NATS 1710 Lecture 7 – Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution
The European Worldview in the 15th and 16th Century
- Combination of Greek (Plato & Aristotle) & Christian ideas
- Teleological or purposeful (Aristotelian final cause)
- Geocentric universe
Clocks and the Quantification of Time
- Mechanical clock (13th / 14th cent.), astronomy
- Clocks and urbanization
- The Clock as a model of the universe
The Printing Press and the Expansion of Recorded Knowledge
- (Block) printing in China,800AD
- 1448, Mainze, Germany, Johann Gutenberg, printing press
- Press helped make knowledge public and critcial
Recap of Aristotelian / Ptolemaic Natural Philosophy
- Aristotle’s ideas form a system
- Greek Miracle
- Element theory and physics of motion
- Heavens and the earth
- No voids in nature, nature is “full”
- Earth centered system
- Pope Gregory, 1231
- Discovery of the New World and Aristotle
- Need for accurate astronomy for navigation
Copernicus
- Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Torun, Poland
- De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543
- Problems with Ptolemy
- Copernicus:
o Spherical earth, rotated on axis
o Large Universe
o Sun-Centred model
-
o Mars and Venus
o Retrograde motion
Circles, deferents, epicycles and eccentrics
Heliostatic and Heliocentric models
Stellar parallax
Earth physics and commonsense
Challenge to religion
Copernican Successors
- Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
- New star in 1572, comet in 1577
- Geocentric model that had all of the planets revolving around the
sun, and the sun revolving around the Earth.
- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), mathematician and a supporter of
Copernicus
- Elliptical orbits and non-uniform velocities