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The Heritage Copernicus: Theories Pleasing to the Mind
Some foxing to page edges. Pages are clean and binding is tight. Solid Book.
542 pages, Hardcover
First published December 15, 1974
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March 26, 2024
A COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL ESSAYS OF ‘INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS’
The Preface to this 1974 book explains, “This book represents the implementation of a decision adopted by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences relating to the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Copernicus. From the outset it was intended that this Copernican volume would describe a number of Copernican-type intellectual revolutions that have taken place in recent centuries. Such revolutions are characterized by the abandonment of widely held concepts and replacement by dramatically new conceptualizations that resulted in deepened understanding of natural processes. It was the original intention … that the essays would be address to the general educated public…we hope that the summaries preceding particular chapters are sufficient to create a broad perspective and make the whole understandable.”
The opening chapter by Editor Jerzy Neyman explains, “According to well-established tradition, Nicholas Copernicus was the celebrated scientist who… originated the idea that the earth moves around the sun, and not vice versa… The actual situation was much more complex. To begin with, Copernicus was not the first to advocate the centrality of the sun. Aristarchus of Samos, eighteen centuries before Copernicus, and later Pythagoreans had the same idea. Copernicus was familiar with some of the rather vague writings of these philosophers and referred to them in his own works… the work of Copernicus was limited to developing numerical details of the heliocentric … system of planetary motions … In the second century of the Christian era, similar work was done by Ptolemy based on a geocentric (earth-centered) system of planetary motions… As far as agreement with observed planetary positions is concerned, the Copernican theory has only minor advantages over the Ptolemaic.” (Pg. 1)
Robert L. Sinsheimer explains in his essay, “With the discovery of the viruses… the concept of life was extended again, to yet smaller entities… But in the process the concept was confused by the loss of some of its salient characteristics. The viruses… could evidently reproduce but only within other living (or recently living) forms. They appeared to lack an independent metabolism. Some researchers, therefore, thought the viruses to be the minimal units of life; others thought them to be the ultimate of obligate parasites.” (Pg. 146)
E. Margoliash states, “On the basis of only two such amino acid sequences it is not possible to tell whether the observed similarity is the result of a convergent evolutionary process or merely what remains of the original ancestral form following a divergent evolutionary process. However, similarities of the sequences of the cytochromes … corresponding to some 50 different species from the lowest to the highest, indicate strongly that all cytochromes ‘c’ being essentially universally distributed among all species, this result is particularly interesting. To the present author, it constitutes the strongest evidence yet obtained that all living forms on earth as we know them today, including man, are the result of a single occurrence and descend from a common ancestor.” (Pg. 198)
Stanley L. Miller recounts in his essay, “I arrived in Chicago in September 1951… About the middle of the fall semester, [Harold] Urey gave a seminar on the origin of the solar system, in which he pointed out that the solar system is reducing (that is, there is an excess of molecular hydrogen) except for the earth and the minor planets (Mars, Venus, and Mercury), which are more oxidized, with the earth’s atmosphere being highly oxidized. The earth’s atmosphere contains carbon dioxide … molecular nitrogen… water, and molecular oxygen…it is highly oxidized because of the presence of molecular oxygen. It seemed very likely to Urey that the earth was also reducing when it was first formed. A reducing atmosphere would contain methane… ammonia… water, and molecular hydrogen… this is just the atmosphere present on Jupiter and Saturn, except that the eater has been frozen out, and on Uranus and Neptune, where both the water and ammonia have been frozen out.” (Pg 229)
He explains of the famous Miller/Urey experiment, “I set the apparatus up again and this time boiled the water more vigorously, making more dangerous pressure did not build up, and started the spark. In the morning when I looked at the apparatus the solution looked distinctly pink… I rushed over to Urey and brought him back to see the color, which he viewed with as much excitement as I did… I estimated that I had at least 10 mg of amino acids… The results were strikingly successful, and there was no question about my being able to continue on the project and write my dissertation on it… So I wrote up a short paper putting Urey’s name as a coauthor and brought it to him for approval. He first said that I should take his name off since I had done the work largely by myself, and if his name was on it I would receive little or no credit… I had expected that this paper would generate considerable interest… But the reaction to the paper startled me… There was even a Gallup poll asking whether people thought it possible ‘to create life in a test tube.’ … After a while the furor died down and I was able to devote full time again to the experiments… the red color observed the first day of the ‘successful’ experiment turned out to be elusive, and the color has never been identified. It is the only aspect of the experiment that has not proved reproducible.” (Pg. 235-237)
This book will interest those studying scientific history.
