Copernicus and Astronomy

The studies collected in this book focus on three main themes. The first theme addressed is geocentric astronomy, its methods and the twists and turns of its evolution, beginning with the classical form given to it by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century CE to the astronomy taught at medieval and renaissance universities and practiced in independent research centers, such as Nuremberg, and therefore the astronomy which Copernicus had studied before he developed his own world model. The theme also encompasses research on the development of astronomy outside Europe and the influence of astronomical treatises originating in Islamic countries on European science. The second theme focuses specifically on Copernicus’s work and on attempts to identify the original impulse which spurred the creation of heliocentric astronomy. The third theme is an overview of the early reception of heliocentric astronomy in Europe, both with regard to cosmological concepts and mathematical solutions originating in De revolutionibus, and an analysis of the influence of Copernicus’s planetary models on the procedures for calculating astronomical tables. The book thus aims to create a multidimensional synthesis of modern Copernican research.

Abbreviations

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

The Genius of Nicholas Copernicus: An Islamic Perspective
F. Jamil Ragep

Sizes, Distances, and Order: Celestial Reckoning in Late Medieval Islam
Sally P. Ragep

Heliocentric Bias in Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Curious Case of a Diagram
Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan

Astronomical Monsters before Copernicus: Regiomontanus’s Criticisms of Ptolemaic Modeling in the Defensio Theonis contra Georgium Trapezuntium
Michael H. Shank

Homocentric Astronomy and Copernicus
Robert G. Morrison

Prudentia and Astronomical Practices: John of Lignères Account in the Introduction to the Tabule magne
Matthieu Husson

The Equation of Time and Ptolemy’s Medieval Followers
Henry Zepeda

The Place of the Parisian Alfonsine Tables in Late Byzantine Astronomy
Anne-Laurence Caudano

Copernicus and Astrology: Remarks on the State of the Question
Robert S. Westman

The Motivation and Trajectory of Copernicus’s Early ‘Homocentric’ Planetary ‘Models’
André Goddu

The Edition of the Diagrams of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus
Diego Pelegrin and Christián Carlos Carman

The Initial Reception of Copernicus in Spain: From Jerónimo de Chaves and Jerónimo Muñoz to Diego de Mesa and Juan Cedillo Díaz
Miguel Ángel Granada

Reframing Copernicus’s Earth-Moon cognatio: From Similarities to Evidence in Favor of Heliocentrism
Natacha Fabbri

Each in His Own Way: Struggling with Heliocentrism within the Academy of the Linceans (1603–1630)
Federica Favino

Index of Names

List of Contributors