Nicolaus Copernicus

Polish astronomer

• Born: February 19, 1473
• Birthplace: Thorn, Prussia (now Toruń, Poland)
• Died: May 24, 1543
• Place of death: Frauenburg, East Prussia (now Frombork, Poland)

Copernicus dismissed the Ptolemaic system and introduced the theory that the planets, including Earth, revolve around the sun. He defended the rights of the educated to discuss scientific theories, even when those theories differ from currently accepted beliefs and contradict religious dogma.

Early Life

The family origins of Nicolaus Copernicus (nihk-uh-LAY-uhs kuh-PUHR-nih-kuhs) and the commercial interests of his hometown, Thorn, reflect the dual claim that Germans and Poles alike have on him. His father, also named Mikołaj (Nicolaus) Kopernik, was an immigrant from Kraków who married a daughter of a prominent burgher family, Barbara Watzenrode, and like other Thorn merchants, prospered from the exchange of Hanseatic goods for the wheat, cattle, and other produce of Poland. Thorn burghers were subjects of the Polish king, but Polish tradition allowed associated lands such as Prussia to govern themselves autonomously. Consequently, they made their political wishes felt through their representatives in the Prussian diet rather than directly to the king.

Had Mikołaj not died in 1483, his sons, Andreas and Nicolaus, would probably have entered into careers in commerce. Their guardianship, however, fell to their uncle, Bishop Lucas Watzenrode of Ermland (Warmia), who was best able to provide for them a future in church administration. A university education being indispensable to holding church offices, Bishop Lucas sent the boys to study first in Kraków, then in Italy. Nicolaus not only became a master of mathematics and astronomy but also acquired knowledge of medicine, painting, and Greek.

On his return to Prussia in 1503, Nicolaus followed the contemporary practice of Latinizing his name, Copernicus, and became one of the canons in the Ermland cathedral chapter. As his uncle’s physician, assistant, and heir apparent, Copernicus was present during inspection tours, provincial diets, and royal audiences. For several years, he managed the diocese efficiently but without enthusiasm his uncle was a hard taskmaster who lacked a sense of humor. Eventually, Copernicus announced that his interests in astronomy were greater than his ambition to become a bishop. From that time on, like most of the other canons, he lived according to clerical rules but remained a simple administrator who had no thought of becoming a priest.

Life’s Work

The first of several portraits made during his lifetime show Copernicus to have been handsome and dressed in simple but elegant clothing, with nothing of either the cleric or the dandy about him. He was so utterly unremarkable in other respects that few anecdotes about him exist, leaving relatively little information about his personal life and intellectual development. Yet two facts stand out. First, Copernicus was a Humanist whose closest friends and associates were poets and polemicists. His translation of an ancient author, Theophilactus Symocatta, from Greek into Latin was the first such publication in the Kingdom of Poland, and he dedicated the work to his Humanistically trained uncle, Bishop Lucas. Copernicus later used Humanist arguments to defend his astronomical theories.

Second, Copernicus must be seen as a bureaucrat whose busy life made it difficult for him to make the observations of the heavens on which his mathematical calculations were based. At one time or another, he was a medical doctor, an astrologer, a cartographer, an administrator of episcopal lands, a diplomat, a garrison commander in wartime, an economic theorist, an adviser to the Prussian diet, and a guardian to numerous nieces and nephews.

About 1507, Copernicus seems to have become persuaded that the Ptolemaic system (which asserted that Earth was the center of the universe) was incorrect. From that point on, he spent every spare moment trying to demonstrate the correctness of his insight that the sun was the center of the planetary movements (the solar system).

His first description of his theory, the Commentariolus (1514; English translation, 1939), circulated among his friends for many years. Eventually, it came to the ears of Cardinal Schönberg, who wrote a letter asking Copernicus to publish a fuller account. This letter was ultimately published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543; On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 1952; better known as De revolutionibus ) as a proof that high officials in the papal curia approved of scholars discussing the existence of a solar system. Copernicus made no answer. Instead, he asked his bishop to assign him light duties at some parish center, where he could make his observations and concentrate on mathematical calculations. This request was difficult to grant because Copernicus was known to be one of the more capable diocesan administrators.

