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Nicolaus Copernicus: an essay on his life and work
Light wear to boards, content clean and sharp, front blank page has been removed, solidly bound, good DJ with some wear. Ex Library Book with stamps/labels, etc
- GenresScience
92 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1973
21 people want to read
About the author
Fred Hoyle
116 books180 followersProfessor Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most distinguished, creative, and controversial scientists of the twentieth century. He was a Fellow of St John’s College (1939-1972, Honorary Fellow 1973-2001), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957, held the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy (1958-1972), established the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge (now part of the Institute of Astronomy), and (in 1972) received a knighthood for his services to astronomy.
Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.
Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 14, 2017
When I was presented with a whole list of quote mines by a geocentrist that seemed to say the sun went around the earth, I knew I had to check them out. One of them was from this book. Hoyle goes into some detail about the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems and compares them. Along the way he has a lengthy chapter about Copernicus's life, which is definitely the weakest part of the book. Hoyle is a better science writer than he is a biographer! The shortness of the book is rather misleading—chapter IV is pretty math intensive and takes some time to get through. I found the math not particularly high level but it was complex and I sooned tired of following it. In addition, I couldn't follow the bits using complex numbers. I likely will return to this book after I learn more math.
To return to geocentrism, yes, the book does indeed say what the geocentrists said it says. Here are the relevant sections:
[W]e can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical problem of describing the planetary motions. It is also possible to take any point as the center even in dynamics, although a recognition of this freedom of choice had to await the present century [20th]. Scientists of the nineteenth century felt the heliocentric theory to be established when they determined the first stellar parallaxes. The positions of nearby stars were found to undergo annual oscillations, which were taken as reflections of the Earth's annual motion around the Sun. But, kinematically speaking, we can always give to the stars epicyclic motions similar to the ones we found for the planets in Chapter IV. Indeed, if we wish to consider the Earth to be at rest, it will be necessary to give an annual epicyclic motion to every object in the distant universe, as well as to the planets of the solar system. We cannot dismiss such a procedure simply on the grounds of inconvenience or absurdity. If our feeling that the Earth really goes around the Sun, not the Sun around the Earth, has any objective validity, there must be some important physical property, expressible in precise mathematical terms, which emerges in the heliocentric picture but not in a geocentric one. What can this property be?
… In the solar system we cannot consider the inverse-square law to operate BOTH in the situation in which the Sun is taken as the center and in that in which the Earth is taken as the center, because Newton's equation would then lead to contradictory results. … It follows that in order to use the inverse-square law in a constructive way we must make a definite choice of center. The situation which now emerges is that to obtain results that agree with observation we must choose the Sun as the center. …
Although in the nineteenth century this argument was believed to be a satisfactory justification of the heliocentric theory, one found causes for disquiet if one looked into it a little more carefully. … We might hope therefore that the Einstein theory, which is well suited to such problems, would throw more light on the matter. But instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions, the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation, and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.
… Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is "right" and the Ptolemaic theory "wrong" in any meaningful physical sense. The two theories, when improved by adding terms involving the square and higher powers of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, are physically equivalent to one another. What we can say, however, is that we would hardly have come to recognize that this is so if scientists over four centuries or more had not elected to follow the Copernican point of view. The Ptolemaic system would have proved sterile because progress would have proven too difficult. pp. 82-88
To return to geocentrism, yes, the book does indeed say what the geocentrists said it says. Here are the relevant sections:
[W]e can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system. This is certainly so for the purely kinematical problem of describing the planetary motions. It is also possible to take any point as the center even in dynamics, although a recognition of this freedom of choice had to await the present century [20th]. Scientists of the nineteenth century felt the heliocentric theory to be established when they determined the first stellar parallaxes. The positions of nearby stars were found to undergo annual oscillations, which were taken as reflections of the Earth's annual motion around the Sun. But, kinematically speaking, we can always give to the stars epicyclic motions similar to the ones we found for the planets in Chapter IV. Indeed, if we wish to consider the Earth to be at rest, it will be necessary to give an annual epicyclic motion to every object in the distant universe, as well as to the planets of the solar system. We cannot dismiss such a procedure simply on the grounds of inconvenience or absurdity. If our feeling that the Earth really goes around the Sun, not the Sun around the Earth, has any objective validity, there must be some important physical property, expressible in precise mathematical terms, which emerges in the heliocentric picture but not in a geocentric one. What can this property be?
… In the solar system we cannot consider the inverse-square law to operate BOTH in the situation in which the Sun is taken as the center and in that in which the Earth is taken as the center, because Newton's equation would then lead to contradictory results. … It follows that in order to use the inverse-square law in a constructive way we must make a definite choice of center. The situation which now emerges is that to obtain results that agree with observation we must choose the Sun as the center. …
Although in the nineteenth century this argument was believed to be a satisfactory justification of the heliocentric theory, one found causes for disquiet if one looked into it a little more carefully. … We might hope therefore that the Einstein theory, which is well suited to such problems, would throw more light on the matter. But instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions, the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation, and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.
… Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is "right" and the Ptolemaic theory "wrong" in any meaningful physical sense. The two theories, when improved by adding terms involving the square and higher powers of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, are physically equivalent to one another. What we can say, however, is that we would hardly have come to recognize that this is so if scientists over four centuries or more had not elected to follow the Copernican point of view. The Ptolemaic system would have proved sterile because progress would have proven too difficult. pp. 82-88
March 16, 2014
One of the events that is highlighted in history is the alleged "Copernican Revolution". This is the idea that Nicolaus Copernicus 'corrected' the ancient astronomy of Ptolemy and showed that the earth revolves around the sun. Copernicus's theory was not completed until Kepler and Galileo appeared on the scene. And since that time, it has been argued that 'science' has corrected not only Ptolemy, but a view that was held by the Church at the time, that the sun revolved around the earth.
But 300 years later, along came Einstein with his theory of General Relativity. This theory says all motion is relative; that it depends on your particular 'location' (or point of reference) which object you perceive to be 'moving.' An example is the time you're sitting at stop lights, and you're looking at the automobile next to you, and all of sudden you have the sensation that you are moving. You slam on the brakes, or you find another reference point to assess your own motion, and you breathe a sigh of relief. You're not moving, the automobile next to you was moving.
Sir Fred Hoyle, in this book on Nicolaus Copernicus, highlights the debate over heliocentric (sun-centered) or geocentric (earth-centered) universe. He follows Einstein's theory and concludes
As he argues earlier, any point in the universe can be chosen as a 'reference point' that can be used to calculate planetary motion.
This book is a powerful reminder on the limits of science, which can prove neither a geocentric nor heliocentric universe. Nor, apparently, can science 'correct' the theologians. Which leaves the tantalizing question, can the theologians do any better using Scripture as their 'scientific' textbook to determine the center of the universe?
But 300 years later, along came Einstein with his theory of General Relativity. This theory says all motion is relative; that it depends on your particular 'location' (or point of reference) which object you perceive to be 'moving.' An example is the time you're sitting at stop lights, and you're looking at the automobile next to you, and all of sudden you have the sensation that you are moving. You slam on the brakes, or you find another reference point to assess your own motion, and you breathe a sigh of relief. You're not moving, the automobile next to you was moving.
Sir Fred Hoyle, in this book on Nicolaus Copernicus, highlights the debate over heliocentric (sun-centered) or geocentric (earth-centered) universe. He follows Einstein's theory and concludes
"Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense. The two theories, when improved by adding terms involving the square and higher powers of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, are physically equivalent to one another."
As he argues earlier, any point in the universe can be chosen as a 'reference point' that can be used to calculate planetary motion.
This book is a powerful reminder on the limits of science, which can prove neither a geocentric nor heliocentric universe. Nor, apparently, can science 'correct' the theologians. Which leaves the tantalizing question, can the theologians do any better using Scripture as their 'scientific' textbook to determine the center of the universe?
July 4, 2017
I read this book primarily as an investigation of the following quote-mine that is often tossed around by geocentrists:
Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is "right" and the Ptolemaic theory is "wrong" in any meaningful sense (...) Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published in a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm, and the editors will turn you down."
I made a boo boo by reserving the wrong edition of the book, the Harper & Row edition, the first time around, when the quote was said to come from the Heinemann edition. The Harper & Row has a few more pages than the Heinemann edition. Since I don't have both editions in front of me right at the moment I can only say, based on my memory, that the Harper and Row edition was more mathematically detailed. In particular, I remember there being more modeling of the planetary orbits based on imaginary numbers in Chapter IV in the Harper & Row.
As far as the quote mine, the person who cited it was off by one page if they were using my edition, but more seriously, I could not find the second part of the quote (Science today is locked . . .) in either edition that I read.
Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is "right" and the Ptolemaic theory is "wrong" in any meaningful sense (...) Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published in a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm, and the editors will turn you down."
I made a boo boo by reserving the wrong edition of the book, the Harper & Row edition, the first time around, when the quote was said to come from the Heinemann edition. The Harper & Row has a few more pages than the Heinemann edition. Since I don't have both editions in front of me right at the moment I can only say, based on my memory, that the Harper and Row edition was more mathematically detailed. In particular, I remember there being more modeling of the planetary orbits based on imaginary numbers in Chapter IV in the Harper & Row.
As far as the quote mine, the person who cited it was off by one page if they were using my edition, but more seriously, I could not find the second part of the quote (Science today is locked . . .) in either edition that I read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews