Copernicus the Confused (1473-1543). Copernicanism is Philosophy not 'Science'.

Part Two of Science as Philosophy. The Catholic mixes up ideas, models and provides no evidence for this theory. All hail.

“There was just one alternative; the earth’s true velocity through space might happen to have been nil.” Henrick Lorentz (1886 paper, “On the Influence of the Earth’s Motion of Luminiferous Phenomena,” in A. Miller’s Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, p. 20.)

[Relativity arises from…] “The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion…” Arthur Eddington (Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 1929, pp. 11)

Creation myths

In the creation myth of Copernicanism, it is taught that the Catholic monk Copernicus, born in Poland and educated in Italy in the glare of the ‘enlightened’ late 15^th century ‘Renaissance’, was a clear eyed, far-sighted seer and prophet, a man who knew the truth and through his jeremiads proclaimed the true gospel of mankind’s cosmic unimportance and utter irrelevancy.  This lion of noble scientism fought against the crude, savagery of the dark superstitions, dragging mankind into the light of reason, Sun worship and heliocentricity.  So the myth goes.

Without Copernicus, so we are told, we would still be in hairshirts, baying at full moons, convinced of a flat earth, and burning lonely widows on heaps of faggots.  Misery and darkness our companions.  Instead, the modern can rejoice in the gospel proclamations of Materialism and Rationalism; of mankind’s cosmological insignificance, of the uselessness of existence; and that our Earth is nothing in the great canvass of the universe.  A hairless ape, a less agreeably evolved virus, so is mankind described by Materialism and the Copernican ‘principle’.

We can state an unequivocal fact. It is a straight red line from Copernicus to the fantasy worlds of Materialism, Rationalism, Einstein and Hawking.

Science as Philosophy or Scientism.

Stephen Hawking, ‘We have moved from the revolutionary claim of Nicolaus Copernicus that the Earth orbits the sun to the equally revolutionary proposal of Albert Einstein that space and time are curved and warped by mass and energy. It is a compelling story because both Copernicus and Einstein have brought about profound changes in what we see as our position in the order of things. Gone is our privileged place at the center of the universe, gone are eternity and certainty, and gone are absolute space and time.’ (On the Shoulders of Giants, ed., Stephen Hawking, 2002, p. ix.)

The Monk and his Church

As with the Galileo myth, not much about the Copernicus myth aligns with reality. 

The Renaissance was medieval, generated in the main by Byzantine Christians fleeing the Ottoman Jihad, who from the early 15^th century onwards, brought money, books, libraries, art and culture to Italy.  There was a ‘rebirth’ of medieval art, architecture and natural science investigation.  The Renaissance was entirely medieval. The clue for the modern could be the religious thematics of its artistic output.

Copernicus was trained by the Church in Church-schools and exposed to Aristotle’s belief of geocentricity expressed in Ptolemy’s accurate and enduring model.  He was also taught that Mercury and Venus may well parade around the Sun.  He profited from the printing press and books from classical Greece and Rome which pace Pythagoras and Aristarchus, proclaimed variations of heliocentric models.  The printing press changed everything.  So did the telescope. Optics had been developed since the 13th century, finding a full expression of utility in the Dutchman Lippershey’s great invention of 1608.  It took over a hundred years to build a functioning telescope.  Copernicus was born into an environment of creativity, inquiry and scepticism.

Jesuits

In line with the myth, we are told that ‘The Church’ did everything possible to stop Copernicus the prophet of the Sun, from disseminating his truth.  In reality, though geocentricity was the established paradigm, there were many who were open to amending that belief.  Church doctrine did not, and does not, hinge on the Earth’s location.  In fact, and quite ironically, some of the greatest promoters of Copernicanism, Materialism and Relativity have been churchmen and the religious. 

For example, consider the Jesuit order.  Let us disregard the current Pope and his order.  Today the Jesuits are barely Catholic, quite secular, globalist and fully supportive of most state doctrines including ‘warming or boiling’, ‘pandemics’ and ‘Relativity.  It was not always thus.

Formed during Copernicus’ lifetime, the Jesuit institution has invested more money and energy in astrophysics, cosmology and general science, than any other single institution in history. 

Indeed, many Copernicans and Relativists can trace their ideas back to Jesuits, and within the order there were sundry groups who have embraced Materialism and Relativism.  We can easily list well over 350 Jesuit Scientists, including 50 mathematicians, 45 physicists, 110 astronomers, 70 geographers, geologists and meteorologists, 4 chemists, 21 biologists, 39 naturalists, and 24 explorers, from the 16^th to 19^th centuries.  The moon landscape contains the names of 37 Jesuit scientists.  