The Preface to this 1974 book explains, “This book represents the implementation of a decision adopted by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences relating to the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Copernicus. From the outset it was intended that this Copernican volume would describe a number of Copernican-type intellectual revolutions that have taken place in recent centuries. Such revolutions are characterized by the abandonment of widely held concepts and replacement by dramatically new conceptualizations that resulted in deepened understanding of natural processes. It was the original intention … that the essays would be address to the general educated public…we hope that the summaries preceding particular chapters are sufficient to create a broad perspective and make the whole understandable.”
The opening chapter by Editor Jerzy Neyman explains, “According to well-established tradition, Nicholas Copernicus was the celebrated scientist who… originated the idea that the earth moves around the sun, and not vice versa… The actual situation was much more complex. To begin with, Copernicus was not the first to advocate the centrality of the sun. Aristarchus of Samos, eighteen centuries before Copernicus, and later Pythagoreans had the same idea. Copernicus was familiar with some of the rather vague writings of these philosophers and referred to them in his own works… the work of Copernicus was limited to developing numerical details of the heliocentric … system of planetary motions … In the second century of the Christian era, similar work was done by Ptolemy based on a geocentric (earth-centered) system of planetary motions… As far as agreement with observed planetary positions is concerned, the Copernican theory has only minor advantages over the Ptolemaic.” (Pg. 1)
Robert L. Sinsheimer explains in his essay, “With the discovery of the viruses… the concept of life was extended again, to yet smaller entities… But in the process the concept was confused by the loss of some of its salient characteristics. The viruses… could evidently reproduce but only within other living (or recently living) forms. They appeared to lack an independent metabolism. Some researchers, therefore, thought the viruses to be the minimal units of life; others thought them to be the ultimate of obligate parasites.” (Pg. 146)
E. Margoliash states, “On the basis of only two such amino acid sequences it is not possible to tell whether the observed similarity is the result of a convergent evolutionary process or merely what remains of the original ancestral form following a divergent evolutionary process. However, similarities of the sequences of the cytochromes … corresponding to some 50 different species from the lowest to the highest, indicate strongly that all cytochromes ‘c’ being essentially universally distributed among all species, this result is particularly interesting. To the present author, it constitutes the strongest evidence yet obtained that all living forms on earth as we know them today, including man, are the result of a single occurrence and descend from a common ancestor.” (Pg. 198)
Stanley L. Miller recounts in his essay, “I arrived in Chicago in September 1951… About the middle of the fall semester, [Harold] Urey gave a seminar on the origin of the solar system, in which he pointed out that the solar system is reducing (that is, there is an excess of molecular hydrogen) except for the earth and the minor planets (Mars, Venus, and Mercury), which are more oxidized, with the earth’s atmosphere being highly oxidized. The earth’s atmosphere contains carbon dioxide … molecular nitrogen… water, and molecular oxygen…it is highly oxidized because of the presence of molecular oxygen. It seemed very likely to Urey that the earth was also reducing when it was first formed. A reducing atmosphere would contain methane… ammonia… water, and molecular hydrogen… this is just the atmosphere present on Jupiter and Saturn, except that the eater has been frozen out, and on Uranus and Neptune, where both the water and ammonia have been frozen out.” (Pg 229)
He explains of the famous Miller/Urey experiment, “I set the apparatus up again and this time boiled the water more vigorously, making more dangerous pressure did not build up, and started the spark. In the morning when I looked at the apparatus the solution looked distinctly pink… I rushed over to Urey and brought him back to see the color, which he viewed with as much excitement as I did… I estimated that I had at least 10 mg of amino acids… The results were strikingly successful, and there was no question about my being able to continue on the project and write my dissertation on it… So I wrote up a short paper putting Urey’s name as a coauthor and brought it to him for approval. He first said that I should take his name off since I had done the work largely by myself, and if his name was on it I would receive little or no credit… I had expected that this paper would generate considerable interest… But the reaction to the paper startled me… There was even a Gallup poll asking whether people thought it possible ‘to create life in a test tube.’ … After a while the furor died down and I was able to devote full time again to the experiments… the red color observed the first day of the ‘successful’ experiment turned out to be elusive, and the color has never been identified. It is the only aspect of the experiment that has not proved reproducible.” (Pg. 235-237)
This book will interest those studying scientific history.
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