Nicholas Copernicus- Polish and Prussian astronomer, mathematician, economist, canon of the Renaissance , author of the heliocentric system of the world.

Biography facts

Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun into a merchant family in 1473, he lost his parents early. There is no definite opinion about his nationality - some consider him a Pole, others - a German. His hometown became part of Poland a few years before his birth, and before that was part of Prussia. But he was brought up in the German family of his maternal uncle.

He studied at the University of Krakow, where he studied mathematics, medicine and theology, but he was especially attracted to astronomy. Then he left for Italy and entered the University of Bologna, where he prepared mainly for a spiritual career, but also studied astronomy there. He studied medicine at the University of Padua. Upon returning to Krakow, he worked as a doctor, at the same time being a confidant of his uncle, Bishop Lukas.

After the death of his uncle, he lived in the small town of Frombork in Poland, where he served as a canon (priest of the Catholic Church), but did not stop studying astronomy. Here he developed the idea of ​​a new astronomical system. He shared his thoughts with friends, so very soon word spread about the young astronomer and his new system.

Copernicus was one of the first to express the idea of ​​universal gravitation. One of his letters says: “I think that gravity is nothing but a certain desire with which the divine Architect endowed the particles of matter so that they would unite in the form of a ball. The Sun, the Moon, and the planets probably have this property; to him these luminaries owe their spherical shape.

He confidently predicted that Venus and Mercury had phases similar to those of the Moon. After the invention of the telescope, Galileo confirmed this prediction.

It is known that talented people are talented in everything. Copernicus also showed himself to be a comprehensively educated person: according to his project, a new monetary system was introduced in Poland; in the city of Frombork, he built a hydraulic machine that supplied water to all houses. As a doctor, he fought the plague in 1519. During the Polish-Teutonic War (1519-1521), he organized the successful defense of the bishopric from the Teutons, and then took part in peace negotiations that culminated in the creation of the first Protestant state - the Duchy of Prussia.

At the age of 58, Copernicus retired from all affairs and began working on his book. "On the rotation of the heavenly spheres", at the same time treated people free of charge.

Nicolaus Copernicus died in 1543 from a stroke.

Heliocentric system of the world of Copernicus

heliocentric system- the idea that the Sun is the central celestial body around which the Earth and other planets revolve. The Earth, in accordance with this system, revolves around the Sun in one sidereal year, and around its axis - in one sidereal day. This view is the opposite geocentric system of the world(the idea of ​​​​the structure of the universe, according to which the central position in the Universe is occupied by the motionless Earth, around which the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolve).

The doctrine of the heliocentric system arose even in antiquity, but became widespread from the end of the Renaissance.

The Pythagoreans, Heraclides of Pontus, had conjectures about the movement of the Earth, but a truly heliocentric system was proposed at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. e. Aristarchus of Samos. It is believed that Aristarchus came to heliocentrism based on the fact he established that the Sun is much larger than the Earth in size (the only work of a scientist that has come down to us). It was natural to assume that the smaller body revolves around the larger one, and not vice versa. The geocentric system of the world that existed before was unable to explain the change in the apparent brightness of the planets and the apparent size of the Moon, which the Greeks correctly associated with a change in the distance to these celestial bodies. It also allowed to establish the order of the luminaries.

But after the 2nd century A.D. e. in the Hellenistic world, geocentrism was firmly established, based on the philosophy of Aristotle and the planetary theory of Ptolemy.

In the Middle Ages the heliocentric system of the world was practically forgotten. An exception are the astronomers of the Samarkand school founded by Ulugbek in the first half of the 15th century. Some of them rejected the philosophy of Aristotle as the physical foundation of astronomy and considered the rotation of the Earth around its axis as physically possible. There are indications that some of the Samarkand astronomers considered the possibility of not just the axial rotation of the Earth, but the movement of its center, and also developed a theory in which the Sun is considered to revolve around the Earth, but all the planets revolve around the Sun (which can be called the geo-heliocentric system of the world) .

In the era Early Renaissance Nicholas of Cusa wrote about the mobility of the Earth, but his judgment was purely philosophical. There were other suggestions about the movement of the Earth, but the system as such did not exist. And only in the 16th century did heliocentrism finally revive, when the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus developed the theory of planetary motion around the Sun based on the Pythagorean principle of uniform circular motions. The result of his labors was the book "On the rotations of the celestial spheres", published in 1543. He considered the disadvantage of all geocentric theories that they do not allow to determine "the shape of the world and the proportionality of its parts", that is, the scale of the planetary system. Perhaps he proceeded from the heliocentrism of Aristarchus, but this has not been conclusively proven; in the final edition of the book, the reference to Aristarchus has disappeared.

