Copernicus: On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. (05/15/2002)
The perception that science evolved in a direct and unbroken line from it origin in the 16th Century as a discipline that applied mathematical calculations to purely material realities is a prejudice that defines its nature more in retrospect from where it stands now than it does from where it began 500 years ago. This observation is true on at least two separate grounds. Early chemistry, for instance, probably arose from ancient traditions associated with combining different kinds of metals to make harder and sharper cutting tools than any which could be fashioned from single types. Bronze and brass were combinations of copper with zinc and tin, respectively, which were both harder, and able to hold a cutting edge better, than any of the single metals alone were able to do. The process which produced the alloys, however, was mysterious and opaque to early metallurgists, who simply learned their craft from predecessors without ever becoming aware of how or why two relatively soft metals (copper/zinc and copper/tin) combined to create a third substance that was decidedly harder than either of its components. Since like combined with like was supposed to create a third substance similar to the other two (soft + soft = soft), a mystery was born in the minds of early chemists and metallurgists when bronze and brass emerged from the process of fusing the components together. The mystery in turn transformed the relatively simple activity of metallurgy into a more elaborate and profound practice which came to be known as alchemy. Eventually, of course, the science of chemistry emerged from the mystical practices of the alchemical tradition.
In many ways this same progression can be seen in the development of astronomy, which some historians of science have cited as the first instance of the human application of number, number theory, and mathematics to the study of the material environment. Calling astronomy the first science, however, where a more complex and sophisticated use of number was required at an earlier point in history to express its concerns than metallurgists were likely to need or employ, tends to cut against the fabric of what early astronomers believed they were quantifying with their mathematics as they developed numerical accounts of celestial motion. Believing that a lump of stone or a ball of gas was the embodiment of this or that god (from Mercury to Saturn, for instance) does not actually affect the application of number to describing its motion in any material way, since a planetary period counted accurately is valid no matter what you think the object is, there is still present in the activity a "theological" component, a "spiritual" ideology, that can, even must, detract from the pure application of number to material reality. Naming god while you count the periods of Venus and Jupiter necessarily qualifies, perhaps even distorts, what you are doing up or down a scale from scientific evaluation to theological speculation. Early astronomical arguments, from Ptolemy to Copernicus and beyond, always show the dissonance involved in trying to quantify a motion traditionally associated with pagan gods or with Christian Deity.
This does not mean that science is somehow tainted, ineffectual, or constrained in its ability or utility to describe the natural world. Ptolemy's view persisted for a millennium before enough evidence accumulated to cast doubt on its efficacy. What it does suggest, however, is that science never managed to escape from its deepest roots in the mythic ideology of a human struggle against god. Like any other religion, after all, science does promise us a certain inevitable felicity if we only remain true in our belief that it will bring us home to a perfect garden of earthly delight, one where old age and disease and even death itself is ultimately banished from human prospects. Finding the roots that link and bind science to its theological origins, while an idea that seems to fly in the face of contemporary disputes between issues of scientific research and religious objections to its apparent goals, is actually not that difficult to do. For instance, as Nickolaus Copernicus was preparing to receive the first printed copy of his book on the heliocentric paradigm of the solar system, he wrote a dedication for his work of many years to Pope Paul III in which he explains his hesitation over bringing it forward. He says that, "[w]hen I weighed [certain] considerations, the scorn which I had reason to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon completely the work which I had undertaken." The fact that Copernicus addresses the Pope at all indicates a deep concern on his part that his "opinion" may not be favorably received by the church. His reference to the "novelty and unconventionality" of his view in this statement is an acknowledgment that what he has discovered about the nature of celestial motion will earn him considerably more than just "scorn," since any charge of "novelty" leveled against a contemporary work of any kind at all, at least in the eyes of the church, would be the same as accusing its author of heresy. Heresy was a capital crime in 1543, punishable by death. Tertullian, in his treatise Against Hermogenes (260 AD), argued that the only test necessary to establish heresy was whether or not an idea existed in Scripture or in the writings of the church Fathers. If it was not in one of those two places, the author was condemned as a heretic. Had he been charged, Copernicus was guilty, even by his own admission. This "rule" of identifying heresy was still in place, of course, and was used against Galileo fifty years later.
Copernicus employed two separate strategies to avoid censure by the church. He reports first to the Pope that his decision to reverse conventional wisdom, which claimed the earth was at rest at the center of the celestial spheres, by assuming instead that the earth was in motion like any other planet around the sun, grew out of his frustration over the fact that the prior model had consistently failed to produce a valid computation of the length of the tropical year. He puts it this way:
"I have accordingly no desire to [hide] from Your Holiness that I was impelled to consider a different system of deducing the motions of the universe's spheres for no other reason than the realization that astronomers do not agree among themselves in their investigations of this subject. For, in the first place, they are so uncertain about the motion of the sun and moon that they cannot establish and observe a constant length even for the tropical year."
Important to note here is the fact that Copernicus did not challenge the idea that celestial objects rotated in the solar system by virtue of being attached to invisible but material spheres that held them in place and regulated their velocity around the center of the circular system. He meant to change only the single fact that the earth was in motion, not at rest, and that the sun was instead motionless at the center of the paradigm. He then goes on to claim that his revision of the system will produce an important advantage for the church; that is, as Copernicus puts it:
"my work too will seem, unless I am mistaken, to make some contribution also to the Church, at the head of which Your Holiness now stands. For not so long ago under Leo X the Lateran Council considered the problem of reforming the ecclesiastical calendar. The issue remained undecided then only because the lengths of the year and month and the motions of the sun and moon were regarded as not yet adequately measured. From that time on, at the suggestion of that most distinguished man, Paul, bishop of Fossombrone, who was then in charge of this matter, I have directed my attention to a more precise study of these topics."
