This is not a great month for science anniversaries — but the one really big anniversary is a REALLY big anniversary: the 520th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus.
Copernicus brought forth the radical notion that the Earth was not the centre of the universe: that the Earth moved around the sun, instead of vice versa. The impact of this idea is indicated by the fact that historians talk of the “Copernican revolution.” Copernicus provided the starting point for the next century’s great scientists: Galileo, Kepler and Isaac Newton (whose birthday we celebrated last month).
Copernicus, the son of a wealthy merchant, was born on February 19, 1473, in Torun, Poland. (What? You don’t think “Copernicus” sounds very Polish? That’s because, as was common practice at the time, he wrote in Latin and therefore Latinized his real name, Niklas Koppernigk.) He studied mathematics, philosophy and astronomy at the University of Krakow, then went to Italy, where he studied liberal arts at Bologna, medicine at Padua and law at the University of Ferrara.
He returned to Poland at the age of 30 with a doctorate in canon law and became lay canon at the cathedral in Frombork, less than 100 miles from his home town. There he remained for the rest of his 70-year life, faithfully performing his church duties, practicing medicine, writing a treatise on monetary reform — and doing some serious thinking about astronomy.
By May of 1514 that thinking had taken the shape of a manuscript with the catchy title of Commentariolus, which he circulated carefully to a few select friends, select because he wasn’t sure how his ideas would go over with the general public — or, more importantly, with the Church that he served.
It was 30 years before Copernicus, nearing the end of his life, expanded the Commentariolus into the even more catchily titled De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Even then he only agreed to do so at the insistence of Pope Clement VII. (Apparently he felt the support of the Pope was a pretty good indication that the Church wasn’t going to take too much offense.)
The idea of the Earth going around the sun instead of vice-versa was radical for a couple of reasons. One was that it went against the long-accepted views of Aristotle and second-century astronomer Ptolemy, who had created a very complex system of solid celestial spheres and other arcane devices to explain the motions of the various heavenly bodies. It’s tough to fight 13-plus centuries of tradition: the “fact” that the sun went around the Earth had become one of those things that “everybody knows.”
Copernicus, however, felt that the motions of the sun, moon and planets could be explained a lot more simply by putting everything, including the Earth, in motion around the sun, instead of vice-versa — and there’s a basic rule of reasoning that says that when there are two explanations for something, the simpler one is the way to bet. (Which isn’t to say Copernicus had all the details correct: he still accepted the notion of solid celestial spheres, he went along with Artistotle’s theories of physics and he believed everything moved in perfect circles, all notions later discarded.)
The second radical aspect of Copernicus’s theory philosophical. By putting the Earth in motion around the sun, instead of vice versa, he displaced Earth from the centre of the universe — and humans along with it. It was the first step toward a view of humans as just one species among many on an insignificant dust-speck in an ever-expanding universe too huge for us to ever fully comprehend.
That’s a notion Copernicus would undoubtedly have found just as uncomfortable as his contemporaries found his idea. He realized his theory implied a universe enormously larger than had been thought, but just how much larger he could never have imagined.
Copernicus didn’t live to see his theory gain wide acceptance. (He may not even have lived to see it published: he died May 24, 1543, the year it came out, and though there’s a story that he received a printed copy of it on his deathbed, there’s no solid evidence of it.) Like other revolutionary theories, it took a while to catch on. Fortunately, it had one great advantage that led to its eventual triumph: it was the truth.
That always helps.
