Copernicus

Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus announced the motion of Earth in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs,” 1543). (An early sketch of his heliocentric theory, the Commentariolus, had circulated in manuscript in the small astronomical community of central Europe from about 1510, but it was not printed until the 19th century.) Although Copernicus made some new observations of the planets and drew on some observations by his medieval predecessors, new observations played no important role in his discovery. Rather, Copernicus discovered the motion of Earth by understanding Ptolemy more deeply than anyone else had—for the essential clues lay there in the Almagest for all to see.

Each planet’s motion is connected with the motion of the Sun. The inferior planets are always the close companions of the Sun. Mercury never gets more than about 22° from the Sun, and Venus never more than about 48°. This can be explained simply by imagining that these two planets circle the Sun.

For the superior planets (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), the connection is more subtle. Each of these planets goes into retrograde motion when it is diametrically opposite the Sun as viewed from Earth. In the ancient planetary theory, this required the three planets to move around their epicycles in lockstep with one another and with the motion of the Sun around Earth. In the case of Mars, for example, the revolving line from the epicycle’s centre to Mars must remain parallel to the revolving line from Earth to the Sun. The same holds true for Jupiter and Saturn. Ptolemy mentioned that one could use this fact to avoid duplicated calculations if one wanted to work out the positions of all three planets for the same date. Copernicus’s great insight was that these four simultaneous motions were really manifestations of one single motion—the motion of Earth itself.

The early reaction to Copernicus was rather muted, and astronomers had several different kinds of response. One could admire Copernicus’s mathematical abilities and simply remain agnostic on the question of Earth’s motion. Such, for example, was the position of German astronomer Erasmus Reinhold, who wrote a popular textbook of Ptolemaic astronomy but who also computed and published the Prutenic Tables, based on Copernicus’s planetary theory, which helped boost Copernicus’s reputation.