Abstract
When Copernicus’s De revolutionibus appeared in 1543, it was valued by the professionals for its innovative planetary models rather than for anything it might have to say about which body is at the centre of the universe. In a volume dominated by complex geometry, and introduced by a misleading preface inserted without the author’s authority to the effect that what followed was guided by the search for accuracy and convenience rather than the quest for truth, the cosmological Book I was largely overlooked. In Book I Copernicus shows in broad, qualitative terms, how so many of the hitherto-puzzling features of the observed motions of these ‘wandering stars’ — such as their retrogressions — are readily explained if one begins from the assumption that the Earth is an ordinary planet orbiting the Sun.
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References
Johannes Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (Tübingen, 1596), pp. 7-8; transl, by A.M. Duncan, The Secret of the Universe (New York, 1981), pp. 63-64.
Isaac Newton, letter to Richard Bentley, 10 Dec. 1692 (Four Letters from Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley (London, 1756), p. 9.
Immanuel Kant, Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Königsberg and Leipzig, 1755), p. 163; transi, by S.L. Jaki, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Edinburgh, 1981), p. 177.
J.H. Lambert, Cosmologische Briefe (Augsberg, 1761), p. 7; transi, by S.L. Jaki, Cosmological Letters (Edinburgh, 1976), p. 57.
Tobias Swinden, An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell, 2nd edn (London, 1727), pp. 354-355.
William Whist on, A stronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (London, 1717), pp. 15, 19.
Thomas Wright of Durham, Clavis Coelestis (London, 1742), p. 16.
Ibid., pp. 17, 33.
Thomas Wright of Durham, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (London, 1750), p. 31.
Thomas Wright of Durham, Second or Singular Thoughts upon the Theory of the Universe, ed. by M.A. Hoskin (London, 1968), p. 45.
Ibid., p. 50.
Kant, op. cit. (ref. 3), p. 17; transl. by Jaki, pp. 108-109.
James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, 12th edn (London, 1809), p. 37: “By comparing the great interval between the Orbits of Mars and Jupiter, it was surmised upwards of seventy years ago, by Mr. Maclaurin and others, and lately by G. Loft, Esq that there must, at least, be one planet, whose orbit is exterior to that of Mars, and interior to the Orbit of Jupiter.” I have not located the work in which Maclaurin makes this suggestion.
Wright, Second or Singular Thoughts, p. 24.
William Whiston, Praelectiones astronomicae (London, 1707), Lectio VII.
David Gregory, Astronomiae elementa (Oxford, 1702), Book I, Section I, Prop. I; transl. from the English edn (London, 1715), p. 2.
The best source for the post-Gregory story of this section is M.M. Nieto, The Titius-Bode Law of Planetary Distances (Oxford, 1972). As the distances quoted by Whiston would convert (to the nearest integer) to give Saturn the figure 96 rather than 95, it is likely that Wolff took the numbers directly from Gregory rather than deriving them himself. Roger Long, Astronomy (2 vols, Cambridge, 1742, 1754), vol. 1, p. 339, gives 32, 59, 82, 125, 426 and 780 millions of miles. Ferguson, Astronomy Explained…, 1st edn (London, 1756), gives Whiston’s values.
Johann Daniel Titius, Betrachtung über die Natur, vom Herrn Karl Bonnet (Leipzig, 1766), pp. 7-8; transl. by Stanley Jaki in “The early history of the Titius-Bode Law”, American Journal of Physics, vol. 40 (1972), pp. 1014-23.
Titius, Betrachtung…, 4th edn (Leipzig, 1783), p. 13; transl. by Nieto, The Titius-Bode Law, p. 11.
Johann Elert Bode, Anleitung zur Kenntnis des gestirten Himmels, 2nd edn (Hamburg, 1772), p. 462; transl. by Jaki, op. cit. (ref. 18).
For a facsimile of the original entry in Herschel’s observing book, see The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel, ed. by J.L.E. Dreyer (2 vols, London, 1912), vol. 1, p. xxviii. In the following pages Dreyer gives further details of the discovery and its aftermath. For futher information, see the articles by R. Porter, J.A. Bennett, M. Hoskin, E.G. Forbes and R.W. Smith in the section on “History of the Discovery of Uranus” in Uranus and the Outer Planets, ed. by Garry Hunt (Cambridge, 1982). For early attempts to determine the orbit of Uranus see A.F. O’D. Alexander, The Planet Uranus: A History of Observation, Theory and Discovery (London, 1865), chap. 2.
The story is told by F.X. von Zach, “Über einen zwischen Mars und Jupiter längst vermutheten nun wahrscheinlich entdeckten neuen Hauptplaneten unseres Sonnen-Systems”, Monatliche Correspondenz, June 1801, 592–623, quotation from p. 602.
Ibid., pp. 602-603.
On Piazzi see the article by Giorgio Abetti in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, and the bibliography therein.
W. Pearson, Introduction to Practical Astronomy, vol. 2 (London, 1829), pp. 413-417.
G. Piazzi, Praecipuarum stellarum inerrantium positiones mediae ineunte saeculo decimonono ex observationibus habitis in specula panoramitana ab anno 1792 ad annum 1802 (Palermo, 1803).
G. Piazzi, Risultati delle Osservazioni delta Nuova Stella (Palermo, 1801), pp. 3-6. I have used (without amendment) the English translation by one Antonio Parachinatti, “teacher of the Italian language”, prepared for Nevil Maskelyne (Cambridge University Library, RGO ms 4/221). Quoted by courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and of the Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Cited by Abetti, op. cit. (ref. 24).
Piazzi, op. cit. (ref 27), pp. 7-8, 13.
Ibid., pp. 13-14.
Ibid., p. 16.
W. Herschel, “Observations on the Two Lately Discovered Celestial Bodies”, Philosophical Transactions, vol. 92 (1802), 187–98. As early as 18 February 1802, and before the discovery of Pallas, Herschel had told the Royal Society that Ceres was much smaller than the Moon: “Observations of the New Planet”, first published in The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel (ref. 21), vol. 1, pp. cix-cxi.
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Hoskin, M. (1993). Bode’s Law and the Discovery of Ceres. In: Linsky, J.F., Serio, S. (eds) Physics of Solar and Stellar Coronae: G.S. Vaiana Memorial Symposium. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 183. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1964-1_3
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