Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

Notes on Copernicus’s Preface to Pope Paul III.

By Morgane Laffont and Christophe Fradelizi

* *
*

Nicolaus Copernicus wrote his book De revolutionnibus orbium coelestium in 1530

where he proposes his heliocentric theory, a work that will only be printed thirteen years
later with the help of his disciple Rheticus1. This theory, which is only intended as an
assumption, attempts to demonstrate the motions of the universe from a radical change of
reference suggesting the idea of a Sun-centered solar system instead of an Earth-centered
one. And in this respect, this hypothesis comes to compete with the geocentric model
conceived by Claudius Ptolemy2 in the 3rd century BC that still held sway in the 16th
century. If Copernicus's work will be put into perspective by his contemporaries and will
go almost unnoticed at the time of its publication, it remains nevertheless a key moment
in the history of science because it implies a remarkable revolution of the methods of
knowledge, as well underlined by Kant in Critique of Pure Reason which is directly
inspired by the "Copernican Revolution" in order to open philosophy to the "secure path
of a science"3.
The object of our study is Copernicus's preface to Pope Paul III, the highest authority
of the Roman Church. And when we take into consideration Galileo's withdrawal a few
years later of his theory on the Earth’s motion or the burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600
by the inquisition for his theory on the "countless and infinite worlds", it is reasonable to
thereby think of the great courage Copernicus displayed in addressing his work to the

1
His real name was Georg Joachim of Porris, Rheticus being a nickname (1514-1574).
2
Claudius Ptolemy (about 90-168), author of the Almagest (or Μαθηματική σύνταξις) in which he delivers
his theory of geocentrism, the true pinnacle of ancient astronomy. His influence until the Renaissance,
combined with that of Aristotle, will fix for fourteen centuries a conception of the world that Nicolaus
Copernicus intends to challenge. As such, Ptolemy and Aristotle are the targets of the Revolutionnibus
orbium coelestium.
3
KANT (Immanuel), Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the 2nd Edition, trans. Paul Guyer & Allen W.
Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 106 & 110.

1
 Pope himself, the latter representing by definition the most dangerous censorship for any
theory or hypothesis questioning or contradicting any dogma of the Catholic Church. The
lengthy dedication also serves as a diplomatic way of underlining that finding an adequate
theory of the planetary motion – which his predecessors were unable to do – is not only
necessary on an astronomic level but that it will also serve as a way for the Church to
develop a more accurate calendar – the reform of the Julian calendar had been on the
agenda for quite some time and very much needed. Working as a Church canon, he knew
that he could not introduce his theory without putting into question the anthropocentric
conception dear to the Church making Man thus Earth the center of the universe.
So why does he address his theory to the Pope? It seems that Copernicus, in this
passage, is in dire need of justifying his hypothesis by explaining to the Pope himself the
reasons behind his research and his work, excluding any personal or belief-related
reasons. He starts immediately to explain to the Pope that the discord between the
mathematicians themselves about the calculation of the motions of the Earth, the planets
and the stars needs to be fixed and he describes how he began by questioning the
unquestionable – an Earth-centered universe:

Therefore, having turned over in my mind for a long time this uncertainty of the traditional
mathematical methods of calculating the motions of the celestial bodies, I began to grow disgusted
that no more consistent scheme of the movements of the mechanism of the universe, set up for
our benefit by that best and most law abiding Architect of all things, was agreed upon by
philosophers who otherwise investigate so carefully the most minute details of this world.
Wherefore I undertook the task of rereading the books of all the philosophers I could get access
to, to see whether any one ever was of the opinion that the motions of the celestial bodies were
other than those postulated by the men who taught mathematics in the schools. And I found first,
indeed, in Cicero, that Niceta perceived that the Earth moved; and afterward in Plutarch I found
that some others were of this opinion.4

It is therefore on a strictly technical or scientific level that Copernicus unveils the

reasons for his approach, which are in direct contradiction with current theories and more
largely with common sense. But much more than a mere justification of his positions, we
will see how this preface is fundamentally important on a scientific level. On one hand,
what appears to be an attempt at substantiation is a way for him of asserting his theoretical

4
ELIOT, C. W, The Harvard Classics, Vol. 39: Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books; With Introduction
and Notes, New York: PF Collier & Son-1909-14.

