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Irritating To The Believer

triadboy said:


Didn't he have his findings published AFTER his death?
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Yes and no. While his main work, De revolutionibus, was not circulated until around the time of his death, he had published elements of the heliocentric theory several years before that, both in his Commentariolus and in the Narratio Prima, published together with and under the name of Georg Rheticus.


(Edited to fix italics.)
 
triadboy said:

I wonder what he was afraid of?
;)
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There's no reason to assume that he was afraid of anything. From the Britannica, note particularly the last sentence, and that they don't mention "condemnation by the church" anywhere:

"To accept the theory's premises, one had to abandon much of Aristotelian natural philosophy and develop a new explanation for why heavy bodies fall to a moving Earth. It was also necessary to explain how a transient body like the Earth, filled with meteorological phenomena, pestilence, and wars, could be part of a perfect and imperishable heaven. In addition, Copernicus was working with many observations that he had inherited from antiquity and whose trustworthiness he could not verify. In constructing a theory for the precession of the equinoxes, for example, he was trying to build a model based upon very small, long-term effects. And his theory for Mercury was left with serious incoherencies.

Any of these considerations alone could account for Copernicus's delay in publishing his work."
 
csense said:
So, if you're going to criticize the Church, you might also want to direct that criticism toward science also, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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I have a hard time criticizing a discipline trying to discover 'truth'. It is much easier criticizing an institution that teaches mythology as history.
 
The enunciation of the heliocentric theory by Copernicus marked the beginning of the scientific revolution, and of a new view of a greatly enlarged universe. It was a shift away from the comfortable anthropocentrism of the ancient and medieval world. A scientific theory that reflected so profoundly on humanity was not welcomed by the church, and it was only after the publication (1540) of Narratio prima (A First Account), by an enthusiastic supporter named Rheticus, that the aged Copernicus agreed to commit to print the theory already outlined in 1514. An undocumented, but often repeated, story holds that Copernicus received a printed copy of his treatise on his deathbed. He died on May 24, 1543.
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http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xcopern.html
 
Leif Roar said:
So, basically, you're basing your view that Copernicus waited so long to publish De revolutionibus because of opposition from the church on a throwaway, unsupported statement on a web-page maintained by a physicist?
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That was just the first site I found. I'm sure there are more. This is something I was taught in High School.
 
triadboy said:


That was just the first site I found. I'm sure there are more. This is something I was taught in High School.
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To paraphrase Tolkien: Do not go to the web for advice, for it will say both yay and nay and maybe and you're a jerk and HOT PORN and I'm a Nigerian Widow and will pay you 10% if you will only let me use your account to transfer BILLIONS OF US DOLLARS out of the country.

The question is, can you find any substantial sources that supports your claim?

Edited to fix the paraphrase.
 
Leif Roar said:
*coughs* Actually, Nicolaus of Cusa, a cardinal and amateur astronomer, was one of the first in medieval Europe to voice the idea that the earth orbited the sun. He didn't get into any hot waters over it either, as far as I'm aware.
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*sneezes*

It is strange how apologists talk so much about Copernicus, and so little about Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64). He was a greater scholar than Albert "the Great," and he realized the error of the Ptolemaic system long before Copernicus did. He was a thinker; and his thinking, as a priest, led him to see that the Papal power was based upon the atrocious fraud of the Forged Decretals, that General Councils were higher than Popes and must reform the Church, and that the Christian philosophy of God and the Universe was puerile. You never heard of this heretic? No, he swung around and became a most zealous champion of the Papacy, a Papal Legate and a cardinal. He no longer insisted on trifles like the position of the sun; he reckoned that, while it was true that reason taught him some very awkward things, "intuition" put a man right with the Church; and he left it to a more courageous man, Giordano Bruno, to go to the stake for his philosophy of God and the universe.
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http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/chapter_28.html
 
Neither of the two URLs you've posted above support the notion that Copernicus delayed the publication of De revolutionibus because he feared the reactions from the Church.

Secondly, these links are hardly unbiased, nor are they sources that have any particular historical authority, so they can hardly be said to be substantial sources.


(Edited to change "Weight" to "authority")
 
Leif Roar said:


I suggest you read the paragraph again. It actually says a lot less than it appears to be saying
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I just happened to come across this.

An earlier post said:

*coughs* Actually, Nicolaus of Cusa, a cardinal and amateur astronomer, was one of the first in medieval Europe to voice the idea that the earth orbited the sun. He didn't get into any hot waters over it either, as far as I'm aware.
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My post seems to say Nicolaus made his discoveries as a priest and (in essence) recanted for the Cardinalship.
 
Leif Roar said:
Neither of the two URLs you've posted above support the notion that Copernicus delayed the publication of De revolutionibus because he feared the reactions from the Church.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus

In 1536 his work was already in a definitive form, and some rumours about his theory had reached the scientists of all Europe. From many parts of the Continent, Copernicus received invitations to publish it, but he felt quite apprehensive of persecution for his revolutionary work by the establishment of the time. The cardinal Nicola Schonberg of Capua wrote him for a copy of his manuscript, and this made Copernicus, who saw in this a certain nervousness of the Church, even more frightened of eventual reactions.
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Copernicus had first conceived of his revolutionary model decades earlier but delayed publication because, while it explained the motion of the planets (and resolved their order), it raised new problems that had to be explained, required verification of old observations, and had to be presented in a way that would not provoke the religious authorities. The book did not see print until he was on his deathbed.
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http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?eu=386884&query=copernicus&ct=
 
Another thing to bear in mind is that a number of higher-ups in the Church (cardinals and such, Schonberg included) were familiar with Copernicus' unpublished theses, and it was they who finally persuaded him, after years of trying, to publish.
 
triadboy said:
How many more do you need?
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How about even one that indicates that Copernicus' ideas, which were circulated even prior to their publication, ever got him in trouble or would have gotten him in trouble?
 
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