceptance than did the theoretical works.[138]

[Footnote 137: Ibid: II, 391.]

[Footnote 138: Holden in _Pop. Sci._, 119.]

Opposition to the theory had not yet gathered serious headway. There is record[139] of a play poking fun at the system and its originator, written by the Elbing schoolmaster (a Dutch refugee from the Inquisition) and given in 1531 by the villagers at Elbing (3 miles from Frauenburg). Elbing and Ermeland were hostile to each other, Copernicus was well known in Elbing though probably from afar, for there seems to have been almost no personal intercourse between canons and people, and the spread of Luther's teachings had intensified the hostility of the villagers towards the Church and its representatives.

But not until Giordano Bruno made the Copernican system the starting-point of his philosophy was the Roman Catholic Church seriously aroused to combat it. Possibly Osiander's preface turned opposition aside, and certainly the non-acceptance of the system as a whole by Tycho Brahe, the leading astronomer of Europe at that time, made people slow to consider it.

[Footnote 139: Prowe: II, 233-244.]

CHAPTER III.

THE LATER DEVELOPMENT AND SCIENTIFIC DEFENSE OF THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.

Copernicus accomplished much, but even his genius could not far outrun the times in which he lived. When one realizes that not only all the astronomers before him, but he and his immediate successor, Tycho Brahe, made all their observations and calculations unaided by even the simplest telescope, by logarithms or by pendulum clocks for accurate measurement of time,[140] one marvels not at their errors, but at the greatness of their genius in rising above such difficulties. This lack of material aids makes the work of Tycho Brahe,[141] accounted one of the greatest observers that has ever lived,[142] as notable in its way perhaps as that of Copernicus.

[Footnote 140: Burckhardt: 8.]

[Footnote 141: The two standard lives of Tycho Brahe are the _Vita Tychonis Brahei_ by Ga.s.sendi (1655) till recently the sole source of information, and Dreyer's _Tycho Brahe_ (1890) based not only on Ga.s.sendi but on the doc.u.mentary evidence disclosed by the researches of the 19th century. For Tycho's works I have used the _Opera Omnia_ published at Frankfort in 1648. The Danish Royal Scientific Society has issued a reprint (1901) of the rare 1573 edition of the _De Nova Stella_.]

[Footnote 142: Bridges: 206.]

His life[143] was a somewhat romantic one. Born of n.o.ble family on December 14th, 1546, at Knudstrup in Denmark, Tyge Brahe, the second of ten children,[144] was early practically adopted by his father's brother. His family wished him to become a statesman and sent him in 1559 to the university at Copenhagen to prepare for that career. A partial eclipse of the sun on August 21st, 1560 as foretold by the astronomers thrilled the lad and determined him to study a science that could foretell the future and so affect men's lives.[145] When he was sent to Leipsic with a tutor in 1562 to study law, he devoted his time and money to the study of mathematics and astronomy. Two years later when eighteen years of age, he resolved to perform anew the task of Hipparchos and Ptolemy and make a catalogue of the stars more accurate than theirs. His family hotly opposed these plans; and for six years he wandered through the German states, now at Wittenberg, now at Rostock (where he fought the duel in which he lost part of his nose and had to have it replaced by one of gold and silver)[146] or at Augsburg--everywhere working on his chosen subjects. But upon his return to Denmark (1570) he spent two years on chemistry and medicine, till the startling appearance of the New Star in the constellation of Ca.s.siopaea (November, 1572) recalled him to what became his life work.[147]

[Footnote 143: Dreyer: 11-84.]

[Footnote 144: Ga.s.sendi: 2.]

[Footnote 145: Dreyer: 13.]

[Footnote 146: Ga.s.sendi: 9-10.]

[Footnote 147: Dreyer: 38-44.]

Through the interest and favor of King Frederick II, he was given the island of Hveen near Elsinore, with money to build an observatory and the pledge of an annual income from the state treasury for his support.[148] There at Uraniborg from 1576 to 1597 he and his pupils made the great catalogue of the stars, and studied comets and the moon. When he was forced to leave Hveen by the hostility and the economical tendencies of the young king,[149] after two years of wandering he accepted the invitation of the Emperor Rudolphus and established himself at Prague in Bohemia. Among his a.s.sistants at Prague was young Johann Kepler who till Tycho's death (on October 24, 1601) was his chief helper for twenty months, and who afterwards completed his observations, publis.h.i.+ng the results in the Rudolphine Tables of 1627.

[Footnote 148: Ibid: 84.]

[Footnote 149: Ibid: 234-5.]

This "Phoenix among Astronomers"--as Kepler calls him,[150]--was the father of modern practical astronomy.[151] He also propounded a third system of the universe, a compromise between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican. In this the Tychonic system,[152] the earth is motionless and is the center of the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the sphere of the fixed stars, while the sun is the center of the orbits of the five planets.[153] Mercury and Venus move in orbits with radii shorter than the sun's radius, and the other three planets include the earth within their circuits. This system was in harmony with the Bible and accounted as satisfactorily by geometry as either of the other two systems for the observed phenomena.[154] To Tycho Brahe, the Ptolemaic system was too complex,[155] and the Copernican absurd, the latter because to account for the absence of stellar parallax it left vacant and purposeless a vast s.p.a.ce between Saturn and the sphere of the fixed stars,[156] and because Tycho's observations did not show any trace of the stellar parallax that must exist if the earth moves.[157]

[Footnote 150: Kepler: _Tabulae Rudolphinae_. t.i.tle page.]

[Footnote 151: Dreyer: 317-363.]

[Footnote 152: As stated in his Book on the Comet of 1577 (pub.

1588).]

[Footnote 153: Dreyer: 168-9.]

[Footnote 154: Schiaparelli in Snyder: 165.]

[Footnote 155: Brahe: _Op. Om._, pt. I, p. 337.]

[Footnote 156: Ibid: 409-410.]

[Footnote 157: The Tychonic system has supporters to this day. See chap. viii.]

Though Tycho thus rejected the Copernican theory, his own proved to be the stepping stone toward the one he rejected,[158] for by it and by his study of comets he completely destroyed the ideas of solid crystalline spheres to the discredit of the scholastics; and his promulgation of a third theory of the universe helped to diminish men's confidence in authority and to stimulate independent thinking.

[Footnote 158: Dreyer: 181.]

Copernicus worked out his system by mathematics with but slight aid from his own observations. It was a theory not yet proven true. Tycho Brahe, though denying its validity, contributed in his ma.s.s of painstaking, accurate observations the raw material of facts to be worked up by Kepler into the great laws of the planets attesting the fundamental truth of the Copernican hypothesis.