Hence, Copernicus claims here, truthfully I assume, that he has been encouraged by the Bishop of Fossombrone, who was charged with the task of reforming the ecclesiastical calendar by Pope Leo X, an effort which ultimately failed because the tropical year could not be accurately measured, to pursue a study of celestial motion based on a different paradigm (solar-centric with the earth in motion) that was perceived as providing an opportunity to correct the problems associated with the Ptolemaic model. Claiming to have been sanctioned by a Bishop, indirectly by a former Pope, and even by the Lateran Council, would have made it difficult for Pope Paul to condemn Copernicus as a heretic. The point, however, was rendered moot by virtue of the fact that the astronomer apparently died on the same day he received the first copy of his book from the printer and, presumably, the Pope did not read this dedication until after Copernicus was buried. He could have been condemned posthumously, of course, which happened during the Middle Ages, but no record survives that such a course was pursued or considered.
Copernicus's second strategy for avoiding the wrath of the church hierarchy was initially expressed directly to Pope Paul and then reinforced in the first statements of the book itself. He resorts to the argument that the "universe's spheres" were made and arranged by the foremost Creator of all. He says that he "began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world." God as "Artisan," then, allows Copernicus to insert the concepts of beauty and truth into the discussion of the way the universe was fashioned and leads him to assert that his method
"is the nature of the discipline which deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the asters' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings, as well as the causes of the other phenomena in the sky, and which, in short, explains its whole appearance. What indeed is more beautiful than heaven, which of course contains all things of beauty? This is proclaimed by its very names, caelum and mundus, the latter denoting purity and ornament, the former a carving. On account of heaven's transcendent perfection most philosophers have called it a visible god."
The idea that the universe is actually a god makes it possible for Copernicus to suggest that studying its shape, its true configuration, even if that study reveals an unconventional result, nevertheless remains a pursuit associated with the highest intentions and aspirations of human curiosity, since knowing truly the condition of the "visible god" of the cosmos can only elevate human reason to a higher standing. Copernicus fashions his assertion in these terms:
"For when a man is occupied with things which he sees established in the finest order and directed by divine management, will not the unremitting contemplation of them and a certain familiarity with them stimulate him to the best and to admiration for the Maker of everything, in whom are all happiness and every good? For would not the godly Psalmist [92:4] in vain declare that he was made glad through the work of the Lord and rejoiced in the works of His hands, were we not drawn to the contemplation of the highest good by this means. . . ?"
Equating the study of the universe to the pursuit of the "highest good" (summum bonum as Kant refers to the same concept later), makes it all the more difficult for a Pope to condemn a person whose only object is to know, through an "unremitting contemplation," the true nature of the God who created the universe. While Copernicus's strategy probably worked in averting condemnation from the Papal See, and was repeated many times over by other thinkers as a way to justify activities that were not generally held in favor by the church, his argument also establishes a ground for scientific evaluation that binds up, even locks in place, the issues of pursuing a purely material reality with purely mathematical schemes with a commitment to theological and spiritual speculations that do not have now, and never did have, any relation to the object of study at hand. Since myth is generally perceived and defined as an ideology concerned with the adversarial relationship of heroic humans with the gods, and where scientific evaluations of celestial motion have always been connected by people who pursue them with the "activities" of gods and God, a fair question is whether or not such evaluations, even those currently being pursued today, have ever actually escaped from the roots of origin so obviously embraced as justification by the early practitioners of the numerical and mathematical arts. Copernicus lays a foundation for the answer when he says that
"If then the value of the arts is judged by the subject matter which they treat, that art will be by far the foremost which is labeled astronomy by some, astrology by others, but by many of the ancients, the consummation of mathematics."
Taking him at his word, then, science, as he perceived its mission and purpose, was an art practiced to comprehend the way in which mere humans were related to, and influenced by, the presence of Deity in their immediate lives. The point here is that the world perceived through science, if it has remained true to its origins, may not be anything more than another metaphor put in place to stand in the stead of a reality Eurocentric paradigms have still not managed to confront directly. The question, then, concerns a possibility that the heliocentric model of the universe may not describe the real world any better than the geocentric one did before it. Looking back at Copernicus we become aware of the fact that Ptolemy's vision of the cosmos was called into question because it could not produce a valid measure of the tropical year, which may only reflect the fact that Europeans were not able to find a suitable method for solving that problem unrelated to the physical configuration of their model, where that failure stimulated a fundamental shift in the shape of the cosmos to a system that ultimately did produce a desired result. Based on that single success, science gradually asserted other more significant alterations in the model (elliptical orbits, gravitational force, dark matter, etc.) that have led us to our present state of knowledge. A significant challenge to the validity of the Copernican model has surfaced in the disjunction between the behavior of objects in the macro-world and the behavior of particles in the micro-world of quantum physics. Whether that disjunction is enough to force a reevaluation of the Copernican model may well depend on the issue of whether or not human intellect is capable of functioning in a world without its traditional dependence on supernatural Deity as the ultimate cause of the shape of our universe.