Dotting the "i" in Copernicus: Correcting Errors in Epochal Works

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There’s nothing quite like writing a revolutionary work than correcting one—and correcting a work that actually needed it.  In the world of epochal efforts, that subset of work that was needed for substantial re-arrangement and correction of The Big Idea is a small one indeed.  In the period from 1875-1915 or so, when virtually every discipline in the West underwent groundbreaking change, none that I can think of offhand needed sweeping revisions, or revisions at all.  Granted, you can’t really “correct” Schoenberg or Strindberg or Joyce or Kandinsky for mistakes, but you can do that for Roentgen or Einstein or Planck or Boltzmann.  But it wasn’t necessary for the big thinking in the sciences.  This is what the today-little-known Erasmus Reinhold (1511-1553) knew needed to be done with Copernicus’ De Revoultionibus (of 1543)—as attested to so somewhat later by Johannes Kepler.  As a matter of fact, according to the Dictionary of Science Biography¹, a vast and superb 20-volume keystone repository of necessary information, Kepler referred to the necessary corrections as  a “huge and disagreeable task”(vol XI, p 366)  but absolutely essential to make the work less cumbersome and slow and more handy and, well, useful.

Reinhold’s book, Prutenicae Tabulae Coelestium Motuum, was speedily done and shows the work of master mathematician, appeared in 1551, delayed as it was for a few years by war.  It instantly became an exceptionally influential book, computationally brilliant and even superior to Copernicus, with the Tables² replacing those of the master, and which were bettered only by those of Kepler’s own Rudolphine Tables³. Eramus’ book presented the first astronomical tables based on Copernicus’ work, but the work as a whole slipped by the heliocentric system, which Erasmus chose to not engage. But he certainly did the necessary corrections for De Revolutionibus⁴, further helping  Copernicus slay the astronomical monsters of ancient construction.   The Principia is another issue… 

Notes:

1. Owen Gingerich, who wrote the “Erasmus” entry for the DSB, 
referred to him as the most influential astronomical 
pedagogue of his generation.  Erasmus also published a 
commentary on Georg Peuerbach's Theoricae Novae 
Planetarum in 1542 as well as one on the first book of Ptolemy's 
Almagest in 1549.

2.  The Prutenic Tables were named for both Copernicus and the man who financed their publication, Erasmus supporter and benefactor Duke Albrecht of Prussia (whose influence seems to have been initially gained for Erasmus by Philip Melanchton).

3. Johannes Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables(Tabulae Rudolphinae)  were published in 1627 and cosnsited of a star catalog and planetary tables based on the extraordinary collection of data and observations of Tycho Brahe.

4. The entire TRANSLATED work is located here.

In the preface to De revolutionibus Copernicus takes on the ancient masters like Ptolemy and Aristotle with a steel glove:   “But meanwhile they introduced a good many ideas which apparently contradict the first principles of uniform motion. Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts. On the contrary, their experience was just like some one taking from various places hands, feet, a head, and other pieces, very well depicted, it may be, but not for the representation of a single person; since these fragments would not belong to one another at all, a monster rather than a man would be put together from them. Hence in the process of demonstration or "method", as it is called, those who employed eccentrics are found either to have omitted something essential or to have admitted something extraneous and wholly irrelevant. This would not have happened to them, had they followed sound principles. For if the hypotheses assumed by them were not false, everything which follows from their hypotheses would be confirmed beyond any doubt. Even though what I am now saying may be obscure, it will nevertheless become clearer in the proper place.”  

5. Copernicus also had some pretty strong stuff to say about the great early scholar Lactantius:

“Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault with my undertaking and censure it. I disregard them even to the extent of despising their criticism as unfounded. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, otherwise an illustrious writer but hardly an astronomer, speaks quite childishly about the earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the earth has the form of a globe. Hence scholars need not be surprised if any such persons will likewise ridicule me. Astronomy is written for astronomers.”