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Domenico Maria Novara – Scientist of the Day

Domenico Maria Novara, an Italian astronomer/astrologer, was born July 29, 1454.

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Today marks the 500th birthday of Georg Joachim Rheticus, the student and supporter of Nicolaus Copernicus. Rheticus joined his teacher in promoting the theory that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of the cosmos. Along with Copernicus himself, Rheticus was among the first proponents of the new heliocentric theory to consider how it should be related to Christian Scripture. He's an underappreciated figure in the history of science - hence the relative lack of fanfare for this milestone - and his efforts to promote the Copernican heliocentric system of the universe deserves more attention from historians. What they have uncovered so far, though, is fascinating. Robert Westman, a leading scholar on Copernicus, has shown that Rheticus was virtually the only outspoken promoter of the Copernican system as a physical reality in the period directly after Copernicus' death in 1543, which was the same year as the publication of De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium, his first printed astronomical work.

But before there was De revolutionibus, there was Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) or "first report" of the Copernican theory. Here Rheticus not only outlined his teacher's sun-centred theory in print for the first time, he also discussed the astrological implications of the theory which was a lifelong interest for the Austrian-born Copernican. Rheticus linked the positions of the celestial bodies as depicted by the Copernican theory with specific historical events, both those in the past and those in the future which he anticipated as a millenarian Christian:

" . . . when the eccentricity of the sun was at its maximum, the Roman government became a monarchy; as the eccentricity decreased, Rome too declined, as though aging, and then fell. When the eccentricity reached the boundary of the quadrant of mean value, the Mohammedan faith was established . . . a hundred years hence, when the eccentricity will be at its minimum, this empire too will complete its period . . . We look forward to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ when the center of the eccentric reaches the outer boundary of mean value, for it was in that position at the creation of the world."

(quoted in Daval Sobel, A More Perfect Heaven p. 166)

For Rheticus, the Copernican theory was so clearly true that it could be used to construct astronomical tables of planetary positions with which one could predict events on the terrestrial realm below. This puts Rheticus in contrast with his colleagues at the University of Wittenberg - a leading German university and the centre of Copernican astronomy in the sixteenth century - who adopted an instrumentalist view that Westman has called the "WIttenberg Interpretation". For the circle of scholars that had originally formed at Wittenberg around Philip Melanchthon, a theologian and ally of Martin Luther, the Copernican system was just a mathematically useful tool. These scholars could avoid the question of whether the theory was true, or deny it outright, while still drawing on Copernicus' text on a day-to-day basis in order to predict planetary motions. They found the Copernican theory very useful but evidently they didn't believe it. Thus the scholars in the Melanchthon Circle could take advantage of the utility of Copernican system without running into the religious problems it introduced.

But of the Wittenberg scholars, only Rheticus had studied under Copernicus personally - in fact, he seems to have been Copernicus's only student, period - and he was the only one publicly adopted a realist position on the Copernican theory: it wasn't just mathematically useful, it was also physically true. But what about the religious issues that contributed to his colleagues' hesitation? Weren't there passages in the Bible that clearly indicated that the Earth was stationary (e.g. "For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world" -- 1 Samuel 2:8, NSRV) and that the Sun revolves around it? (e.g. Joshua 10, which describes a miracle in which God made the Sun stand still)?

In contending with this apparent discord between Scripture and astronomical data, Rheticus adopted a strategy that numerous physical Copernicans would echo in the seventeenth century: he took an accommodationist approach to reading Scripture. In a treatise that historian Reijer Hooykaas has attributed to Rheticus (although there has been debate about this attribution), the Copernican system is supported by the common observation that Scripture is written 'in the language of men'. God, Rheticus argued, intends Scripture to convey how people can be saved, a matter to which the structure of the universe is irrelevant. Those educated in astronomy can perceive that the Earth moves around the Sun rather than vice-versa, but to the uneducated masses this esoteric fact seems manifestly wrong: they see the Sun moving and they perceive the Earth to be stationary. To make sure everyone can understand what Scripture is saying, it has to describe things the way people experience them; that's why the Bible speaks of a moving Sun and a stationary Earth. This is the same sentiment Galileo would express in his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina in 1615, where he remarked (quoting Cardinal Baronius) that "[t]he intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes." The accommodationist argument was also put forward by some of Galileo's clerical supporters, as well as Kepler and Newton. Few (if any) of these writers made use of Rheticus's text directly, but he still represents perhaps the earliest thorough application of accommodationist hermeneutics to Copernican cosmology, a strategy that was popular for over a century among those committed to both the truth of the Bible and a Sun-centred universe.

After a prolific career in astronomy, astrology and mathematics, Rheticus died in 1574 at the age of 60, at a time when the Wittenberg interpretation of Copernicanism was losing ground to the realist view. By the 17th century, the physical Copernicanism was the norm, and so accommodationist arguments like those espoused by Rheticus became increasingly popular. It seems likely that Rheticus at least had an indirect effect on these moves toward physical Copernicanism and accommodationist hermeneutics, since he had a role in preparing De revolutionibus for publication and worked for many years to promote his teacher's theory: the words and ideas of Copernicus may not have reached the audience they did without Rheticus's involvement. That's not to say that the heliocentric model of the cosmos wouldn't have been adopted without Rheticus, but it may not have happened so quickly and in the particular ways it did if Copernicus hadn't had such a dedicated follower. Today Rheticus is far from a household name - despite the fact that a minor character in Harry Potter bears his name - but it seems likely that further historical research on the Copernican question will continue to reveal his importance. Hopefully it won't take another 500 years! Happy birthday, Rheticus.

Sources:

Galilei, Galileo. “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina.” In The Galileo Affair: Documentary History, edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro, 87-118. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1989.

Kraai, Jesse. "Rheticus's Heliocentric Providence: a Study concerning the Astrology, Astronomy of the Sixteenth Century." PhD diss. University of Heidelberg, 2003.

Rheticus, G. J. G. J. Rheticus’ Treatise on Holy Scripture and The Motion of The Earth. Translated by R. Hooykaas. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1984.

Snobelen, Stephen D. “‘In the Language of Men’: The Hermeneutics of Accommodation in the Scientific Revolution.” In Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700, edited by Jitse M. van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote, 691-732. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

Sovel, Dava. A More Perfect Heavens: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.

Westman, Robert S. The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

. “The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory.” Isis 66.2 (June 1975): 164-193.

#history of science #science and religion #rheticus #copernicus #astronomy #astrology #galileo

When love is lost and loss o'ertakes me, The rules of love then are hidden; And chaos rules and order lost, And hidden then my heart from love.

Rheticus 'The Loss of Reason'

(as read by Myka Bering, Warehouse 13 - Claudia)

#warehouse 13 #quotes #rheticus #claudia #myka bering #joanne kelly #and hg is never far from our mind #cry if you must #you'll never be the only one