2
position, and that, on the other hand, it is a also mean to refute the Ptolemaic theory of
geocentrism built from a very complex system difficult to admit in light of the
inconsistencies that are increasingly obvious as soon as we try in a coherent way to match
observations and mathematical calculation. And as we see in the extract previously quoted
and as he insists on pointing out throughout his preface, the idea of a moving Earth was
not that absurd and might be the missing link that could explain all phenomena and
planetary motions:

Taking this as a starting point, I began to consider the mobility of the Earth; and although
the idea seemed absurd, yet because I knew that the liberty had been granted to others before me
to postulate all sorts of little circles for explaining the phenomena of the stars, I thought I also
might easily be permitted to try whether by postulating some motion of the Earth, more reliable
conclusions could be reached regarding the revolution of the heavenly bodies, than those of my
predecessors.5

Finally, we will insist on the fact that, although Copernicus remains in a

cosmological tradition inherited from antiquity, he nonetheless establishes the
foundations of a method that foreshadows new scientific requirements that will prevail
with Brahé, Galileo or Kepler. It is difficult not to see in Copernicus an essential figure
of the modern scientific revolution, even if he, as we will see, is still permeated with
ancient philosophy, and in particular Neoplatonism.

To understand the intention behind this preface6, we must first distinguish both lines
of reflections structuring the text: the first part is devoted to his explanation for what came
to motivate him to work on the Earth motions. However, in a very rhetorical way,
Copernicus focuses more on these motives than on the very results of his work:

However, Your Holiness will perhaps not be greatly surprised that I have dared to publish
my studies after devoting so much effort to working them out that I did not hesitate to put down
my thoughts about the Earth's motion in written form too.

Copernicus therefore insists more on the reasons for the research itself than on the

5
Ibid.
6
COPERNICUS (Nicolaus), On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, « To his holiness, Pope Paul III,
Nicolaus Copernicus's Preface to his books on the revolutions », Translation and Commentary by Edward
Rosen, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1992.

3
content of the results of his discoveries and its possible consequences. And in a certain
way, it appears like he submits himself to the Christian examination of conscience and to
what could be considered as a confession, proposing to the Pope to read the intentions
that stimulated him in this research about a particularly sensitive subject. He does not
intend to question the “Architect of all things”, and that is the reason why he did not
publish his work before being on his deathbed. He knew how his theory was going to be
rejected and that mathematicians and astronomers were going to “cry out at once”. For
the mundus, the Kosmos, is the work of God and there can be no questioning this world
in total freedom or even less radically challenging the perception we have of it.
Copernicus warns:

But you are rather waiting to hear from me how it occurred to me to venture to conceive
any motion of the Earth, against the traditional opinion of astronomers and almost against
common sense.

The position adopted by the Polish astronomer is indeed delicate; his theory goes
against the astronomers of antiquity such as Claudius Ptolemy but also against
contemporary astronomers who still consider geocentrism as the only possible
explanation of the motions of the Earth and of the heavens. But he faces an important
inconvenience he cannot neglect and that is common sense itself. Indeed, the immediate
sensitive knowledge – i.e. the sensation we have of living in a still world - makes difficult
to conceive the heliocentric system supposed to replace the Ptolemaic model. The task is
not so easy for Copernicus who is well aware that the hypothesis he submits to the Papal
supremacy contradicts the sensitive knowledge and that the risk is great his approach
might not be understood therefore accepted. This is the main reason he insists on the
necessity of looking for a new model: the disagreement between mathematicians as to the
calculation of the motions of the celestial spheres implies the need for a major change in
perspective. To him, therefore, it is a question of alleviating the real revolution that his
hypothesis involves by highlighting the fact that ultimately, it is a matter that only
concerns mathematicians, an internal discord that is not be considered as a danger or a
heresy for Christianity. In a very diplomatic way, this process allows Copernicus to justify
his work to a religious authority that by definition adopts extremely firm positions on
sensitive issues, and at the same time, it allows him to rekindle discussions with his
predecessors and his contemporary scientists about the very status of geocentrism, which
does not seem to establish its legitimacy on an agreement or reach a total consensus. Thus
the disagreement between mathematicians mentioned by Copernicus causes a series of

