The Copernican revolution
"The author brings to a common focus the considered approach of the historian, the technical understanding of the scientist and the skill and experience of an able teacher. No careful reader of this well-wrought volume can fail to appreciate the nicely balanced interplay of these elements in the full explication of one of the major turning points in the evolution of scientific thought. For those concerned with the teaching of the history of science, this discussion of the issues involved in the Copernican revolution will prove to be indispensable, a superb analysis of the anatomy of revolution. Those drawn to the question of meaning which the historian of science can give to the evolution of ideas will find this book equally valuable, a paradigm of synthesis and interpretation." [Isis].
Stats for nerds
7recommend
17mentions
11people
2010–2025years
76% recommend18% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I see the humanities (I mean literature here and not so much history etc) as a continuation of cautionary tales and parables and fables and legends and fairy tales around the campfire. Its "output" is that you're better able to feel on a visceral level how others might feel or what the social outcome can be, or what the deep values of your society are etc. Literary analysis is twice removed from this. Ground level is how you act in a new situation. Once removed is the concrete stories you hear at the campfire. Twice removed is the dissecting analysis of the story and more meta levels.
In physics the ground level is solving a new engineering problem in industry. You use the recipes and methods you learned in physics class to formulate your problem in the language of physics and solve it. Once removed is teaching the equations and methods themselves. Twice removed is discussing how the physics knowledge was produced historically and how research is done today.
I do belive though that learning about the history of science is immensely enlightening. In school it seems like these things just fell from the sky fully formed like Athene from Zeus' forehead. Kuhn's book on the Copernican revolution is super interesting. I found it better than the more famous Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The latter is more abstract and tries to build a big theory, while the former mostly just narrates how it happened in the concrete case of Copernicus, Kepler et al.
- This claim from the article is too extreme: "It is safe to say that prior to 1610 not a single significant scientific argument had turned on a question of fact."
Just in astronomy alone, in the previous century Tycho Brahe was debating against the Copernican models, with his own hybrid model where most of the planets orbit the sun, but the sun orbits the earth. Facts about which model predicted the location of what planets were really important.
The book "The Copernican Revolution" by Kuhn is really interesting for anyone curious to know more about this period.
- On Copernicus and Kepler, I recommend the 1957 book The Copernican Revolution by Kuhn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Copernican_Revolution_(boo... Some details might be outdated though.
- Could be Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution. In any case, it’s a great book.
- Philosopher here as well. I'd strongly recommend Thomas Kuhn's "The Copernican Revolution". It's a beautiful book that shows how ancient astronomy, cosmology and philosophy were interwoven, with valuable lessons for how science works even today.
From the classics I'd also recommend Hume. The "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" is short, very well written and argues, among other things, that causality is an illusion :)
- Maybe better is his “The Copernican Revolution”. It’s one of the best popularizations of the history of science I’ve ever read.
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