1.1 STS Topic 6 Copernican Revolution

King Fredrick II of Denmark; Tycho Brahe

• stellar parallax

• Supernova; comet

• __________ built _______ a naked-eye observatory to measure the position of planets with high accuracy.

• He developed the practice of measuring the error from his instruments in order to obtain accurate observations.

• He was unable to observe _______, which would have given strong proof for the heliocentric theory

• His observations of a __________ showed inconsistencies with Aristotelian theory but he did not challenge it.

Brahe Model

developed a model in order to explain Galileo’s observation that Venus had phases.

His model had all the planets (except Earth) orbiting around the Sun, but then the Sun orbited around the Earth.

Johannes Kepler

• ________ was Tycho Brahe’s assistant. Brahe felt threatened and assigned ____to the difficult task of observing Mars.

• It was from the meticulous and extensive record of observation of Mars that _____ formed his model of the solar system.

• Unable to fit Mars data into circular orbits, he was forced to come to the conclusion that the orbits must be elliptical.

Equal

are conic sections formed when a plane intersects a cone in an inclined way. The main characteristic of ______ is that all the points on their curve have a sum of distances from two fixed points that is equal to a constant.

All planets move about the sun in elliptical orbits, having the sun as one of the foci.

Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion

• First Law

A radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths of time

Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion

• Second Law

The squares of the sidereal period (P) of the planets are directly proportional to the cubes of their mean distances (d) from the Sun

Kepler’s Law of Planetary Motion

• Third Law

Galileo Galilei

is considered the father of modern science and made major contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, cosmology, mathematics and philosophy.

Hans Lippershey

Contrary to the popular belief, he was not the inventor of the telescope. It was the Dutch eyeglass maker ________ who first applied for the patent of the telescope. Galileo improved upon this Dutch design.

Siderius Nuncius

GALILEO GALILEI

He published his discoveries in “________” (meaning The Starry Messenger). This included observations of the moon’s surface and descriptions of a multitude of new stars in the Milky Way.

ok

Galileo’s observations contradicted the Aristotelian view of the universe.

The moon’s rugged surface went against the idea of heavenly perfection, and the orbits of the Medician stars violated the geocentric notion that the heavens revolved around Earth.

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• Galileo is tried before the Roman Catholic Inquisition in Rome, Italy, in 1633. Galileo is accused of teaching

• Copernican theory, which states that the Earth revolves around the Sun. At the time the church taught that Earth was the center of the universe.

“Eppur si muove!” or Yet it moves

After being forced during his trial to admit that the Earth was the stationary center of the universe, Galileo allegedly muttered,

Isaac Newton

Contributions to different fields:

• Mathematics, both pure and applied

• Optics and the theory of light and color

• Design of scientific instruments

• Synthesis and codification of dynamics

• Invention of the concept and law of universal gravity

• Alchemy

• Chronology, church history, and interpretation of the Scriptures

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It took 144 years of active debate and research for the Copernican view to establish itself. Can a scientific revolution take that long? What is important about a revolution is not its length but its depth. What makes a change revolutionary is its upheaval in an established structure, a reversal of viewpoints, a replacement of presuppositions. It is a general rearrangement of elements in a network, be it conceptual, political, or social. Some elements in the system are displaced, some replaced, and others remain.