Since the 17^th century, throughout the world, about 100 observatories, 150 universities, and 300 secondary schools have been built by Jesuits.  There is no comparable record by any other group or institution in history investing such time and energy into ‘science’ including scientific education (Agustin Udias, Jesuit Contribution to Science, 2015).  It is rather curious then that the Scientism refrain is always the non-existing conflict between Church and ‘Science’. 

·        Without the Catholic priest Le Maitre where would the ‘Big Bang’ be? 

·        Without the Methodist Eddington where would Einstein be? 

·        Without the maths of the Jesuit Clauvius in the 16^th century, where would Newton be? 

·        Without the Lutheran Brahe’s observatory where would Mount Wilson be?  

·        Without the dualism of the Catholic Descartes, where would Materialism be? 

·        Without the Catholic Copernicus and the Lutheran Kepler, where would the Sun worshippers be?

What conflict exactly?

On Revolutions

Owen Barfield, in a good read of human thought, suggests that the Copernican revolution dwarfs any other and that pace Pierre Duhem, it could ‘save the phenomenon’ of what was viewed in the cosmos:

The real turning-point in the history of astronomy and of science in general was… when Copernicus…began to think, and others, like Kepler and Galileo, began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only saved the appearances, but was physically true. It was this, this novel idea that the Copernican (and therefore any other) hypothesis might not be a hypothesis at all but the ultimate truth, that was almost enough in itself to constitute the “scientific revolution,” of which Professor Butterfield has written: “it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom”….It was not simply a new theory of the nature of the celestial movements that was feared, but a new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is identical with truth. (Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, 2nd ed., 1988, pp. 50-51)

The last point is the key one. ‘If a hypothesis saves all the appearances’ it must be true. Thus are the non-sciences of Darwinism, Materialism, and Relativity born. Gone is mechanical proof. In with the rhetoric, maths and models.

As a theory, heliocentricity is now enshrined as a holy ‘law’.  It leads to the ‘Copernican principle’ which is used by everyone in ‘Science’ as a starting point.  Few if any question whether the principle comports with the reality expressed as certainty by Barfield and Butterfield cited above.

In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle states that humans, on the Earth or in the Solar System, are not privileged observers of the universe, that observations from the Earth are representative of observations from the average position in the universe. Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus' argument of a moving Earth.

The Copernican principle is deeply misanthropic.  Mechanical Materialism is profoundly anti-human.  No wonder our world is upside down.

Confusion

Between 1510-1514, Copernicus published his first work on heliocentricity entitled Commentariolus (“Little Commentary”).  This antedates his more famous work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, released some thirty years later, in 1543 when he died.  It is in the Commentariolus that Copernicus makes his first claim that the Ptolemaic system is unsatisfactory yet admits that it is “consistent with the data.” 

By 1514 Copernicus was well known and accepted in Papal circles and within the Catholic science community as a talented astronomer.  In 1514 he was asked by Pope Leo X to use his skills to help fix the calendar and especially the consistent dating of Easter.  The reforms and adjustments were finalised under Pope Gregory in 1584.  The Gregorian calendar is what we use in our world today. 

Copernicus was therefore amply connected and funded by the Church.  He had the luxury of time to ruminate on theories and read. In ‘Little commentaries’ and ‘De revolutionibus’, Copernicus’ lays out his three major premises:

(1) ‘That the Earth is not the center of the universe, only of the moon’s orbit and of terrestrial gravity’;

(2) ‘That the apparent daily revolution of the firmament is due to the Earth’s rotation on its own axis’;

(3) ‘That the apparent annual motion of the sun is due to the fact that the Earth, like the other planets, revolves around the sun.’

Copernicus’ motivation for introducing his new system was his dissatisfaction with Ptolemy’s regressions, retrograde motions and elliptical processions.  He criticised Ptolemy (c 100 AD – 170 AD) for departing from the circle as the only possible movement for celestial bodies!  Ptolemy had recognized that an accurate representation of planetary motion necessitated the abandoning of uniform circular motion and introduced what was later called an ‘equant’, from which nonuniform motion along an arc would appear uniform.  Ptolemy was more accurate and careful than Copernicus.

Copernican theory with the circular orbits of the planets, is therefore wrong.  So enchanted was Copernicus with the circle however, that he mapped them to Aristotle’s ‘crystalline spheres’ as the perfect ‘mould’ or ‘lane’ for the circling planets.  Another incorrect idea. 

