Talk:Copernican Revolution

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Unclear Text
"The “epoch-making work, the De revolutionibus”[2] is not the spider at the center of the web."

What does this mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.117.126.98 (talk) 10:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Much of the main article is about a non-existent mole-hill and a non-existent spider. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.207.21 (talk) 10:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Not only is the spider non-existent, so is the web. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.207.21 (talk) 11:18, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The article is so silly, it ought to be deleted altogether. The points in it have been mentioned elsewhere in Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.207.21 (talk) 12:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Copernicus's heliostaticism is meaningless and similar opinions have been put forward earlier by Pythagoras and others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.207.21 (talk) 12:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a danger of being over-whelmed by non-existent spider-webs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.34.71 (talk) 14:37, 6 April 2009 (UTC) Much idiotic matter was removed by Finell on the 16/5/2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.178.217.38 (talk) 10:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Intext citations
I propose to start with Kuhn's "The Copernican Revolution" 1957 to see what can be added. (MihalOrela (talk) 07:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC))

References and Notes
I have added both a (foot)notes section and a references section (MihalOrela (talk) 16:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC))

Geography and History
There is already a huge amount of material available on the details of Copernicus' life and work. I have introduced a different perspective: geography which focuses not on the political divisions of land masses (Poland, Prussia, or whatever) but on the latitude of the region with respect to the equator in the northern hemisphere and what can be seen in the sky at night; and history, not that thing nicely wrapped up in dates after the fact but the meandering time lines sometimes criss-crossing, often in parallel. Some converge. Some diverge.

(MihalOrela (talk) 18:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC))


 * Please don't import the ridiculous dispute about Copernicus' nationality onto this page. It is not about Copernicus the person, but about the scientific revolution he initiated. Biographical details of Copernicus, Tycho et al belong on the pages for those people (that's why we have links). PaddyLeahy (talk) 22:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Animation
Does anyone know why the fine animated figure by Cleonis does not work on the article (while it works in )? --GianniG46 (talk) 11:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It is working now, after the substitution of "thumb" with "frame", which gives no option for choosing the dimension (it was 400px) --GianniG46 (talk) 12:47, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

"Galaxy" is a contemporaneous concept
In relation to:


 * "which postulated the Earth at the center of the galaxy"

There is not concept of "galaxy" in the 16th and 17th Centuries nor earlier. In the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology the Earth is the center of the world.

--Gonzalcg (talk) 02:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Klbrain (talk) 11:27, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Pictures
Added pictures of the Copernican system, Tycho's drawing of the comet he saw, and Kepler's system. Meganjeanne1 (talk) 02:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Article Expansion
I believe this is an article of significance that should be improved in its quality and comprehensiveness. The Copernican Revolution was an important advancement in humanity’s understanding of the universe and the content of this article should reflect that. I plan on working on this page and expanding its content in the coming weeks.

First, I believe a summary of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory is relative to this page with a link to the main article for further reading. Also, I believe the sections pertaining to individual astronomers and their contributions to the Copernican Revolution can be expanded on significantly. Each played a large part and increasing that content will be beneficial to this page. Finally, I would like to touch on the connection between the Copernican Revolution and the Scientific Revolution. This is a subject I do not know much about and I will have to do research in order to expand this idea.

Here are a few of the sources I have been working from so far. --IndigoDeberry (talk) 23:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Williams, C. J. F. "Aristotle And Copernican Revolutions." Phronesis 36.3 (1991): 305-312. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
 * Graney, Christopher. "Seeds Of A Tychonic Revolution: Telescopic Observations Of The Stars By Galileo Galilei And Simon Marius." Physics In Perspective 12.1 (2010): 4-24. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
 * Singham, Mano. "The Copernican Myths." Physics Today 60.12 (2007): 48-52. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
 * Kosso, Peter. "And Yet It Moves: The Observability Of The Rotation Of The Earth." Foundations Of Science 15.3 (2010): 213-225. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
 * Ragep, F. Jamil. "Copernicus And His Islamic Predecessors: Some Historical Remarks." History Of Science 45.1 (2007): 65-81. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
 * Yes, I agree with you, though there are other Wiki articles covering this: e.g. Heliocentrism, Copernican heliocentrism. The latter has a good section on the Acceptance of the theory which I'm interested in, though curiously it points to this as the main article!
 * Btw I've moved this section to the end, following normal wiki practice. Chris55 (talk) 19:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