4
inconsistencies which must be examined; and it is a proof that geocentrism is not a viable
theory considering all the contradictions, or at least the complexity of the model to the
point that it is difficult to hold it to be true in view of other simpler hypotheses, although
apparently opposite to common sense, but which would make it possible to suppress a
whole series of contradictions. The complexity and the contradiction of the geocentric
model are indeed the objects of the second paragraph of the extract submitted to our study.
As we will see, Copernicus scrutinizes every issue posed by the theories in force at the
time and goes beyond than his contemporaries to the whole cosmological tradition and
goes back as far as Thales, Anaximander, or Pythagoras, and intends to demonstrate the
need for a new approach that can meet at least three essential requirements: simplicity,
harmony and accuracy.

**

In the second part of the text, Copernicus immediately dives into various theories
attempting to explain the motions of the stars, the planets and the Sun by reducing his
theories to the types of motion characterizing them. Three types of motions are thus listed:
concentric motions, eccentric motions and epicycles. These three motions represent the
evolution, or at least the different astronomical and cosmological systems developed in
antiquity. The study of the motion of the planets, the stars and the heavens, and in a more
general way, the problem of the motions of nature is indeed a crucial question for all the
scientists of antiquity whether they are "physicists" or "mathematicians"7.
The issue with the knowledge of the motion presents itself very early: on one hand,
it pervardes the philosophical struggle created by the conceptions of Heraclitus and
Parmenides, the former claiming the perpetual motion of all things, the latter asserting on
the contrary the immobility and the unity of the eternal being, an opposition between two
types of eternity that will somehow give rise to a great debate in which Zeno of Elea,
Empedocles, Democritus or Anaxagoras will engage. But before Heraclitus and
Parmenides, the school of Miletus, Thales and Anaximander in particular, and especially
Pythagoras, elaborate on conceptions about the origin of the world and its organization,

7
Aristotle, in the treatises on Physics, Generation and Corruption, Meteorology and On the Heavens,
condenses and deals with all the questions in relation to motion and change. He begins a critical dialogue
with all the Ionian, Eleate, and Abderan philosophers, as well as the Pythagoreans, and from this will
emerge a very complete onto-cosmological theory answering all the problems examined. The philosophy
of Heraclitus will also be one of the most criticized by Aristotle (Physics, VIII, 3, 253b).

5
conceptions where mathematics, especially geometry, already play a crucial part. Thus,
the theory of the spheres is developed by the Pythagoreans in their conception of a
spherical Earth surrounded by ten concentric spheres carrying the different stars. The
adjective "concentric" - or “homocentric” also used in some texts - refers here to the
center which is the same for all the different spheres, i.e. the Earth itself as the center of
Kosmos. Nearly three centuries later, Eudoxus of Cnidus imagines twenty-seven
concentric spheres with the particularity of not moving on the same axis in order to
explain the differences in latitudes of the planets. As for the Aristotelian theory 8 , it
postulates that the stars and the planets are carried by fifty-five concentric spheres holding
the Earth as the center of the universe, the latter being "finite" as opposed to systems like
the one thought by Anaximander, conceived as infinite-indeterminate or indefinite,
designated by the Greek term apeiron.
The eccentric motions and the epicycles later evoked by Copernicus refer to another
possible explanation, apparently previously supported by Apollonius of Perga and
Hipparchus. It consists in explaining the planetary motions in relation to the Earth by
replacing the theory of concentric spheres by a new model introducing new landmarks,
especially the "deferent", a concentric circle where the Earth would be the center, and the
epicycles on which the planets would turn and themselves would be on the deferent. The
planets would then no longer orbit around the Earth each of them aligned on a concentric
orb, but around an eccentric landmark far from the center of the Earth. This conception,
that maintains the Earth as the center of the universe, has had concrete effects on the
applications of astronomy into practical life, especially by allowing the first predictions
of solar eclipses. In addition, the theory of epicycles is the basis on which Claudius
Ptolemy leans on to develop the geocentric system which, as we know it, is still prevalent
in the time of Copernicus. Ptolemy's great contribution to the theory of epicycles is the
introduction of the "equant" point to better understand the speed change in planetary orbit,
but it is above all a very daring attempt to introduce as a referent an imaginary point which
corresponds to no celestial object, the equant point being very distinct from the Earth
itself. However, this innovation makes it possible to match measures - which are
becoming more and more accurate - and with which we have to make do so they can
comply to the observations.