Copernicus in his confusion, had tried to merge incompatible ideas.  He borrowed a moving Earth from Pythagoras and Aristarchus; and commandeered the crystalline spheres of Aristotle who believed in geocentricity.  

Contrary to popular opinion, Copernicus’ solar system is therefore not one of free-floating planets pushed by natural forces around the Sun, but the old Greek idea of ‘crystal spheres’, within which the planets were hung, that rotated around a central point, in this case the Sun.  At best this model might be an improvement on Ptolemy’s universe, not a ‘revolution’.  At worst it was inferior because circles now replaced rather precise quants and ellipses. 

Philosophy

Many of Copernicus’ ideas were based on Platonic theories.  Karl Popper commented on the philosophical provisioning of his thesis:

‘Copernicus studied in Bologna under the Platonist Novara; and Copernicus’ idea of placing the sun rather than the Earth in the center of the universe was not the result of new observations but of a new interpretation of old and well-known facts in the light of semi-religious Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas. The crucial idea can be traced back to the sixth book of Plato’s Republic, where we can read that the sun plays the same role in the realm of visible things as does the idea of the good in the realm of ideas. Now the idea of the good is the highest in the hierarchy of Platonic ideas.

Accordingly, the sun, which endows visible things with their visibility, vitality, growth and progress, is the highest in the hierarchy of the visible things in nature.…Now if the sun was to be given pride of place, if the sun merited a divine status…then it was hardly possible for it to revolve about the Earth. The only fitting place for so exalted a star was the center of the universe. So the Earth was bound to revolve about the sun. This Platonic idea, then, forms the historical background of the Copernican revolution. It does not start with observations, but with a religious or mythological idea’. (Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, p. 187)

The above is clear.  Again, we have Scientism, or Philosophy, being declared a ‘Science’.  Copernicus was regurgitating ancient Greek religio-philosophy.

No new observations were made by Copernicus.  Nothing in fact.  In his ‘De revolutionibus’ which sits on my shelf in Latin, French and English, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for his claims.  Most of the book is filled with meaningless astronomical tables, many of them directly copied from the ancient Greeks.  Maybe 15 pages of prose at the beginning of the book explains his position.  He offers no conclusion.  It is not a work of ‘Science’ but of philosophy – Platonic philosophy. 

Unreadable, wrong

In 1543 the weak philosophical work ‘De revoluionibus’ was published.  Few copies were sold or read.  It is in the main a poorly organised book, which did not improve on Ptolemy’s model.  It also betrays a complete incognisance of movement and planetary motions.  In a letter to Pope Paul III Copernicus the confused states:

‘For although those who have put their trust in homocentric circles have shown that various different movement can be composed of such circles, nevertheless they have not been able to establish anything for certain that would fully correspond to the phenomena. But even if those who have thought up eccentric circles seem to have been able for the most part to compute the apparent movements numerically by those means, they have in the meanwhile admitted a great deal which seems to contradict the first principles of regularity of movement.   ,’ (trans. Charles G. Wallis, 1995 On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, p. 5)

Extant astrophysics had for 1400 years, since the time of Ptolemy, confirmed the non-circular motion of planets and astral bodies.  Thus, this statement from a ‘scientist’ is very puzzling indeed.  This lack of knowledge and the poor readability of the text guaranteed a limited 16^th century audience.  Contrary to myth it was not the glaring obvious light of reality or the thunderous cataracts of truth.  Copernicus’ work was a mishmash of half thought out cultic ideas and was more complicated and indeed unproven, when compared to Ptolemy’s model.

‘The popular belief that Copernicus’ heliocentric system constitutes a significant simplification of the Ptolemaic system is obviously wrong. The choice of the reference system has no effect on the structure of the model, and the Copernican models themselves require about twice as many circles as the Ptolemaic models and are far less elegant and adaptable’. (Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 1957, p. 204)

Ptolemy’s system has forty epicycles, whereas Copernicus ends up with forty-eight or 90 depending on how you count them.  One reason Copernicus had so many epicycles is that he places the Earth’s entire orbit in the centre of the universe, as opposed to the Sun (Owen Gingerich, The Book that Nobody Read, p. 16).  

The complexity of Copernicus’ heliocentric system stems in part from the fact that most of the charts and figures in ‘De revolutionibus’ were not original.  Copernicus merely borrowed them from the Greeks and then reworked the figures to fit his heliocentric model.  No wonder he took so long in deciding whether to publish his ‘ideas’.  He was indeed charged with plagiarism by some. 

And the proof?

