{"id":1734,"date":"2013-02-19T14:32:02","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T14:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/news\/specialcollections\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2013-02-19T14:32:02","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T14:32:02","slug":"happy-birthday-nicolaus-copernicus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/2013\/02\/19\/happy-birthday-nicolaus-copernicus\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Nicolaus Copernicus!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus <\/strong>Copernicus<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>by Owen Gingerich<\/p>\n

The so-called “book nobody read” was Copernicus’ 1543 work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, <\/em>in which the Polish astronomer expressed, for the first time, that the sun and not the earth was the center of the universe.<\/p>\n

For a work of this nature, this book by Harvard Smithsonian professor Owen
\nGingerich takes a different approach from most. Unlike previous histories
\nwritten about Copernicus, Gingerich focuses more on locating copies of
\nCopernicus’ book than in examining the ideas in it.<\/p>\n

Arthur Koestler’s influential 1959 history of astronomy The Sleepwalkers<\/em>,
\npresented a view that Copernicus’ book was not nearly so widely read as many
\nother books on astronomy of the day, due to its extreme unreadability.
\nUltimately, Koestler’s work inspired Gingerich to locate and survey almost
\nevery known edition of On the Revolutions<\/em>, a 30-year obsession which led
\nGingerich not only to Europe and some Warsaw Pact nations but also to Australia
\nand China. During his travels, he served as an expert witness at a trial of a
\nman who had stolen a copy of Copernicus’ book; braved the Byzantine procedures
\nin the rare book archives of Cold War Russia; and attended a rare books auction
\nin which, in less than three minutes, a first edition of On the Revolutions <\/em>sold
\nto an anonymous telephone bidder for $675,000.<\/p>\n

In the end, Gingerich located 600 copies of On the Revolutions, <\/em>documenting
\nwho had owned them and the comments they had written in them. Most important
\nwere the copies owned by astronomers, which demonstrated a long-time acceptance
\nof the Suncentered cosmos. Finally, Gingerich concludes that Koestler was
\ncompletely wrong about the negligible influence of On the Revolutions<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although Gingerich’s tracking of the centuries-old copies of Copernicus’ work
\nthrough the dusty archives of history may not be for everyone, anyone who finds
\nit interesting to peer over the shoulders of those who had the courage to defy
\nthe entrenched orthodoxy of the day and to write about the heavens as they
\nobserved them, will find this book second to none.<\/p>\n

By Ron Hunka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich The so-called “book nobody read” was Copernicus’ 1543 work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in which the Polish astronomer expressed, for the first time, that the sun and not the earth was the center of the universe. For a work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libnews.binghamton.edu\/specialcollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}