Copernicus believed that the Earth makes three movements:

1. Around its axis with a period of one day, resulting in a daily rotation of the celestial sphere.

2. Around the Sun with a period of a year, resulting in backward motions of the planets.

3. The so-called declination movement, also with a period of approximately one year, leads to the fact that the Earth's axis moves approximately parallel to itself.

Copernicus explained the reasons for the backward motions of the planets, calculated the distances of the planets from the Sun and the periods of their revolutions. Zodiacal inequality in the movement of the planets Copernicus explained by the fact that their movement is a combination of movements in large and small circles.

Heliocentric system of Copernicus can be formulated in the following statements:

• orbits and celestial spheres do not have a common center;
• the center of the Earth is not the center of the Universe, but only the center of mass and orbit of the Moon;
• all the planets move in orbits whose center is the Sun, and therefore the Sun is the center of the world;
• the distance between the Earth and the Sun is very small compared to the distance between the Earth and the fixed stars;
• the daily movement of the Sun is imaginary, and is caused by the effect of the rotation of the Earth, which rotates once every 24 hours around its axis, which always remains parallel to itself;
• The Earth (together with the Moon, like other planets), revolves around the Sun, and therefore the movements that the Sun seems to make (the daily movement, as well as the annual movement when the Sun moves around the Zodiac) are nothing more than the effect of the Earth's movement ;
• this motion of the Earth and other planets explains their location and the specific characteristics of the motion of the planets.

These statements completely contradicted the geocentric system that prevailed at that time.

The center of the planetary system for Copernicus was not the Sun, but the center of the earth's orbit;

of all the planets, the Earth was the only one that moved uniformly in its orbit, while the orbital speed of the other planets varied.

Apparently, Copernicus retained a belief in the existence of celestial spheres carrying planets. Thus, the movement of the planets around the Sun was explained by the rotation of these spheres around their axes.

Evaluation of the theory of Copernicus by contemporaries

His closest supporters for the first three decades after the publication of the book « On the rotations of the celestial spheres" was the German astronomer Georg Joachim Retik, who at one time collaborated with Copernicus, who considered himself his student, as well as the astronomer and surveyor Gemma Frisius. A friend of Copernicus, Bishop Tiedemann Giese, was also a supporter of Copernicus. But the majority of contemporaries from the theory of Copernicus “pulled out” only the mathematical apparatus for astronomical calculations and the almost complete disregard for his new, heliocentric cosmology. This was perhaps because the preface to his book was written by a Lutheran theologian, and the preface said that the motion of the earth was a clever computational trick, but that Copernicus should not be taken literally. Many in the 16th century believed that this was the opinion of Copernicus himself. And only in the 70s - 90s of the XVI century. astronomers began to show interest in the new system of the world. Copernicus had both supporters (including philosopher Giordano Bruno; theologian Diego de Zuniga, who uses the concept of the Earth's motion to interpret some words of the Bible) and opponents (astronomers Tycho Brahe and Christopher Clavius, philosopher Francis Bacon).

Opponents of the Copernican system argued that if the Earth rotated around its axis, then:

• The earth would experience colossal centrifugal forces that would inevitably tear it apart.
• All light objects on its surface would be scattered in all directions of the Cosmos.
• Any thrown object would deviate towards the west, and the clouds would float, along with the Sun, from east to west.
• Celestial bodies move because they are made of imponderable thin matter, but what force can make the huge heavy Earth move?

Meaning

The heliocentric system of the world, put forward in the III century BC. uh . Aristarchus and revived in the 16th century Copernicus, made it possible to establish the parameters of the planetary system and discover the laws of planetary motions. The justification of heliocentrism required the creation classical mechanics and led to the discovery of the law gravity. This theory paved the way for stellar astronomy, when it was proved that the stars are distant suns) and the cosmology of the infinite Universe. Further, the heliocentric system of the world was more and more asserted - the main content of the scientific revolution of the 17th century consisted in the establishment of heliocentrism.