‘But this apparent economy of the Copernican system, though it is a propaganda victory that the proponents of the new astronomy rarely failed to emphasize, is largely an illusion….The seven-circle system presented in the First Book of the De revolutionibus, and in many modern elementary accounts of the Copernican system, is a wonderfully economical system, but it does not work. It will not predict the position of planets with an accuracy comparable to that supplied by Ptolemy’s system’. (Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought, 1957, 1959, p. 169)

“…nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.” (Lincoln Barnett in, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, 2^nd rev. edition, 1957, p. 73)

Copernicus’ books never proved heliocentricity.  Galileo never proved the concept.  Neither did Newton.  Heliocentricity today remains unproven.  300.000 or so experiments from the 17^th to 20^th centuries can find no evidence for the Earth’s movement. 

The Earth might well be moving at a smiling amble of 107.000 km per hour.  Our solar system might indeed be rotating around the centre of our Milky Way galaxy at the leisurely pace of 828.000 km per hour.  Our entire galaxy might indeed be effortlessly moving through the universe at a sedate 1.4 million km per hour.  The claims are, however, mechanically unsupported and based on maths. 

Given the issues with light, light speed, red-shifting and the various assumptions used in calculating the aforementioned velocities, we need that small thing called mechanical proof.  This has gone missing in action.  The ‘axiom’, ‘postulate’ and starting position is that heliocentricity is right.  The cooks have never shown the pudding, they just declare how tasty it is. 

Even with all our technology and visual advancements, no mechanical or even visual proof has been offered.  All the pretentious claims purporting to have proof for heliocentrism including stellar parallax, stellar aberration, retrograde motion, the Foucault pendulum, the Coriolis effect, meteor showers, red shift, ring lasers, the equatorial bulge of the Earth and geosynchronous satellites, none of them prove heliocentricity and many like the Coriolis, red-shift or Gamma Ray bursts actively work against it.  I have discussed all of these on this substack and will post more information on the same.  The average student or person cannot bear it of course.  Surely the philosophy of Copernicus is the truth?

‘It is another irony that the post-Copernican defenders of Aristotelian cosmology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in fact pushed the principle of optical relativity to its extreme; for just as Copernicus invoked the principle of relativity to show that the earth could move, even if it seemed to be at rest, they argued that the same principle implied equally well that the earth could be at rest and the remainder of the universe in motion. They took refuge in the impartiality of relativity’.  (J. Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion, pp. 254-255)

Copernicus had to resort to the magic of ‘Relativity’ to sell his philosophy. Devoid of actual proof that was the only recourse. Einstein (or Einstotle as I call him), would take up the same standard and develop the fantasy world of Relativity.

Bottom Line

By equating philosophy and Scientism with reality and ‘facts’, Homo sapiens has lost his wisdom and become ‘Materialismus Homo’.  We can blame a lot of this on Copernicus. Specifically, Platonic Sun worship is the underlying philosophical tenet of the dissident Catholic Copernicus’ ideas.  He invented nothing, provided no proof, and copied copiously from ancient and medieval astronomers. 

Worse he lied and exaggerated the number of epicycles and complexity of Ptolemy’s model in comparison to his own.  It seems clear that Copernicus was intent on achieving renown and was not shy about how he did it.  Galileo, Newton and Einstein also suffered from such egotistical failings and peccadillos.

This does not necessarily entail that his work or ideas are completely false.  But what is rarely done is to point out that philosophy, not science, and certainly not mechanical proof, was paramount in his work ‘De revolutuionbus’.  Copernicus could only defend his thesis by appealing to ‘Relativity’, or a system or grid, in which no fixed absolute exists.  Geocentrism, Tychonism and various other models which have fixed absolutes adequately ‘save the phenomena’ equally as well as the Copernican.  

There is therefore no reason why Copernicanism should be declared superior unless you invoke philosophy. There is absolutely no scientific reason to reject the Ptolemaic or Tychonic systems. Both explain the cosmos equally as well if not better than the Copernican. Einstein, Mach and every physicist in the past 100 years has admitted the same.

The next post will canter through Kepler who tried to provide mathematical proof to support Copernicanism.  After that we need to deal with Descartes.  He is one of the most destructive and incoherent philosophers in history.  Much of the damage to reality and a proper worldview can be attributed to not only the self-seeking Sun-philosophy of Copernicus, but also to Descartes.  All hail.

Is Heliocentricity a ‘proven fact’? Or is it just more Scientism dogma?

Summarising the failures of Copernicanism. $cientism's very religious views.

Heliocentricity and Theoretical Proofs (part one). The claim based on Newtonian gravitation, that smaller bodies always orbit the larger, ergo the Earth must orbit the Sun.