The Book Nobody Read

What Hacker News says

1. ziotom78Dec 2018
   I fully agree! But, as somebody else said, it can be difficult to read old literature, as mathematical notation and terms are things that have evolved significantly in the last centuries.

   There are two "new" references about "old" physics literature I particularly enjoyed: - "The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus," by O. Gingerich, about Copernicus' book "De revolutionibus."

   - "A Student’s Guide Through the Great Physics Texts," by K. Kuehn (4 volumes). It presents many original papers by Newton, Galileo, Maxwell, etc., together with study questions and exercises.

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2. akkartikSep 2014
   "Gingerich has examined nearly every extant first- and second-edition copy—six hundred in all—of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres."

   That is a fascinating book; part history of science, part detective story and part bibliophile's wet dream: http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Nobody-Read-Revolutions/dp/B0...

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3. lmkgApr 2022
   That's pretty funny, because a book I read about the Copernican revolution says that the prevailing attitude among astronomers during Copernicus' period was the exact opposite. Namely that Heliocentrism was not generally promoted or accepted as an accurate model of the heavens, but did gain acceptance as having a few computation advantages.

   In particular, it removed the need for a particular type of epicycle called an Equant. Ironically, the Equant somewhat resembles Kepler's second law, meaning it arguably is a better approximation of reality than Copernicus' circles-only Heliocentric model.

   I'm not sure I can find the exact book. There's, like, so many books about Copernicus on Amazon. This is my best guess: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Nobody-Read-Revolutions-Copernic...

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