8
ARISTOTLE, On the Heavens, translated by W. K. C. Guthrie, in Aristotle Volume VI Loeb Classical
Library 338.

6
 Schematically speaking and without going into the details of every theory, such is
what Copernicus inherits and he distances himself from it since it appears that numerous
points have not been fully clarified, explained or proven by his notorious predecessors,
especially the problem of the planetary retrograde motion. The issues raised in the rest of
the text are eventually related to two questions that have always been asked to
astronomers and mathematicians: the first issue resides in not having been able to explain
the connection between the concentric motions, combining uniform motion and non-
uniform motion, and the observed phenomena. The second remark of Copernicus, on the
contrary, concerns the connection of eccentric motions and apparent phenomena, which,
however, prevents us from considering the motion uniformity without some
contradiction, even though it is the fundamental principle of the geocentric model.
Copernicus confronts the two types of conceptions and thus reduces Ptolemy's
geocentrism to the same level as the concentric spheres theory which is considered at that
time as an outdated model. At the same time, he highlights two levels of requirements
found in these conceptions that could explain the stalemate reached when you combine
analysis and observation: the first level of requirement concerns the need for absolute
conformity between calculations and observations and implies that to "save the
phenomena" you have to adapt the theory to the experiment. It also implies that
mathematics is at the observer's service and not the opposite. The second level refers to
the very principle creating motion: its uniformity. There is a presupposed here that
depends above all on the inability to conceive a system where uniformity would be absent;
for uniformity is here the sign of perfection, and the Greeks have not overvalued the circle
and the sphere without reason. In this respect, the principle of uniform and circular motion
is therefore an assumption towards which we will naturally take into consideration
because it matches a presupposed favoring a certain form of perfection, a certain form of
harmony.
We understand that the heliocentrism promoted by Copernicus is not inconsequential
considering the facts we have just mentioned. First of all, suppressing the Earth as the
initial referent allows to point out the inconsistencies related to planetary motions. By
favoring the heliocentric model, the calculations prove to be more accurate even if the
denial of the "senses" it entails seems to reach its peak. The immediate consequence is
the primacy of mathematics over observation, since the calculations validate the initial
hypotheses that go against sensitive evidence and thus appearing "absurd" as Copernicus
himself mentions. Moreover, his reasoning is based on the deficiency of the systems in

7
force but also on a reflection about all the chimeras and creations of the imagination that
flourished in the minds of those who wanted to explain the universe motion. And in this
reflection, Copernicus does not seem to consider it more absurd to postulate the sun as
the center of the universe than to postulate an imaginary point as the main referent. Now,
among the many systems preceding Ptolemy's, we find the Platonic cosmology to which
Copernicus probably did not remain hermetic. In his cosmology, Plato grants such an
importance to the Sun that has no equivalent and the notion of harmony is the necessary
structure of Kosmos. And even if his cosmological theory developed in the Timaeus is not
mathematically deduced, Plato still affirms the significance of mathematics in
understanding this organized and harmonious whole that is the world: "Also is the figure
of a sphere, the center of which is equidistant from all the points of the periphery, a
circular figure (...) figure which between all is the most perfect and the most similar to
itself ... "9.
Copernic's double influence on Plato according to Thomas Kuhn in his book The
Copernican Revolution, in which he tempers the significance of the Polish astronomer's
discovery: there is yet to have a paradigm shift with Copernicus because he is still linked
to the ancient tradition and the problems it tries to solve, only opening the door to modern
science without truly belonging in it. However, it seems that Copernicus is not just a
harbinger of a science to come but that he has already grasped the fundamentals of modern
science, at least some of them. This seems to be apparent at the end of the text and it is to
this question that our last part will be devoted to, even if we must admit, as we shall see,
that Copernicus remains of course limited in the possibilities offered to him.