In fact, Aristarchus of Samos - Samos was an island near Turkey - developed a form of heliocentric world system as early as around 200 BC. Other ancient civilizations, including various Muslim scholars in the 11th century, maintained the same beliefs that built on the work of Aristarchus and European scholars in Medieval Europe.

In the 16th century, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus invented his version of the heliocentric system of the world. Like others before him, Copernicus drew on the work of Aristarchus, mentioning a Greek astronomer in his notes. The Copernican theory has become so famous that when most people discuss the heliocentric theory these days, they refer to the Copernican model. Copernicus published his theory in his book "On the rotation of the celestial spheres". Copernicus placed the Earth as the third planet from the Sun, and in his model orbits the Earth rather than the Sun. Copernicus also hypothesized that the stars do not orbit the earth; The earth rotates on its axis, which makes the stars look like they are moving across the sky. Through the application of geometry, he was able to transform the heliocentric system of the world from a philosophical hypothesis into a theory that did a very good job of predicting the motion of the planets and other celestial bodies.

The only problem facing the heliocentric system of the world was that it was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, a very powerful organization in the time of Copernicus. This may have been one of the reasons why Copernicus did not publish his theory until after he was on his deathbed. After the death of Copernicus, the Roman Catholic Church worked even harder to suppress the heliocentric view. The Church arrested Galileo for supporting the heretical heliocentric model and kept him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. Around the same time that Galileo created the telescope, astronomer Johannes Kepler was perfecting the heliocentric system of the world and trying to prove it with the help of calculations.

Although its progress was slow, the heliocentric system of the world finally replaced the geocentric system of the world. While new evidence has emerged, some have begun to question whether the sun was actually the center of the universe. The sun was not the geometric center of the orbits of the planets, and the center of gravity was also not quite in the center of the sun. What this means, although children in schools are taught that heliocentrism is the correct model of the universe, astronomers use both types of the universe depending on what they are studying and which theory makes their calculations easier.

It is difficult to say exactly when astronomy was born: almost no information related to prehistoric times has reached us. In that distant era, when people were completely powerless in front of nature, a belief arose in powerful forces that allegedly created the world and rule it, for many centuries the Moon, the Sun, and the planets were deified. We learn about this from the myths of all the peoples of the world.

The first ideas about the universe were very naive, they were closely intertwined with religious beliefs, which were based on the division of the world into two parts - earthly and heavenly. If now every schoolchild knows that the Earth itself is a celestial body, then earlier “earthly” was opposed to “heavenly”. They thought that there was a "firmament of heaven", to which the stars were attached, and the Earth was taken for the motionless center of the universe.

Geocentric system of the world

Hipparchus, an Alexandrian scientist who lived in the 2nd century BC, and other astronomers of his time devoted much attention to observing the motions of the planets.

These movements seemed to them extremely confusing. In fact, the directions of motion of the planets in the sky, as it were, describe loops in the sky. This apparent complexity in the motion of the planets is caused by the movement of the Earth around the Sun - after all, we observe the planets from the Earth, which itself moves. And when the Earth “catches up” with another planet, it seems that the planet seems to stop, and then moves back. But ancient astronomers thought that the planets did make such complex movements around the Earth.

In the 2nd century AD Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy put forward his "system of the world." He tried to explain the structure of the universe, taking into account the apparent complexity of the movement of the planets.

Considering the Earth is spherical, and its dimensions are negligible compared to the distance to the planets, and even more so to the stars. Ptolemy, however, following Aristotle, argued that the Earth is the fixed center of the universe. Since Ptolemy considered the Earth to be the center of the universe, his system of the world was called geocentric.

Model of geocentric system.

Around the earth according to Ptolemy, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, stars move (in order of distance from the Earth). But if the motion of the Moon, Sun, stars is circular, then the motion of the planets is much more complicated. Each of the planets, according to Ptolemy, does not move around the Earth, but around a certain point. This point, in turn, moves in a circle, in the center of which is the Earth. The circle described by the planet around the moving point, Ptolemy called the epicycle, and the circle along which the point moves around the Earth, the deferent.

It is hard to imagine such intricate movements taking place in nature, and even around imaginary points. Such an artificial construction was required by Ptolemy in order to explain the apparent complexity of the movement of the planets, based on a false idea of ​​the immobility of the Earth, located in the center of the Universe.

Ptolemy was a brilliant mathematician for his time. But he shared the view of Aristotle, who believed that the Earth is motionless and only it can be the center of the universe.

