JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 831  Blog Bookstore

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.”
 

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 672  Blog Bookstore

It bothers me how
long people had access to something like a telescope and used it as a toy, or a
contrivance, or as an insurance tool or a gear in the machine of war before the
instrument made its ways into Galileo’s mind. 
There are many rivalries for the term of “inventor” of the telescope,
with descriptions of undoubtedly very primitive telescopes going back to
Egyptian and Arabian legend, to Chaucer, to Roger Bacon’s “glasses or
diaphanous bodies”, to the theoretical accomplishments of Thomas Digges and
terrestrial interests of Dr. John Dee. These investigations no doubt made their
influence in the development of the telescope, but seem minor compared to great
strides made in 1608, when the telescope seemed to be everywhere (at least in
Germany and Holland and Italy and France) in advanced development.  But particular high distinction goes to Holland, with Jan Lippershey  and James Metius  who
(was it in 1608?) filed petitions for the exclusive rights to sell their
instruments for seeing things at a distance. 

But still, people
were still not actually pointing these instruments “up”—and then there was a
class of aristocrats and well-do-dos who were shown these optical tools as toys
and pastimes.  But all of this changed monumentally
when news of the telescope came to Galileo’s attention in May 1609—by August 29
he had fabricated one of superior quality and effect (three diameters and nine times
larger), though the first public demonstration was used to spot ships’ sails
over an horizon that was invisible to the naked eye.  By 1610 he had produced his fifth and most
powerful telescope, allowing things one thousand times closer, which he
instantly used and made enormous discoveries of such significance that they are
hard to understand today in the context of early 17^th century
knowledge.

 With the exception of
comets and eclipses the sky had remained immutable, a perfect score of the
creator’s creation, until 1572, when Tycho Brahe noticed something new in Cassiopeia,
something that was not a comet—a something that was a star. This was momentous
because the night sky had been seen for centuries as being complete—a new star,
the Nova of Brahe, contradicted this high belief, offering the possibilities of
newness where there had not been one previously.  And so too with Kepler’s new star of 1602.

One of the things
that Galileo brought to the world was an entirely new sky, revealed to him
through his telescope—so many stars that he could only guess (though Galleon
reckoned that there was an order of magnitude more stars than previously known “stars
in myriads, which had never been seen before….and which surpasses the old,
previously known, stars by ten times”).

All of this was
published in his fantastic Sidereus
Nuncius on March 4, 1610—extraordinarily, the very title page¹ of the book
proclaiming some of the great discoveries of Galileo’s adventure.  Of course there was also his investigations
of the Milky Way and the impossible discovery of four new “planets” (moons) around
Jupiter, and the disruption of the happy belief in a smooth and luminous
Moon. 

It is difficult today to estimate the impact Galileo’s
innovation and the subsequent (and immediate) publication of Sidereus had on society.  The challenges to long-defined orthodoxy and
the bending of theological constraints (though the church would have its turn
on Galileo later); expanding the size and scope of the universe, applying mathematics
to the study of physics, understanding the physics of motion, developing the
telescope and the microscope and other precision physical instruments, are all
such deeply important changes that it is difficult to resize them in terms of
21^st century advancement. 

1. The title page reads: “great
   and very wonderful spectacles, and offering them to the consideration of
   every one, but especially of philosophers and astronomers; which have been
   observed by Galileo Galilei … by the assistance of a perspective glass
   lately invented by him; namely, in the face of the moon, in innumerable
   fixed stars in the milky-way, in nebulous stars, but especially in four
   planets which revolve round Jupiter at different intervals and periods
   with a wonderful celerity.”