Term Papers on Question #1

Term Paper Title	Question #1
# of Words	704
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.82

Question #1

                                                                                                                               11/17/02

                                                                                                                                period 1

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who wrote On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. In this book, he challenged the Ptolemaic system in the most conservative manner possible. The Ptolemaic system assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Above the Earth lay a series of crystalline spheres, which contained the sun, moon, stars, and other planets. Copernicus said that if the Earth were assumed to move about the sun in a circle, many of the difficulties with the Ptolemaic systems would disappear or become simpler. The motive behind this shift away from the Earth-centered universe was to find a solution to the problems of planetary motion. By allowing the Earth to move around the sun, Copernicus was able to construct a more mathematically elegant basis for astronomy. He had been discontented with the traditional system because it was mathematically clumsy and inconsistent. The primary appeal of his new system was its mathematical aesthetics. A change in the conception of the position of the Earth meant that the planets were actually moving in circular orbits and only seemed to be doing otherwise because of the position of the observers on Earth.

            The next major step toward the conception of a sun-centered system was taken by Tycho Brahe. He suggested that the moon and the sun revolved around the Earth and that the other planets revolved around the sun. Brahe’s idea was based on a series of new naked-eye astronomical observations. Brahe constructed the most accurate tables of observations that had been drawn up for centuries.

            When Brahe died, these tables came into the possession of Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer. Kepler was a Copernican, but not for mathematical reasons. Kepler was deeply influenced by Renaissance Neoplatonism, which held the sun in special honor. H e was determined to find mathematical harmonies in Brahe’s numbers that would support a sun-centered universe. After much work Kepler discovered that to keep the sun at the center of th...

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