The system of the world of Aristotle-Ptolemy seemed plausible to contemporaries. It made it possible to pre-calculate the movement of the planets for the future - this was necessary for orientation along the way while traveling and for the calendar. This false system has been recognized for almost fifteen hundred years.

This system was also recognized by the Christian religion. Christianity based its worldview on the biblical legend of the creation of the world by God in six days. According to this legend, the Earth is the “center” of the Universe, and the heavenly bodies were created in order to illuminate the Earth and decorate the firmament. Any deviation from these views was mercilessly pursued by Christianity. The system of the world of Aristotle - Ptolemy, which placed the Earth at the center of the universe, perfectly corresponded to the Christian doctrine.

The tables compiled by Ptolemy made it possible to determine in advance the position of the planets in the sky. But over time, astronomers have discovered a discrepancy between the observed positions of the planets and the predicted ones. For centuries, it was thought that the Ptolemaic system of the world was simply not perfect enough, and in an attempt to improve it, they introduced new and new combinations of circular motions for each planet.

Heliocentric system of the world

His system of the world the great Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus(1473-1543) set out in the book "On the rotations of the celestial spheres", published in the year of his death. In this book, he proved that the universe is not arranged in the way that religion has claimed for many centuries.

In all countries, for almost a millennium and a half, the false teaching of Ptolemy, who claimed that the Earth rests motionless in the center of the Universe, dominated the minds of people. The followers of Ptolemy, for the sake of the church, came up with more and more “explanations” and “proofs” of the movement of the planets around the Earth in order to preserve the “truth” and “holiness” of his false teaching. But from this, the Ptolemaic system became more and more far-fetched and artificial.

Long before Ptolemy, the Greek scientist Aristarchus argued that the Earth moves around the Sun. Later, in the Middle Ages, advanced scientists shared the point of view of Aristarchus on the structure of the world and rejected the false teachings of Ptolemy. Shortly before Copernicus, the great Italian scientists Nicholas of Cusa and Leonardo da Vinci argued that the Earth moves, that it is not at all in the center of the Universe and does not occupy an exceptional position in it.

Why, in spite of this, did the Ptolemaic system continue to dominate?

Because it relied on the all-powerful church authority, which suppressed free thought, hindered the development of science. In addition, scientists who rejected the teachings of Ptolemy and expressed correct views on the structure of the Universe could not yet convincingly substantiate them.

This was done only by Nicolaus Copernicus. After thirty years of hard work, long reflections and complex mathematical calculations, he showed that the Earth is only one of the planets, and all the planets revolve around the Sun.

Copernicus did not live to see the time when his book spread throughout the world, revealing to people the truth about the universe. He was near death when friends brought and put the first copy of the book into his cold hands.

Copernicus was born in 1473 in the Polish city of Torun. He lived in a difficult time, when Poland and its neighbor - the Russian state - continued the centuries-old struggle against the invaders - the Teutonic knights and the Tatar-Mongols, who sought to enslave the Slavic peoples.

Copernicus lost his parents early. He was raised by his maternal uncle Lukasz Watzelrode, an outstanding public and political figure of that time. The thirst for knowledge possessed Copernicus from childhood. At first he studied at home. Then he continued his education at Italian universities. Of course, astronomy was studied there according to Ptolemy, but Copernicus carefully studied all the surviving works of great mathematicians and ancient astronomy. Even then, he had thoughts about the correctness of Aristarchus' guesses, about the falsity of Ptolemy's system. But not only astronomy was engaged in Copernicus. He studied philosophy, law, medicine and returned to his homeland a comprehensively educated man for his time.

Upon his return from Italy, Copernicus settled in Warmia - first in the city of Litzbark, then in Frombork. His activities were extremely diverse. He took an active part in the management of the region: he was in charge of its financial, economic and other affairs. At the same time, Copernicus tirelessly pondered the true structure of the solar system and gradually came to his great discovery.

What does the book of Copernicus “On the rotation of the celestial spheres” contain and why did it deal such a crushing blow to the Ptolemaic system, which, with all its flaws, had been kept for fourteen centuries under the auspices of the omnipotent church authority in that era? In this book, Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the Earth and other planets are satellites of the sun. He showed that it is the movement of the Earth around the sun and its daily rotation around its axis that explains the apparent movement of the Sun, the strange entanglement in the movement of the planets and the apparent rotation of the firmament.

