Comments on: Own a piece of heliocentrism

By: llewelly

llewelly — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:18:00 +0000

Everyone interested in this book – or in books in general – should read The Book Nobody Read , Owen Gingerich’s wonderful history of the first and second edition copies of de Revolutionibus , along with fascinating details about the people who owned those books (like Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, etc)

What? No preview? BA, you should be ashamed.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:39:05 +0000

If Jupiter and Saturn had formed a binary gas giant with a naked-eye visible orbit, Father Kopernik would have had a much easier time getting his theory accepted. (I plan to use that trick in a fictional system I’m writing.)

By: tracer

tracer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:13:41 +0000

Frankly, in the time of Copernicus and Galileo, there was nothing scientific about Heliocentrism.

Sure, evidence abounded that the planets orbited the sun. But there was NO reason to suppose that the sun didn’t, in turn, orbit the Earth, other than just a feeling of “wouldn’t it be neat if it were so!”. In fact, there was substantial evidence AGAINST an Earth orbiting the sun: No one had ever detected stellar parallax!

Tycho Brahe was probably the single staunchest voice of reason in that age. His Geocentric model featured the sun and moon going around the Earth, and the rest of the planets going around the sun. It DID require the Earth to rotate on its axis once every day, but this was a far less absurd notion (for its time) than the idea that the Earth hurtled around the sun once a year.

Of course, today, we HAVE detected stellar parallax, and so the heliocentric model has gotten its time in the sun (so to speak). But in Copernicus’s, Galielo’s, and even Kepler’s time, the evidence simply wasn’t there to support it.

By: Larry

Larry — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:48:36 +0000

Copernicus did not pioneer the concept of a heliocentric solar system. Many other astronomers (from Aristotle) proposed the theory. But, Copernicus was the first to support it mathematically. See J. Repcheck, Copernicus’ Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began.

By: Thony C.

Thony C. — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:01:23 +0000

There was a time that these things didn’t cost so much! Of course a first edition of De Revolutionibus will usually fetch much more at auction than a second edition. However Owen Gingerich lists himself as owning two copies of the second edition. I’m sure that Harvard hasn’t made him wealthy.

A second edition auctioned recently achieved a new record of €100 000. Go back twenty or thirty years when Owen Gingerich acquired his and you will find that he only paid a couple of hundred dollars. The prices exploded in the 1990s and have been spiraling ever since.

By: penny

penny — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:53:15 +0000

Certain ancient Greeks had the concept long before C., did.
Since many of their works are now known to be on rolls used to
wrap mummies in Egypt–and since, as money accrues, these are being
taken apart, we might do even better.

Next best to having the original library of Alexandria scroll access.

Anyone want to bid on copies of Aristarchus or on the lost plays of
Sophocles?

By: George E. Martin

George E. Martin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:10:34 +0000

8MinutesOld said:

“It’s a pity. I think every astronomer wants it, but unfortunatetly they don’t even earn enough to buy such a used, second-hand (N’th-hand?) book.”

George

P.S.

Thanks to Josh for the link to Christie’s!