"Dedication" to The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies
Nicholaus Copernicus (1543)

URL: http://ragz-international.com/copernicus.htm

SITE SUMMARY: This document is a translation of Copernicus' "Dedication" essay that accompanies his treatise describing the scientific theory stating that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system, an idea for which he has been remembered through time. The "Dedication" is like a letter in which Copernicus "talks" to the person to whom he chose to dedicate his publication. He reveals what his publication is about and his reasoning behind it. When he wrote "men of philosophy" or mathematicians, and philosophy, he was actually referring to scholars or other thinkers and thinking logically. This online translation is a reproduction of the one in the 1910 Harvard Classics print edition.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES

1. Identify how long it was after Copernicus wrote "the commentaries in proof of [the earth's] motions" that he allowed his ideas to be published, and why? Tell reasons why he at last allowed his ideas to be published. Compare these situations (i.e., time between thinking of, then writing, then publishing, scientific ideas) with the way it happened in his day and the way it happens today. Consider the consequences of the way Copernicus handled the situation if he did it that way today.
2. In which metaphorical way did Copernicus refer to "drones among bees"? Apply this metaphor to something in your life, then to something around you, then to something in the present world, and then to something in the past. For each case, explain how this metaphor applies, and why to avoid it.
3. Why did Copernicus first decide to "look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly bodies"? Elaborate on your statement, including his comments, and emphasizing his two main reasons.
4. Identify Copernicus' metaphor about a human body. Explain how he applied it to what is referred to in Question/Activity no. 3 above. What did he say about other people's "process of demonstration"? Describe what he said about and concluded from "fixed principles." Extra Activity: Think about what is referred to in the first parts of this Question/Activity just above. Apply each reference in a general way to something you know and to something in science in a successful way, and in an unsuccessful way. (Note: Support your choices with explanations.)
5. What disgusted Copernicus? What did it cause him to do? What did he discover? Provide quotations. Include references that he cited to two common things, then explain why and how he referred to them.
6. How did Copernicus include thinkers of the past in his study involving his idea? Why did he then decide to "postulate" something else? What did he postulate, how, and what did he discover as a result of his postulating? State what he "therefore" described in his first book, and in his other books. What did he not doubt with reference to other learned people? Why? (Note: See also the "Dedication" translation in the History Guide when answering. Its url is cited in the Related Internet Sites section below.)
7. Study the Dedication's last three paragraphs. What had Copernicus found "by many and long observations"? (Hint: Note the sentence with the phrases that follow "if," "not only," "but," and "that.") Extra Activity: Think of and describe a science related situation other than his example. Apply to that situation his way of thinking as these phrases show.
8. Study the Dedication, identify to whom Copernicus dedicated his work, and tell why. Next, see the Web site featuring the article "When the Earth Moved, Copernicus…." (Its url is cited in the Related Internet Sites section below.) Tell what this article says about Copernicus and his giving credit with reference to his treatise. Extra Activities: Imagine that you have made two discovery in science, and have written about what you discovered. Describe your "discoveries." (Note: One "discovery" should be in a science known during or just after Copernicus' time. The other "discovery" should be in a science of a time later than Copernicus' time [e.g., from the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century].) (Hint: Find information to help with your "discoveries" at the Web sites whose urls are cited in this book's Appendix B.) Choose someone of note to whom you would dedicate what you have written. Write a "dedication" in which you "talk" to that person as you explain why you chose her or him.
9. With the "When the Earth Moved …" article (cited in Question/Activity no. 8 above), the Polish American Journal honored Copernicus, a native of Poland. Choose a scientist from a nation that is a place of ethnic origin or heritage for you, your family, or your ancestors, or else a United States scientist who traces her or his ethnic origin or heritage to a nation to which your family traces its roots. Explain what this scientist has done for people in general, and for her or his nation of ethnic origin or heritage. (Hint: For information, see Web sites featuring scientists with ethnicity noted or searchable, such as Scientists at the Best Source for Canadian Science, and Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography, whose urls are cited in this book's Appendix B.)

RELATED INTERNET SITE(S)

Nicholaus Copernicus

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Copernicus.html

Originating in Scotland at the School of Computational Science of the University of St. Andrews, this site has a 1995 biography of Copernicus by J.V. Field, president of the Da Vinci Society and research fellow at the Royal Institution. There are links to a list of books and articles on Copernicus, quotations, more information on related topics (e.g., Greek astronomy, a brief history of cosmology, orbits, and gravitation), other biography and encyclopedia Web pages.

The Copernican Revolution

http://phyun5.ucr.edu/∼wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node38.html

Click Copernican Revolution at the site From Middle Ages to Heliocentrism to find out how the publication of Copernicus' treatise "The Revolution of Celestial Spheres" ("De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium") caused the sixteenth century to be what Jose Wudka, a faculty member of the Physics Department of the University of California, Riverside, calls a "watershed in the development of Cosmology."

"When the Earth Moved, Nicholas Copernicus Changed the World"

http://www.polamjournal.com (click online library link)

Click the biographies link, then the Copernicus link, to find this article from the February 1993 Polish American Journal published on the occasion of the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of "On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres" ("De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium"). It describes why Copernicus is thought of as the Father of Astronomy and a Sixteenth Century Renaissance Man and how he moved the earth and initiated great thinking.

Galileo's Considerations on the Copernican Opinion (1615)

http://home.mira.net/∼gaffcam/phil/galileo.htm

In this detailed letter, meant for average people, Galileo offered support for the controversial Copernican viewpoint as he explained how the viewpoint is "indubitably certain" and is based on "the most correct judgment." He also commented on why ancient thinkers might have thought the other, long-held viewpoint, was true.

"Hamlet's Transformation"

http://www.jmucci.com/ER/articles/usher

This article, in the Elizabethan Review Online, is by Peter Usher, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Eberly College of Science, Pennsylvania State University. It is a look at the Copernican Revolution as reflected in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Usher claims that "Hamlet manifests an astronomical cosmology that is no less magnificent than its literary and philosophical counterparts." Footnote no. 5 refers to other articles about Hamlet and astronomy, including the article "Hamlet and the Infinite Universe," an excerpt from an article in Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 28, (1996), 1305, and now online in the Online Research/Penn State Journal, 18, no. 3, (September 1997), at http://www.rps.psu.edu/sep97/hamlet.html.

Excerpts of Copernicus' "Dedication" to The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies

http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/dedication.html

This History Guide Web page features a 1972 translation, plus links to information on The Copernican Model, Copernican System, translations of The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, and biographies of Copernicus.