Brilliantly simple, Copernicus explained that we perceive the movement of distant celestial bodies in the same way as the movement of various objects on Earth when we ourselves are in motion.

We slide in a boat along a calmly flowing river, and it seems to us that the boat and we are motionless in it, and the banks “float” in the opposite direction. In the same way, it only seems to us that the Sun moves around the Earth. But in fact, the Earth with everything that is on it moves around the Sun and during the year makes a complete revolution in its orbit.

And in the same way, when the Earth overtakes another planet in its movement around the Sun, it seems to us that the planet is moving backward, describing a loop in the sky. In reality, the planets move around the Sun in regular, although not perfectly circular orbits, without making any loops. Copernicus, like the ancient Greek scientists, that the orbits along which the planets move can only be circular.

Three quarters of a century later, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, the successor of Copernicus, proved that the orbits of all the planets are elongated circles - ellipses.

Copernicus considered the stars to be fixed. Supporters of Ptolemy insisted on the immobility of the Earth, argued that if the Earth moved in space, then when observing the sky at different times, it would seem to us that the stars are shifting, changing their position in the sky. But no astronomer has noticed such displacements of stars for many centuries. It was in this that the supporters of the teachings of Ptolemy wanted to see proof of the immobility of the Earth.

However, Copernicus argued that the stars are at unimaginably great distances. Therefore, their insignificant shifts could not be noticed. Indeed, the distances from us even to the nearest stars turned out to be so large that even three centuries after Copernicus they could be accurately determined. Only in 1837, the Russian astronomer Vasily Yakovlevich Struve laid the foundation for the accurate determination of the distances to the stars.

It is clear what a startling impression a book must have made in which Copernicus explained the world without considering religion and even rejecting any authority of the Church in matters of science. Church leaders did not immediately understand what a blow to religion was caused by the scientific work of Copernicus, in which he brought the Earth down to the position of one of the planets. For some time, the book was freely distributed among scientists. Not many years passed, and the revolutionary significance of the great book was fully manifested. Other prominent scientists came forward - the successors of the Copernican cause. They developed and spread the idea of ​​the infinity of the Universe, in which the Earth is like a grain of sand, and there are countless worlds. Since that time, the church began a fierce persecution of supporters of the teachings of Copernicus.

The new doctrine of the solar system - heliocentric, was affirmed in the most severe struggle with religion. The teachings of Copernicus undermined the very foundations of the religious worldview and opened up a wide path to a materialistic, truly scientific knowledge of natural phenomena.

In the second half of the 16th century, the teachings of Copernicus found their supporters among the leading scientists of different countries. Scientists also came forward who not only propagated the teachings of Copernicus, but deepened and expanded it.

Copernicus believed that the Universe is limited by the sphere of fixed stars, which are located at unimaginably huge, but still finite distances from us and from the Sun. In the teachings of Copernicus, the vastness of the universe and its infinity were affirmed. Copernicus also for the first time in astronomy not only gave the correct scheme of the structure of the solar system, but also determined the relative distances of the planets from the sun and calculated the period of their revolution around it.

The formation of the heliocentric worldview

The teachings of Copernicus were not immediately recognized. We know that according to the verdict of the Inquisition in 1600, an outstanding Italian philosopher, a follower of Copernicus, was burned in Rome Giordano Bruno(1548-1600). Bruno, developing the teachings of Copernicus, argued that there is not and cannot be a center in the Universe, that the Sun is only the center of the solar system. He also expressed a brilliant conjecture that the stars are the same suns as ours, and planets move around countless stars, many of which have intelligent life. Neither torture nor the fire of the Inquisition broke the will of Giordano Bruno, did not force him to renounce the new teaching.

In 1609 Galileo Galilei(1564-1642) first directed a telescope to the sky and made discoveries that clearly confirm the discoveries of Copernicus. He saw mountains on the moon. This means that the surface of the Moon is to some extent similar to the earth's and there is no fundamental difference between "earthly" and "heavenly". Galileo discovered four moons of Jupiter. Their movement around Jupiter disproved the erroneous idea that only the Earth can be the center of celestial bodies. Galileo discovered that Venus, like the Moon, changes its phases. Therefore, Venus is a spherical body that shines with reflected sunlight. Studying the features of the change in the appearance of Venus, Galileo made the correct conclusion that it does not move around the Earth, but around the Sun. On the Sun, which personified “heavenly purity”, Galileo discovered spots and, observing them, established that the Sun rotates around its axis. This means that various celestial bodies, such as the Sun, are characterized by axial rotation. Finally, he discovered that the Milky Way is full of faint stars that are not visible to the naked eye. Consequently, the Universe is much grander than previously thought, and it was extremely naive to assume that it makes a full revolution around the small Earth in a day.