***

After exposing the tensions which made necessary a new approach of the question of
the universe motion, the end of our extract draws the consequences of the contradictions
in which mathematicians have locked themselves into. And the first of these
consequences relates to the lack of simplicity presented by the various theories evoked,
not to name only "one": Ptolemy's geocentrism. Because, this one precisely combines
concentric spheres, eccentric spheres and epicycles in one theory alone and it becomes

9
PLATO, Timaeus, 33b-c (our translation).

8
more and more complex by adding new notions which are even not enough however to
solve all the issues. The change brought on by the Copernican model is therefore a return
to simplicity and this is what is implicitly noted in the presentation of the different types
of motion. Yet, this simplicity can easily be attained only and only if one assumes that the
center of the universe is no longer to be sought on the side of the Earth but on the side of
the Sun. And this hypothesis needs no further confirmation than the accuracy of the
calculations in relation to the observations:

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through
careful and expert study. Then he must conceive and devise the causes of these motions or
hypotheses about them. Since he cannot in any way attain to the true causes, he will adopt
whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of
geometry for the future as well as for the past. The present author has performed both these duties
excellently. For these hypotheses need not be true nor even probable. On the contrary, if they
provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is enough.10

The certainty of the immobility of the Earth is here reduced to a pure illusion in view
of the ability of mathematics to verify and confirm initial hypotheses that are likely to
anger and upset common sense and to question well-established beliefs. Simplicity as a
requirement is precisely not sufficient enough, hence the emphasis put in this passage on
calculations and its accuracy which constitutes the second fundamental element of the
Copernican method. From a strictly controversial point of view, the primacy of
mathematics, which seems to be Plato's legacy inasmuch as it refers to a harmonious
conception of the world, is a response to Ptolemy and Aristotle. Their respective systems
adopt geocentrism as a principle firstly because they succumb to the charm of the
evidence of phenomena. The Platonic influence might play here a crucial role in that
Copernicus grants mathematics a value close to what Plato or Pythagoras before him
attributed to this discipline. The number is the only reality for Pythagoras, and we know
that the ideas for Plato are the true essences, the only authentic beings even if they are not
reduced to numbers like for the philosopher of Samos. It is worth noting that Plato and
Aristotle, however, agree that the Earth is the center of the universe and that circular
motion is the most perfect motion. The difference between the two philosophers resides
more in the primary cause of this world than in its description and fundamental
understanding.

10
COPERNICUS (Nicolaus), On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Foreword by Andreas Osiander,
« To the Reader Concerning the Hypotheses of this Work ».

9
 This brings us to the last part of our analysis of Copernicus concerning the notion of
harmony, notion thought in a new perspective. Indeed, when Kuhn analyzes the
Copernican revolution, he distinguishes a new scientific requirement qualified as
"consistency" and notices that it works as an essential value upon which all true science
is constituted. In fact, the whole end of the extract of the preface develops a metaphor of
a body where each member would be "very well represented in themselves (...) but
without being related to the same body, since they do not go together ... " Copernicus
translates into simple terms the effect produced by a theory that is too complex and
ultimately a nest for contradictions. There is a lack of harmony in the geocentrism that
needs to be filled. And it seems from this point of view that Copernicus's position
corresponds to what Thomas Kuhn develops in his book entitled The Essential Tension,
on the criteria of scientific rationality. In addition, he introduces five essential criteria that
should help determine the validity of a theory: accuracy, consistency, broad scope,
simplicity and fruitfulness 11 . We have seen that Copernicus meets the simplicity
requirement. We find that it seems to answer to the requirement of consistency since it
requires the entirety to hold as a whole, even though this consistency is still tinged with
Platonic harmony. What about the other values? Does Copernicus meet the requirement
of precision? Is he at least in the requirement of accuracy, which entails the requirements
of the precision of calculations coupled with the observations? But it must be recognized
that the demand for precision of modern science is not separable from the new instruments
that did not exist back then. Copernicus, because of its historical situation, has necessarily
limited means not having access to the instruments of observation that will appear a few
years, decades nay centuries later. Are the broad scope and fruitfulness criteria met by
Copernicus’s theory? In view of the posterity that will resume his work, Copernicus opens
a new branch that will indeed disrupt sciences, scientific methods but also the
philosophical disciplines and the religious dogmas. And if its fruitfulness cannot be
denied, the scope of the heliocentric theory is indeed real since it tries to encompass an
“explanatory power” in a theory as economical as possible. But as Kuhn highlights it,
Copernicus’s vision of the universe is still aesthetic and not resolutely scientific, and his
system does not bring much more accurate predictions of planetary motions or celestial
events than the Ptolemaic system. As the last sentence of our text underlines, Copernicus

