Talk:Tycho Brahe/Archive 3

Is "Manufactories" a word?
The third paragraph includes the sentence "Something of an autocrat on the island he nevertheless founded manufactories such as paper-making to provide material for printing his results." Is "manufactories" a real word? I don't think it is. Emmenjay (talk) 05:30, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think so. Connormah (talk) 05:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a real word. It means "a place where a product is manufactured" according to the OED. MidlandLinda (talk) 14:13, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Dubious quotation

 * "At age 17, Tycho wrote:

I've studied all available charts of the planets and stars and none of them match the others. There are just as many measurements and methods as there are astronomers and all of them disagree. What's needed is a long term project with the aim of mapping the heavens conducted from a single location over a period of several years. "

I have transferred the above text here from the article because the request for a more suitable source has remained unfulfilled for three months. The source given is a tertiary source, as are the few others I have been able to find, and these give no clue as to where Tycho is supposed to have uttered the words quoted. I don't consider such sources reliable for such details, and especially not for details which, as in this case, cannot be found in several of the most authoritative scholarly secondary sources, such as Dreyer's Tycho Brahe, Thoren's  The Lord of Uraniborg, Christianson's On Tycho's Island, Christianson's Tycho Brahe and Prague or Mosley's Bearing the Heavens. Despite extensive searches, I have been unable to find a primary or secondary source containing the quotation.

I can confirm from reliable sources&mdash;such as those for which I have just given links&mdash;that the quotation does accurately depict Tycho's attitudes and activities in 1563, and could well be something that he might have said. However, there are very good reasons for doubting that anything like it occurs in what little of his writings have survived from that period. I very much suspect that if the quotation could be tracked back to a primary origin it will be found to have suffered some distortion from Chinese whispers, and had an incorrect date assigned to it. The primary source commonly cited by scholars as documenting Tycho's activities and attitudes during the period in question are his recollections published some 35 years later in Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica. Here is a case in point with some extracts translated into English. David Wilson (talk · cont) 07:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Tycho's Elk - Owning one percent of Denmark's wealth
This sentence has a "quotation needed", and I can understand why.

In my astronomy-class I remember being told by the teacher that Tycho Brahe was promised by the Danish king 1% of the king's collected taxes - in effect 1% of the states income - making Tycho Brahe (according to my teacher) the first person in history to perform so-called "Super Science" - in his definition a single project or institution receiving at least 1% of a nations available funds. I can imagine that this "fact" has transformed into Tycho Brahe having at his disposal 1% of the nation('s economy) to "having 1% of the nations wealth" which is much more than the 1% of the states collected tax.--Nwinther (talk) 14:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The request for a citation has remained unfulfilled for 18 months. This is plenty of time for anyone who thinks the claim might be credible to provide one, so you would be perfectly within your rights to simply remove it without further ado.  I've now done so.
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 15:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

al-Wafa and lunar variation
A recent edit removed the following partially sourced assertions from the article: ""The 3rd Lunar inequality (the variation) was first discovered by Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī,[78] although Tycho often quoted al-Wafa's work we today say that he independently rediscovered the phenomenon.""

until the relevant information could be "double checked". The source cited was p.105 of Florian Cajori's A History of Mathematics, first published in 1893. Although this source does support the assertion in the first half of the removed text, there appears to be nothing in it to support the one in the second, and I could find no support whatever for that in either Dreyer's or Thoren's well-regarded biographies of Brahe, or any other reliable source I consulted.

Moreover, Cajori's assertion that al-Wafa discovered the lunar variation turns out to have been based on a mistaken interpretation, published in 1835, by a single French scholar, of a defective manuscript copy of Ptolemy's Almagest. By 1892, the year before Cajori's book was published, this scholar's misinterpretation had already been thoroughly discredited, and, as far as I have been able to determine, there are no modern historians of science who support it. Details can be found in any good modern biography of al-Wafa, such as the ones in the on-line copy of Encyclopedia Iranica, the The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers and the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

Needless to say, removal of the text turns out to have been fully justified, and none of it should be reinstated. David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:12, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Good call. Based on your rationale I have taken the liberty of removing a copy-paste of that sentence in the Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī article, which was added by the same editor who originally added the information to this article. --Saddhiyama (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. You just beat me to it. In fact, I was surprised to see your name in the edit history, because I thought I had just made exactly the same edit and didn't get an edit conflict.  The same material had also been added to the article Variation (astronomy), from which.
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Evidence or data?
I have a slight problem with this sentence: After his death, his records of the motion of the planet Mars provided evidence to support Kepler's discovery of the ellipse and area laws of planetary motion.. First of all, I don't like the word evidence. It would be more accurate to say that his data was used by Kepler to derive planetary motion. To say his records "provided evidence" suggests that Kepler's discovery was made independently of the data, and then confirmed by Brahe's records. In fact, Brahe's data was crucial. The truth is that Kepler used Brahe's data to work out the laws of planetary motion. So I would suggest something like this: After his death, Kepler used Brahe's records of the motion of Mars to work out the modern laws of planetary motion, such as the elliptical orbits. —75.4.241.108 (talk) 07:21, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for picking this up. I agree with your analysis, and  your suggestion (with some minor modification).
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