The discovery of Galileo multiplied the number of supporters of the heliocentric system of the world and at the same time forced the church to intensify the persecution of the Copernicans. In 1616, the book of Copernicus "On the rotations of the celestial spheres" was included in the list of prohibited books, and what is stated in it contradictory Holy Scripture. Galileo was forbidden to propagate the teachings of Copernicus. However, in 1632 he still managed to publish the book “Dialogue on the two main systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernican”, in which he was able to convincingly show the truth of the heliocentric system, which incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church. In 1633, Galileo appeared before the court of the Inquisition. The elderly scientist was forced to sign a “renunciation” of his views and was kept under the supervision of the Inquisition until the end of his life. Only in 1992 did the Catholic Church finally acquit Galileo.

The execution of Bruno, the official ban on the teachings of Copernicus, the trial of Galileo could not stop the spread of Copernicus. In Austria Johannes Kepler(1571-1630) developed the teachings of Copernicus, discovering the laws of planetary motion. In England Isaac Newton(1643-1727) published his famous law of universal gravitation. In Russia, the teachings of Copernicus boldly supported M. V. Lomonosov(1711-1765), who discovered the atmosphere on Venus, defended the idea of ​​a plurality of inhabited worlds.

Original entry and comments on

Question number 4 Cosmological concept in the era of rebirth

Nicholas Copernicus,Johannes Kepler andGiordano Bruno

Space- the concept of ancient Greek philosophy and culture, the idea of ​​the natural world as a plastically ordered harmonic whole. Opposed to chaos. The Greeks combined in the concept of "cosmos" two functions - ordering and aesthetic.

The term "Cosmos" begins to be used in a philosophical sense already during the formation of the first philosophical schools of ancient Greece. According to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras was the first to call the universe "Cosmos". However, the use of this concept is recorded even before Pythagoras in Anaximenes and Anaximander. It is widely used by Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus and other pre-Socratics.

In ancient Greek cosmology, the Cosmos was considered limited, in its center was the motionless Earth, around which all celestial bodies revolved, including the Sun. The stars were located on the periphery of the Cosmos. The geocentric system of the world dominated until the 16th century.

Philosophers of the Middle Ages also included the doctrine of the cosmos in their concepts. Renaissance and early modern scientists (such as Kepler and Copernicus) usually relied on the principles of ancient cosmology, but the Sun, not the Earth, was placed in the center of the Cosmos.

In modern times, the concept of "cosmos" is being squeezed out of scientific use, being replaced by the concept of "the Universe".

Nicholas Copernicus(February 19, 1473 - May 24, 1543) - Polish astronomer, mathematician, mechanic, economist, canon of the Renaissance. Best known as the author of the heliocentric system of the world, which marked the beginning of the first scientific revolution.

Heliocentric system of Copernicus

Reflecting on the Ptolemaic system of the world, Copernicus was amazed at its complexity and artificiality. Studying the writings of ancient philosophers (especially Nikita of Syracuse and Philolaus), he came to the conclusion that not the Earth, but the Sun should be the motionless center of the Universe. Based on this assumption, Copernicus very simply explained all the apparent intricacy of the movements of the planets, but, not yet knowing the true paths of the planets, considering them to be circles.

Creating your heliocentric system, Copernicus relied on the mathematical and kinematic apparatus of Ptolemy's theory, on the latter's specific geometric and numerical patterns. So, in Ptolemy's model, all the planets obeyed a common (albeit incomprehensible within the framework of geocentrism) law: the radius vector of any planet in the epicycle always coincided with the radius vector of the Earth-Sun. In the Copernican model, this law received a simple and logical explanation.

The main and almost the only work of Copernicus, the fruit of more than 40 years of his work, is "On the rotation of the celestial spheres". ( The work was published in Nuremberg in 1543; it was printed under the supervision of the best student of Copernicus, Reticus).

By structure main work Copernicus consists of 6 books.

The first book speaks of the sphericity of the world and the Earth, and instead of the position of the immobility of the Earth, another axiom is placed: the Earth and other planets rotate around an axis and revolve around the Sun. This concept is argued in detail, and the "opinion of the ancients" is convincingly refuted.