11
KUHN, T. S. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

10
 shows us geocentrism in the form of a "monster" when we have to create a "man" out of
the members he previously mentions. The monster refers here to the ugliness embodied
by the Ptolemaic model and all the mathematicians and astronomers who are still refusing
to consider another possible explanation for planetary motions and who will probably be
outraged by Copernicus’s theory as he anticipates it:

Nor have they been able to discover or calculate from these the main point, which is the
shape of the world and the fixed symmetry of its parts; but their procedure has been as if someone
were to collect hands, feet, a head, and other members from various places, all very fine in
themselves, but not proportionate to one body, and no single one corresponding in its turn to the
others, so that a monster rather than a man would be formed from them. Thus in their process of
demonstration which they term a “method,” they are found to have omitted something essential.12

The “method” he is proposing, seemingly devoid of all the ugliness of archaic

systems, aims to the beauty of cosmic harmony. Copernicus, in the scientific and aesthetic
requirements that spur him on, remains an original and unique figure in the history of
science, symbolizing both the spirit of inheritance and that of transition.

*
* *

The preface Copernicus addressed to Pope Paul III, and particularly the excerpt that
we have commented on, serves a real desire to justify a result he knows can trigger a lot
of fury. In this sense, his lucidity is complete but not less than the certainty he has of his
demonstrations and the soundness of his results. In any case, this is reflected in the
sequence that precedes our excerpt:

And perhaps, as absurd as my theory of the motion of the Earth does today seem to most, it
will only cause all the more admiration and gratitude when, as a result of the publication of my
comments they will see the clouds of absurdity dispelled by the clearest demonstrations.13

Copernicus does not seem to doubt for a moment his theory and it is probably because
he knows its impact that he must guard himself against any overreaction on the part of
the religious authorities. To "hide" nothing from his intentions, to submit to the judgment

12
ELIOT, C. W, The Harvard Classics, Vol. 39: Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books; With Introduction
and Notes, Op. Cit.
13
COPERNICUS (Nicolaus), On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, « To his holiness, Pope Paul III,
Nicolaus Copernicus's Preface to his books on the revolutions », Op. Cit.

11
of the Pope himself, to do honor to the Church, these are the precautions that allow
Copernicus to temper both the consequences of his theory and a too severe papal
judgment who would seal his destiny.
Despite this, the book as a whole represents a revolution whose effects, paradoxically,
will be felt later. It is certain that Copernicus remains attached to a tradition he is one of
a last remnant of. The persistence of thinking in terms of concentric circular motion marks
his attachment to antiquity and to Plato in particular. But it seems that the elliptical motion
could only be unimaginable in the absence of a suitable instrument of observation, and it
was only with the force of mathematics that he had to work with. Copernicus's over
evaluation of mathematics, however, should not be underestimated with his predecessor
Ptolemy. Let us be reminded that the latter based his system using mathematics, and the
introduction of the "equant" point remains a great originality from the point of view of
the method. Copernicus pushed to its limits the contradictions of geocentrism, until he
had to invent a necessary new explanatory framework, a new system of reference that
obviously implied mathematics in a fundamental way, but by summoning imagination as
a backup to reason, thus producing the ending of a paradigm henceforth defective and the
possibility for successors to complete the great reversal implied by the heliocentric model.
In a sense, we can at least claim that Copernicus settles the beginning of a paradigmatic
"crisis" of the astronomical and astrophysical sciences, in the sense that Kuhn means in
his work entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, crisis which will continue to
increase until the most recent discoveries of the twentieth century, and we can still suspect
in the future the many twists and turns.

12