IndigoDeberry and I Meganjeanne1 have completed the article expansion, we hope all who read like it. Our classmates from the History of Science from Antiquity to Newton will begin to revise and edit the article for the next week or so. Meganjeanne1 (talk) 04:35, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts. The text certainly reads better. However you don't seem to have appreciated the importance of links in Wiki articles—most of those in the first paragraph have been removed. People who don't understand terms need to be able to click on those links. Also references are as important as the text, which could be just someone's unsupported opinion. Chris55 (talk) 11:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that the page is really coming together. I do have a few tips however. First, as noted above links can be very crucial. For example, I did not know of the book "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium," but was able to find it on Wikipedia. By adding two opening brackets to the beginning of the link and close the link with two closing brackets you could easily solve this minor problem. Secondly, I believe that pictures of Galileo's moons would really drive home the idea that Galileo proved moons were not perfect and without a terrestrial landscape. LetsBeAwesome (talk) 02:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

This page looks great! I like the breakdown with each scientist and the description of their work related to the subject. The section "Sphere of the fixed stars" seems out of place a little because it is so short without much description. It could probably be expanded upon but it's not absolutely necessary. Jen Johnson (talk) 22:33, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Slight mistake
The article says "...Mars and its orbit, the most eccentric of the six known planets at the time". Actually, with modern figures, the orbit of Mercury has an eccentricity of 0.205630. That of the orbit of Mars is 0.095515. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.68.199.137 (talk) 08:51, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The old version has now been corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.23.186.206 (talk) 11:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