In the second part of the work of Copernicus, information is given on spherical trigonometry and the rules for calculating the apparent positions of stars, planets and the Sun in the firmament.

The third deals with the annual movement of the Earth and the so-called precession of the equinoxes.

The fourth part talked about the Moon, the fifth - about the planets in general, and the sixth - about the reasons for changing the latitudes of the planets. The book also contained a star catalog, an estimate of the size of the Sun and Moon, the distances to them and to the planets (close to true), the theory of eclipses.

The heliocentric system in the Copernican version can be formulated in seven statements:

The orbits and the celestial spheres do not have a common center;

The center of the Earth is not the center of the Universe, but only the center of mass and orbit of the Moon;

All planets move in orbits, the center of which is the Sun, and therefore the Sun is the center of the world;

The distance between the Earth and the Sun is very small compared to the distance between the Earth and the fixed stars;

The daily movement of the Sun is imaginary, and is caused by the effect of the rotation of the Earth, which rotates once every 24 hours around its axis, which always remains parallel to itself;

The Earth (together with the Moon, like other planets), revolves around the Sun, and therefore the movements that the Sun seems to make (the daily movement, as well as the annual movement when the Sun moves along the Zodiac) are nothing more than the effect of the Earth's movement;

This movement of the Earth and other planets explains their location and the specific characteristics of the movement of the planets.

All his statements completely contradicted the geocentric system that prevailed at that time. On the border of the world, Copernicus placed the sphere of fixed stars. Strictly speaking, Copernicus' model was not even heliocentric, since he did not place the Sun at the center of the planetary spheres.

The real movement of the planets (especially Mars) is not circular and uniform. Because of this, the tables of Copernicus (originally more accurate than those of Ptolemy) soon diverged significantly from observations, which puzzled and cooled the enthusiastic supporters of the new system. Accurate heliocentric tables were published later by Johannes Kepler, who discovered the true shape of the orbits of the planets (ellipse), and also recognized and mathematically expressed the unevenness of their movement.

The Copernican model of the world was a colossal step forward and a crushing blow to archaic authorities.

The Catholic Church was initially indulgent about the new astronomy, since observations of the Sun and Moon were useful for the upcoming reform of the calendar. In 1616, the Catholic Church officially banned the adherence and defense of the Copernican theory, as such an interpretation is contrary to Scripture. It was listed in the Roman Index of Prohibited Books as "before correction". The required censorship amendments, which had to be made by the owners of the book for the possibility of further use, were made public in 1620.

Molchanova M. (9th grade "B")

Comparison of geocentric and heliocentric systems

Modern science has long established that all objects in the universe are in motion relative to each other. However, earlier, when astronomers did not have at their disposal the technology to establish this for sure, there were different, sometimes conflicting opinions regarding the movement of celestial bodies. Until the Renaissance, the so-called. geocentric(Geo in Greek means "Earth") a picture of the world, according to which the central position in the Universe is occupied by the motionless Earth, around which the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolve.

Since ancient times, the Earth has been considered the center of the universe. At the same time, the presence of the central axis of the Universe and the asymmetry "top-bottom" were assumed. The earth was kept from falling by a certain support, which in early civilizations was thought of as some kind of gigantic mythical animal or animals (turtles, elephants, whales). The "father of philosophy" Thales of Miletus saw a natural object as this support - the oceans. Anaximander of Miletus suggested that the Universe is centrally symmetrical and does not have any preferred direction. Therefore, the Earth, located in the center of the Cosmos, has no reason to move in any direction, that is, it rests freely in the center of the Universe without support. Anaximander's student Anaximenes did not follow his teacher, believing that the Earth was kept from falling by compressed air. Anaxagoras was of the same opinion. Anaximander considered the Earth to have the shape of a low cylinder with a height three times less than the diameter of the base. Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Leucippus considered the Earth to be flat, like a table top. A fundamentally new step was taken by Pythagoras, who suggested that the Earth has the shape of a ball. In this he was followed not only by the Pythagoreans, but also by Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. This is how the canonical form of the geocentric system arose, which was subsequently actively developed by ancient Greek astronomers: the spherical Earth is in the center of the spherical Universe; the visible daily movement of the celestial bodies is a reflection of the rotation of the Cosmos around the world axis. As for the order of the luminaries, Anaximander considered the stars to be closest to the Earth, followed by the Moon and the Sun. Anaximenes first suggested that the stars are the objects farthest from the Earth, fixed on the outer shell of the Cosmos. Aristotle believed that there is nothing above the sphere of fixed stars, not even space, while the Stoics argued that our world is immersed in infinite empty space; atomists, following Democritus, believed that beyond our world (limited by the sphere of fixed stars) there are other worlds.