How do you figure
"It gained a considerable following after 1616 when Rome decided officially that the heliocentric model was contrary to both philosophy and Scripture, and could be discussed only as a computational convenience that had no connection to fact." Why would this matter to people like Tycho or Keppler? They weren't Catholics. Moreover, what's your source for the Catholic Church decided the heliocentric model was contrary to philosopy and scripture. Galileo's real problem was that he mixed science and religion and insulted his old friend the pope in the process, without actually having proved, scientifically, that the Earth revolves around the Sun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.3.42.23 (talk) 03:17, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism
There seem to be some persistent vandalism activity in this article - should it be better protected ? TGCP (talk) 08:16, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree, and have requested semi-protection here at Requests for page protection. -84user (talk) 21:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll add this here, if I may. It's not exactly concerning vandalism, but does concern an edit I would like to propose. Sarah William's wonderful poem "The Old Astronomer to his Pupil" begins with a tribute to Brahe, and I think it deserves mention under the "Legacy" heading:

Reach me down my Tycho Brahé, -- I would know him when we meet

When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.83.29.154 (talk) 19:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Facts about Tycho Brahe
I would like to add that Tycho was the most precise naked eye astronomer. Also he had a pet moose that he took along when he went to parties with him. Mbar3466 (talk) 16:00, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Horrible sentence
I read this three times and still don't understand it:

In his De nova stella of 1573, he destroyed the theory of the celestial spheres with precision measurements that showed the celestial heavens were not immutable as previously assumed by Aristotle and Ptolemy, but by the lack of parallax, new stars (now known as novae or supernovae), in particular that of 1572, were not "atmospheric" tail-less comets but occurred above the atmosphere and moon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.85.14.106 (talk) 05:15, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that is terrible. I made some edits to simplify it. People may revert or re-edit as they please, of course.MorbidAnatomy (talk) 21:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a big improvement, nice -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:11, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Still needs more work, such as getting the facts straight. 99.65.198.174 (talk) 04:13, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Unless the terminology has changed since Brahe, the phrase 'stellae novae, now known as supernovae' is incorrect. The original 'novae or supernovae' should probably be reintroduced for 'supernovae'. AlexFekken (talk) 07:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Tycho's Elk clarification
"Tycho's Elk" section states "Pierre Gassendi wrote that Tycho also had a tame elk (moose)... " which may cause some confusion with the simple reference to both elk and moose. In North America, the two are different species (while both belong to the deer family). More of a global clarification might be made by saying 'Tycho also had a tame elk (North America: 'moose')...', or something similar.

This distinction in North America is shown here: http://press.princeton.edu/birds/mammals/elk/elksp.html  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.42.135.235 (talk) 14:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If you click on the wikilink elk, which is linked in the article, you will get an explanation there as well. To include a more elaborate distinction in the actual article seems a bit WP:UNDUE to me. --Saddhiyama (talk) 16:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Not cited correctly
Apologies for any breach of protocol, it has been a very long time since I edited a Wikipedia page. I just wanted to mention that this passage under Family life:

"under Danish law, when a nobleman and a common woman lived together openly as husband and wife, and she wore the keys to the household at her belt like any true wife, their alliance became a binding morganatic marriage after three years. The husband retained his noble status and privileges; the wife remained a commoner. Their children were legitimate in the eyes of the law, but they were commoners like their mother and could not inherit their father's name, coat of arms, or landholdings."

Is cited as Skautrup, Peter, 1941 Den jyske lov: Text med oversattelse og ordbog. Aarhus: Universitets-forlag. I happen to have "On Tycho's Island" by John Robert Christianson right in front of me and discover that the above passage was copied verbatim from page 13 of this book. I don't know if this is plagiarism because I am sadly uninformed about GFDL. I therefore do not wish to make any changes to the passage but I feel that it should at least be cited properly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.253.0.121 (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 December 2015
It is unnecessary and unsubstantiated to state he behaved autocratically towards persons on the island. Not only would this type of thinking be inaccurate for the time period it bears no relevance to his biography at large and is purely speculative and completely non demonstrative.

