The Copernican Revolution, or Heliocentrism

Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543), De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543

• Julian calendar - 45 B.C.
• Gregorian calendar - A.D. 1582
  • counter-reformation / Catholic Reformation
  • Council of Trent, 1540-60)
  • Paul III
  • Gregory XIII

patron / client

Ptolemy, Almagest

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
De stella nova, 1573
observatory
1577 comet
parallax

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
stella nova, 1604
Mars
Apollonius of Perga, Conics (3rd century B.C.)

• 1427
• 1556, Latin trans. + commentary

ellipse
focus / foci

Kepler's Laws

1. The planets move in ellipses, not circles, and the Sun is at one focus of the ellipse.
2. A line drawn from the Sun to a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal amounts of time.
3. The ratio of
   1. the period of a planet's orbit, squared
   2. to its distance from the Sun, cubed
   3. is constant

John Napier
logarithms
exponential notation

Galileo

• 1609 - telescope
• 1610 - Siderius Nuntius (moons of Jupiter) + to Florence
• 1615 - Letter to the Grand Duchess of Florence (Christina of Lorraine)
• 1632 - Dialogue concerning the Two World Systems (Ptolemaic and Copernican)

sola natura (186, 203, 206, 210)
theology ("queen of sciences") serves physics (king)

The Corpustular (or Mechanical) Philosophy

"Nature abhors a vacuum"
horror vacui

Evangelista Torricelli (1608-47)
Blaise Pascal (1623-62)
Puy de Dôme
baros (Gk., weight)
Estienne Noël, S.J. (1581-1659)

relativity of motion
Galileo (1564-1642)

• Il Saggiatore (The Assayer, 1623)
• The Two New Sciences (1638)

corpuscular philosophy

• size
• shape
• motion

Democritus, atoms
Epicurus
Lucretius, De rerum natura (1c B.C.)
René Descartes (1596-1650)

• res extensa (physics)
• res cogitans (metaphysics)

Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)
Robert Boyle, The Origin of Forms and Qualities According to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1666)

causality
Laws of Nature

• Law of Inertia
• Law of Motion
• Collision