The Sleepwalkers (88 page)

Of
all
these
projects,
only
the
trigonometrical
tables
were
of
scientific
value;
they
were
published
posthumously
by
his
pupil,
Otho,
and
secured
Rheticus
an
honourable
place
in
the
history
of
mathematics.
They
represented
an
enormous
amount
of
dreary
labour,
and
were
evidently
the
occupational
therapy
which
kept
him
within
the
borders
of
sanity.

He
was
now
in
his
fifties,
and
still
he
could
not
settle
down.
He
became
house
physician
to
a
Polish
Prince,
then
migrated
to
Cassovia
in
Hungary,
where
some
Magyar
noblemen
provided
for
him.
He
died
there
in
1576,
at
the
age
of
sixty-two.
¹⁰²

It
was
in
that
last
year
of
his
life
that
the
young
mathematician,
Valentine
Otho,
travelled
all
the
way
from
Wittenberg
to
Cassovia
in
the
foothills
of
the
Tatra
mountains,
to
become
his
pupil
–
and
to
publish,
twenty
years
later,
the
result
of
Rheticus'
life
work,
the
Opus
Palatinum
de
Triangulis.
Otho's
preface
to
the
book
contains
this
epitaph
on
Georg
Joachim
Rheticus:

"...
When
I
returned
to
the
University
of
Wittenberg,
fortune
willed
that
I
should
read
a
dialogue
by
Rheticus,
who
had
been
attached
to
the
Canon.
I
was
so
excited
and
enflamed
by
this
that
I
could
not
wait
but
had
to
journey
at
the
first
opportunity
to
the
author
himself
and
learn
from
him
personally
about
these
matters.
I
went,
therefore,
to
Hungary
where
Rheticus
was
then
working
and
was
received
by
him
in
the
kindest
manner.
We
had
hardly
exchanged
a
few
words
on
this
and
that
when,
on
learning
the
cause
of
my
visit,
he
burst
forth
with
the
words:

'You
come
to
see
me
at
the
same
age
as
I
myself
went
to
Copernicus.
If
I
had
not
visited
him,
none
of
his
works
would
have
seen
the
light.'"
¹⁰³

II THE
SYSTEM
OF
COPERNICUS

1.
The Book that Nobody Read

THE
Book
of
the
Revolutions
of
the
Heavenly
Spheres
was
and
is
an
all-time
worst-seller.

Its
first
edition,
Nuremberg
1543,
numbered
a
thousand
copies,
which
were
never
sold
out.
It
had
altogether
four
reprints
in
four
hundred
years:
Basle
1566,
Amsterdam
1617,
Warsaw
1854,
and
Torun
1873.
¹

It
is
a
remarkable
negative
record,
and
quite
unique
among
books
which
made
history.
To
appreciate
its
significance,
it
must
be
compared
with
the
circulation
of
other
contemporary
works
on
astronomy.
The
most
popular
among
them
was
the
textbook
by
a
Yorkshireman,
John
Holywood,
known
as
Sacrobosco
(died
1256),
which
saw
no
less
than
fifty-nine
editions.
²
The
Jesuit
father
Christophe
Clavius'
Treatise
on
the
Sphere
,
published
in
1570,
had
nineteen
reprints
during
the
next
fifty
years.
Melanchton's
textbook,
Doctrines
of
Physics
,
which
was
published
six
years
after
Copernicus'
book
and
which
attempted
to
refute
Copernicus'
theories,
was
reprinted
nine
times
before
the
Revolutions
was
reprinted
a
single
time
(1566);
and
had
a
further
eight
editions
later
on.
Kaspar
Peucer's
textbook
on
astronomy,
published
in
1551,
was
reprinted
six
times
in
the
next
forty
years.
The
works
just
mentioned,
plus
Ptolemy's
Almagest
and
Peurbach's
Planetary
Theory
reached
altogether
about
a
hundred
reprints
in
Germany
till
the
end
of
the
sixteenth
century
–
the
Book
of
Revolutions
,
one.
³

The
main
reason
for
this
neglect
is
the
book's
supreme
unreadability.
It
is
amusing
to
note
that
even
the
most
conscientious
modern
scholars,
when
writing
about
Copernicus,
unwittingly
betray
that
they
have
not
read
him.
The
give-away
is
the
number
of
epicycles
in
the
Copernican
system.
At
the
end
of
his
Commentariolus
,
Copernicus
had
announced
(
see
p.
145
f):
"altogether,
therefore,
thirty-four
circles
suffice
to
explain
the
entire
structure
of
the
universe
and
the
entire
ballet
of
the
planets."
But
the
Commentariolus
had
merely
been
an
optimistic
preliminary
announcement;
when
Copernicus
got
down
to
detail
in
the
Revolutions
,
he
was
forced
to
add
more
and
more
wheels
to
his
machinery,
and
their
number
grew
to
nearly
fifty.
But
since
he
does
not
add
them
up
anywhere,
and
there
is
no
summary
to
his
book,
this
fact
has
escaped
attention.
Even
the
former
Astronomer
Royal,
Sir
Harold
Spencer
Jones,
fell
into
the
trap
by
stating
in
Chambers's
Encyclopaedia
that
Copernicus
reduced
the
number
of
epicycles
"from
eighty
to
thirty-four".
The
same
mis-statement
can
be
found
in
Professor
Dingle's
Copernicus
Memorial
Address
to
the
Royal
Astronomical
Society
in
1943,
⁴
and
in
a
number
of
excellent
works
on
the
History
of
Science.
^*
They
obviously
took
the
frequently
quoted
proud
announcement
in
the
last
phrase
of
the
Commentariolus
at
face
value.