1540?
The article says, "In 1596, Kepler published his first book, the Mysterium cosmographicum, which was the first to openly endorse Copernican cosmology by an astronomer since 1540." Copernicus published his book in 1543. How could anyone have said anything about it in 1540? -- ke4roh (talk) 11:21, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The 1540 comes from Margaret Osler. Which book it refers to, I don't know. She might have found something earlier than 1543. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.8.170.5 (talk) 10:11, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Osler
Margaret Osler made feeble excuses for Copernicus's "shortcomings". She implied that Copernicus was entirely dependent on ancient observations. Actually, he made a few of his own, often with severe errors.
 * Aristarchus put forward the same theory, without instruments, other than the unaided eye. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.12.55.1 (talk) 16:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Globalise?
We have a request to "globalise" this article; right on. The inline comment asserts we're missing Missing Mu’ayyad al-Din al-’Urdi and Ibn al-Shatir. I've just stripped them back, because all the relevant stuff was added by... can you guess who... oh go on, have a guess... yes! You're right. It was Jagged William M. Connolley (talk) 11:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the memories. It seems like yesterday. Johnuniq (talk) 11:26, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * added ref in leadScientus (talk) 04:03, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You'll need much better than that William M. Connolley (talk) 06:48, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * User:William M. Connolley, can you explain what exactly is wrong with the reference "V. Roberts and E. S. Kennedy, "The Planetary Theory of Ibn al-Shatir", Isis, 50(1959):232-234" ? It seems to have appeared in a reputable venue. Tkuvho (talk) 07:06, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I even had a link to JSTOR. How can a source be any better than being inaccessible to the general public?Scientus (talk) 16:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm sure the ref is as good as any of User:Jagged 85's were. What's less clear is that it directly supports the assertion that the revolution began "with the publication of Ibn al-Shatir's kitab nihayat al-sul fi tashih al-usul" William M. Connolley (talk) 17:16, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * User:Scientus, the jstor reference you provided is to a different article, namely "The Planetary Theory of Ibn al-Shatir: Latitudes of the Planets," Author(s): Victor Roberts. Source: Isis, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Summer, 1966), pp. 208-219. This article acknowledges that Ibn al-Shatir's model is "geostatic." Copernicus' model is on the contrary heliocentric. Based in this article by Roberts, the inclusion of your sentence in the lede may be inappropriate. Tkuvho (talk) 07:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Petrakis
See www.demokritas.org/Aristarchus%20and%20Copernicus-Petrakis.htm Leonidas Petrakis makes the obvious point that this article should be called "The Aristarchan revolution". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.59.207.163 (talk) 10:11, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Is Petrakis published in a refereed journal? Tkuvho (talk) 13:25, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Except of course, when Aristarchos proposed it, it didn't cause a revolution. Chris55 (talk) 22:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It is difficult to estimate the size and permanency of revolutions. It is a waste of time to use metaphors, anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.2.28.40 (talk) 12:09, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Pythagoras's moving earth lasted until the time of the Michelson Morley experiment in 1887. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.126.220.77 (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Kepler's Fraud
I called Nova a fraudulent treatise and cited a New York Times article which itself cited a paper published by Harvard. My edit was undone. I will undo this undoing soon if I don't get a good explanation as to why I shouldn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.202.168.129 (talk) 22:54, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Averroes
The article reads "Aware of the recent criticism of the Ptolemaic model, led by the arguments made by Arabic astronomer Averoes". But Ibn Rušd died in 1198 and Copernicus was born in 1473. By my calculations they lived 275 years apart. How does this qualify as recent? Jayarava (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have improved the article, as suggested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:B37C:2800:A1C4:CCA4:B55F:CCFA (talk) 17:04, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This may or may not be an "improvement" depending on what Osler (2010) says on p.42. Does your edit, or does it not, accurately reflect the content of the reference cited?  Did you even bother to check? --dab (𒁳) 09:25, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I fixed this based on references. It is about a suggestion due to Neugebauer (1957) cited approvingly by Saliba (1979). The proposition is that 15th-century European scholarship had somehow also received 13th to 14th century Persian astronomical texts and was not entirely limited to the works of Averroes. The extent of work done before Copernicus remains unchanged by this, but it's a relevant question regarding the transmission of sources which influenced Peuerbach and Regiomontanus. --dab (𒁳) 12:07, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:CFORK
Compare: I realize the topics are strictly speaking different, or at least only partially overlapping. But if you look at the article, about half of "Copernican heliocentrism" is about Heliocentrism in general, and about half of "Copernican Revolution" is either about Heliocentrism in general, or about Copernican heliocentrism specifically. The "Copernican Revolution". The little that is actually on-topic in this article can easily become part of Copernican_heliocentrism. Hence the suggestion: Reason: there is material for two articles here, at present awkwardly spread out over three pages. --dab (𒁳) 05:36, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Heliocentrism
 * Copernican heliocentrism
 * Copernican Revolution
 * 1) merge parts of Copernican heliocentrism not about Copernican heliocentrism (Copernican_heliocentrism, Copernican_heliocentrism) into Heliocentrism
 * 2) merge Copernican Revolution into Copernican_heliocentrism (could be re-titled to just "Reception" or similar).
 * Sounds sane. I have a slight preference for merging CH into CR rather than the other way round, on the grounds that CH is a subset of H, if you like, but CR emphasises the R aspect William M. Connolley (talk) 08:54, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I disagree, this article shouldn't be moved. As you said, the two topics are not the same. This article looks quite good on it's own already, and there's still much room for improvement. There's more than enough to say about the topic. Maybe we'll have to think more about how both articles fit together, but a merge would be wrong. Karlpoppery (talk) 06:36, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * well, "CFORK" does not mean either article isn't "good", or that the topics are identical, but just that the topic overlap is so extensive that large part of both articles are essentially discussing the same thing. I suppose there we could make an effort to separate the article scopes better instead of merging, but first we need to identify the content overlap and cut it down to WP:SS summary style in either direction. I would argue that a merger is the rather more easy task, especially taking into account future buildup of article deterioration and drift introduced by well-meaning editors. On Wikipedia, you don't just try to write good articles, but you try to write them in a way that makes them hard to break by well-intentioned but poorly informed passers-by (because this is what is going to happen in any case). --dab (𒁳) 05:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree, but I also prefer to merge CH into H and CR. The majority of information in CH refers to geocentrism or reception of heliocentrism. Every section of CH (including the main point of the article, the theory itself) refers to another main article and only provides a small overview. It perfectly fits the definition of WP:CFORK and I see it as the easiest one to be rid of with the least amount of potential for missing info after merging. CAF RCN MARS (talk) 02:35, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I want to merge CR into CH because they are both related, and the content overlaps. One (CR) was the result of the other (CH), and an article that covers both related topics would provide a complete picture of the Copernican Revolution. The CH article does a better job at providing a full explanation of CH, before Copernicus, and the CR.Dpvalade (talk) 18:53, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I want to remove the "Heliocentrism" section and replace it with "Before Copernicus" section to include an "Antiquity" sub-section and "Medieval Islam" or "Islamic Golden Age" sub-section. I also want to add a "Copernican Heliocentrism" section after the "Nicolaus Copernicus" sub-section. Also, include an in "Chinese Astronomy" sub-section in the "Sphere of Fixed Stars" section, and create another sub-category "European Astronomy" in that section.Dpvalade (talk) 20:07, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Chinese astronomy
We have an excellent article on Chinese astronomy. Why repeat this here, with a content that is almost completely irrelevant to the topic of this article – the reception of Copernicus' heliocentric model? --Lambiam 04:44, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Indian Astronomy
Why is there no section on Indian astronomy? Sooku (talk) 01:14, 14 February 2020 (UTC)