For several years, his work was interrupted by war. In 1520, the last grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, Albrecht of Brandenburg, made a final effort to reestablish his religious order as ruler of all Prussia. Copernicus led the defense of Allenstein (Olsztyn) and participated in the peace negotiations. In 1525, Albrecht, defeated at every turn, secularized the Teutonic Order in Prussia and became a Protestant vassal of the king of Poland. This brought about an immediate improvement of Albrecht’s relationship to the rest of Prussia. Albrecht later called on Copernicus’s services as physician, and in 1551, he published a volume of Copernicus’s astrological observations.

Copernicus labored for several years to restore order to the war-ravaged Ermland finances. He advised the Prussian diet to reform the monetary system, explaining that since everyone was hoarding good coins and paying taxes with debased coins, the income of the diet was being reduced significantly. Having expounded this early version of English financier Sir Thomas Gresham’s law, he recommended that all coins be called in and new ones issued. The diet, aware that it did not have the bullion to mint a sufficient number of full-weight coins, took no action. There were other, more pressing problems: politics and religion.

The spread of Lutheran reforms through Poland was halted by royal action, but not before many cities and some prominent nobles had become Protestant. The ensuing era was filled with strident debate as fanatics on both sides denounced their opponents and demanded that all parties commit themselves to what they perceived as a struggle against ultimate evil. Copernicus sought to avoid this controversy but could not. When Ermland bishop Johann Dantiscus sought to rid himself of all canons who gave any appearance of Protestant leanings, his eye fell on Copernicus, whose friends were corresponding with prominent Protestants and who, moreover, had as his housekeeper a young woman with children. Copernicus responded that his housekeeper was a widowed relative who could have no interest in a man as aged as he, but he argued in vain. He dismissed his housekeeper and watched as his friends went into exile. His health failing, Copernicus was indeed isolated from friends and family.

In 1539, a Lutheran mathematician at Wittenberg, Rheticus, made a special journey to Frauenburg to visit Copernicus. Finding him ill and without prospect of publishing the manuscript he had completed at great labor, Rheticus extended his stay to three months so that he could personally copy the manuscript. He then arranged for the publication of Narratio prima de libris revolutionum (1540; The First Account , 1939) in Danzig and for the publication of the mathematical section in Nuremberg in 1542. Unable to supervise the printing of the theoretical section personally, Rheticus gave that task to another Protestant scholar, Andreas Osiander of Wittenberg.

Osiander was at a loss as to how to proceed. He saw that Copernicus had not been able to prove his case mathematically. Indeed, it would have been difficult for him to do so without inventing calculus (which was later created by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton independently of each other for the very purpose of calculating the elliptical orbits of the planets). Consequently, Copernicus had defended his ideas by demonstrating that Ptolemy’s was not the only ancient theory describing the universe; indeed, there were ancient philosophers who believed that the sun was the center of the solar system. Moreover, he had argued that free inquiry into science was as necessary as freedom to write literature or produce fine art. In this respect, Copernicus was presenting his case to Renaissance Humanists, especially to the well-educated pope to whom he dedicated his book, as a test of free thought.

Osiander, who perceived that the Catholic world was hostile to all innovations and was equally well aware of the debates raging in the Protestant world over biblical inerrancy, saw that Copernicus was treading on dangerous ground by suggesting an alternate view of the universe than the one presented in Scripture. Consequently, there was a real danger that the theory would be rejected entirely without having been read. To minimize that possibility, he wrote an unauthorized introduction that readers assumed was by Copernicus. This stated that the solar system was merely a hypothesis, a way of seeing the universe that avoided some of the problems of the Ptolemaic system. This led to much confusion and angered Copernicus considerably when he saw the page proofs. Copernicus, however, was too weak and ill to do anything about it. With a justice that is all too rare in this world, a copy of De revolutionibus arrived in time for him to know that his life’s work was to survive.

Significance

Copernicus’s theory was not immediately accepted, and not because of the controversies of the Reformation alone although they made it dangerous for any scientist to suggest that the biblical descriptions of the heavens were incorrect. Copernicus’s idealistic belief that God would create only perfectly circular planetary orbits made it impossible for him to prove his assertions mathematically. Nevertheless, Copernicus’s theory was the only one to offer astronomers a way out of a Ptolemaic system of interlocking rings, which was becoming impossibly complex. His insights undermined the intellectual pretensions of astrology and set astronomy on a firm foundation of observation and mathematics.

Although Copernicus’s defense of the freedom of inquiry was less important in the struggle against religious dogmatism than later demonstrations of the existence of the solar system, Copernicus became a symbol of the isolated and despised scientist who triumphs over all efforts by religious fundamentalists to silence him.

Bibliography

Armitage, Angus. Sun, Stand Thou Still: The Life and Works of Copernicus, the Astronomer. New York: Henry Schuman, 1947. The best-known of many biographies, its explanation of the conceptual problems facing Copernicus is easily followed by any good reader.

Barrett, Peter. Science and Theology Since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding. Reprint. Poole, Dorset, England: T&T Clark, 2003. Traces the legacy of Copernicus over four hundred years. Examines the history of the debate between science and Christianity, attempting to fashion a philosophical basis for the simultaneous embrace of scientific method and religious faith in the modern world.

Beer, Arthur. Copernicus Yesterday and Today. Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1975. A collection of useful essays that were delivered during the Copernicus celebration.

Copernicus, Nicolaus. Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus, The Letter Against Werner, The Narratio Prima of Rheticus. Edited and translated by Edward Rosen. 3d ed., rev. New York: Octagon Books, 1971. This timeless translation of basic documents relating to Copernicus’s achievement is accompanied by an extensive learned commentary. Rosen demonstrates that Copernicus put forward a “hypothesis” rather than a “theory” out of a fear of arousing opposition from religious fundamentalists rather than from any doubt that he was right. The third edition includes a biography of Copernicus and bibliographies of works written about Copernicus between 1939 and 1970.

Gingerich, Owen. The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. New York: Walker, 2004. A fascinating and original work of scholarship. Gingerich spent years tracking down and examining every extant copy of the original printing of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus. Using this bibliographic analysis, he demonstrates who read the work, what they thought of it, and how exactly Copernicus’s ideas spread throughout Europe. Includes illustrations, photographic plates, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Henry, John. Moving Heaven and Earth: Copernicus and the Solar System. Cambridge, England: Icon, 2001. Argues that Copernicus’s discovery had revolutionary effects for the cultural status afforded to theoretical science and mathematics in Western culture. He asserts that before Copernicus, pure knowledge was believed to come only from the traditions of ancient scholars, whose work was preserved only in fragments. Copernicus demonstrated that abstract mathematics and formal scientific inquiry could produce pure knowledge on their own, thereby transforming the nature of thought and truth in the West. Includes illustrations and bibliographic index.

Kesten, Hermann. Copernicus and His World. New York: Roy, 1945. This biography deals with Copernicus’s contemporaries as much as with the astronomer himself. Kesten presents Copernicus as a warrior in the contest between science and religion. He concludes with chapters on Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo.

Rusinek, Michat. The Land of Nicholas Copernicus. Translated by A. T. Jordan. New York: Twayne, 1973. The text is relatively sparse, but the pictures are unequaled in quality. The author traces the life of the astronomer through photographs of cities, castles, and personal possessions.

Stachiewicz, Wanda M. Copernicus and the Changing World. New York: Polish Institute, 1973. The four hundredth anniversary of Copernicus’s birth brought forth many publications. This one is unique.