170.146.221.37 (talk) 17:07, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, it is prominently mentioned in biographies, and merits inclusion here. It is also ell documented in historical sources, because the local peasants actually litigated against him. This is because the people at the Island lived free of service bonds untill he arrived and because the tax and labor burdens he forced on them after he was given the Island were heavier than those of comparable areas in the same period.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:33, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion
are old but may have some details or be the source of various sentences in this article. — Llywelyn II   07:18, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Alleged sole motive
The second paragraph speaks of "a religiously motivated reluctance". The paragraph entitled "The Tychonic cosmological model" notes correctly that Tycho also gave physical reasons for supposing that the Earth was stationary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Python541 (talk • contribs) 09:31, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciation
How is his name correctly pronounced? English people say /ˈtaɪ.koʊ brɑː/ while Czechs say it /ˈtɪxo ˈbraɦɛ/. I doubt either of these are correct, does anyone here know the Danish pronunciation? - file lake  shoe  17:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"Tycho" is a Latin form, so it was subject to a wide range of pronunciations even in Tycho's own time. "Brahe", when written in Latin, would also have been subject to regional Latin accents plus the several approximations of classical Latin. If a pronunciation is needed, should we give a reconstruction of golden Latin, or go with the current Vatican standard pronunciation? 163.47.20.94 (talk) 08:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)


 * The original question is based on the assumption that there is only one correct pronunciation of Danish or any language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.132.12.28 (talk) 10:15, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

In modern Danish, it's something along the lines of "TOO-ko BRAh-ah" (source: https://forvo.com/word/da/tycho_brahe/#da) 213.211.211.226 (talk) 12:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Incorrect quote source regarding cause of death
In the Illness, death, and investigations section there is a quote stating Tycho Brahe "most likely died of a burst bladder". Due to the structure of the sentence this quote appears to come from the team who analysed samples from his exhumed body (a quote earlier in the same sentence comes from the lead of the investigation). This quote actually come from a scientific journalist reporting on some results from that team (according to the citation).

Exor314 (talk) 22:07, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 May 2018
Hello fellow contributors,

I would like to draw attention to the following paragraph under section "The Tychonic cosmological model". Currently it states: Kepler, as well as other Copernican astronomers, tried to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the solar system. Tycho advocated for a system with an immobile Earth for both scientific and religious reasons. But Tycho was not persuaded.

I'm not sure if the entire paragraph originates from reference 73, but the sentence structure is confusing. I suggest the following correction: Tycho advocated for a system with an immobile Earth for both scientific and religious reasons. Kepler, as well as other Copernican astronomers, tried to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the solar system, but Tycho was not persuaded.

This correction would clarify the flow of the idea presented since the original contrasting statement "But Tycho was not persuaded" is in response to a statement two sentences prior, which leaves ambiguity as to what is being contrasted (i.e., Was Tycho not persuaded by his own advocated idea?) I believe using "Kepler...tried to persuade Tycho to adopt...the solar system, but Tycho was not persuaded" flows easier.

Dantestyrael (talk) 20:13, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. The description of Tycho's view is a reiteration of the above paragraph so I have removed it, but I have implemented your request in regard to the flow of the sentence. Hrodvarsson (talk) 00:34, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 October 2017
Grammar mistake: Change "5 times more accurate than the best measurements" to "5 times more accurate than the best of any other measurements". 173.64.120.19 (talk) 01:05, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Stickee (talk) 01:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Isn't this meaningless? Shouldn't it be that the error is five times smaller?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.52.124.254 (talk) 16:21, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Regarding this edit, you're right. Thanks for correcting me. (I'm not pinging you for reasons known to both of us). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Danish version
The Danish version has his birth name written as Thyge, not Tyge that we see here and on the French version (and everywhere else I've seen). Anyone care to "investigate"? Thanks! CielProfond (talk) 23:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

No mention of Jeppe?
No mention of Tyco Brahe's dwarf, Jeppe??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:643:8104:730:F4E7:35AC:B4C1:7B2A (talk) 00:13, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Untitled
Needs info on Jepp! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.11.242.203 (talk) 11:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Astronomer or Astrologer
The text says "firm intention of becoming an astrologer" - is there any basis for saying he intended an Astrologer, or do we mean Astronomer? 150.143.13.154 (talk) 18:05, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Nearly every academic with mathematical skills in Tycho's time was an astrologer - as it provided a steady form of income in otherwise uncertain times. However, he was dismissive of astrology as it took him away from his primary focus of being an astronomer. In his last two years, to his chagrine, he was forced to do astrology for the emperor and virtually left Keppler with the data he had collected to be analyzed. Terry Macro (talk) 23:43, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

"Tycho De Brahe" was used in Brahe's lifetime
Although Alena Solcova's article (ref 2) claims the name "Tycho de Brahe" was only applied in the 19th century, this was an error, as has been clarified with sources in this question on History of Math and Science StackExchange. Examples of earlier usage include Brahe's own Epistolarum Astronomicarum Libri (1596) in a letter from William IV, Landgrave of Hesse dated 26 July 1589. Further examples can be found on the linked question. This relates to note a in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjgallagher2 (talk • contribs) 20:43, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

First-name basis
I see no reason to refer to the subject by his first name throughout the article. Using his last name is more appropriate, except where needed to distinguish him from family members. UpdateNerd (talk) 09:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Tycho is used consistently by other encylopedias (e.g. ) and biographies (e.g. ). This article should refer to him in the same way (other examples exist, for instance see Galileo Galilei). I intend to amend the article to ensure it consistently names him as Tycho. Amitchell125 (talk) 11:29, 27 October 2021 (UTC)