The main "creator" of geocentrism is the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy(c. 87-165). In his main work, The Great Construction, also known under the Arabized name Almagest, he outlined the collection of astronomical knowledge of ancient Greece and Babylon.

During the scientific revolution of the XVII-XVIII centuries. it turned out that geocentrism is incompatible with astronomical facts and contradicts physical theory; the heliocentric system of the world was gradually established. The main events that led to the rejection of the geocentric system were the creation of the heliocentric theory of planetary motions by Copernicus, the telescopic discoveries of Galileo, the discovery of Kepler's laws and, most importantly, the creation of classical mechanics and the discovery of the law of universal gravitation by Newton. It was an important step on the way of humankind's comprehension of the true picture of the universe.

heliocentric system of the world - the idea that the Sun is the central celestial body around which the Earth and other planets revolve. Its idea originated in antiquity, but became widespread only from the end of the Renaissance. In this system, the Earth is assumed to revolve around the Sun in one sidereal year and around its axis in one sidereal day. The consequence of the second movement is the apparent rotation of the celestial sphere, the first - the movement of the Sun among the stars along the ecliptic (a large circle of the celestial sphere, along which the apparent annual movement of the Sun occurs). In this case, the Sun is considered to be stationary relative to the stars.

The idea of ​​the Earth's motion arose in the era of antiquity among representatives of the Pythagorean school. In the Middle Ages, the heliocentric system of the world was practically forgotten. At that time, the trend of a literal reading of biblical texts dominated, according to which, among other celestial bodies, it is the Earth that is the main creation of God and therefore is located in the center of the universe, and all others revolve around it. This worldview was supported by a visible picture: directly from the surface of the planet, its movement is imperceptible, while the Sun, Moon, stars, like clouds, “move” across the sky.

At the beginning of the Renaissance, the mobility of the Earth was claimed by Nicholas of Cusa, but his reasoning was purely philosophical, not related to the explanation of specific astronomical phenomena. Leonardo da Vinci spoke rather vaguely on this subject. In 1450, a Latin translation of Archimedes' Psammit appeared, which mentions the heliocentric system of Aristarchus of Samos. Regiomontanus, the leading European astronomer of the Renaissance, was well acquainted with this work. In private correspondence, he noted that "the movement of the stars must undergo tiny changes due to the movement of the Earth." However, in his published writings, Regiomontanus remained geocentric. The motion of the Earth was also mentioned at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1499, this hypothesis was discussed by the Italian professor Francesco Capuano, and he meant not only the rotational, but also the translational motion of the Earth (without specifying the center of motion). In 1501, the Italian humanist Giorgio Valla mentioned the Pythagorean doctrine of the movement of the Earth around the Central Fire and argued that Mercury and Venus revolve around the Sun.

Finally, heliocentrism was revived only in the 16th century, when the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) developed the theory of planetary motion around the Sun based on the Pythagorean principle of uniform circular motions. He published the results of his work in the book “On the rotations of the celestial spheres”, published in 1543. Copernicus believed that the Earth makes a threefold movement: 1. Rotation around the axis with a period of one day, resulting in a daily rotation of the celestial sphere; 2. Movement around the Sun with a period of a year, leading to backward movements of the planets; 3. The so-called declination motion with a period also of approximately one year, leading to the fact that the Earth's axis moves approximately parallel to itself. Subsequently, the ideas of Koprnik were supported and developed by other great scientists Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes. However, on the part of conservative-minded (primarily ecclesiastical) circles, heliocentrism was under serious pressure. Scientists who supported new trends in astronomy were subjected to repression. In particular, Giordano Bruno died at the stake, and the aged Galileo was judged by the church court and saved his life only by pretending to renounce his convictions. Protestant and Orthodox churches were also opponents of heliocentrism.

The clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church criticized the heliocentric system of the world until the beginning of the 20th century. Until 1815, with the approval of the censorship, a school manual was published in which the heliocentric system was called a "false philosophical system" and an "outrageous opinion." Bishop Arseny of the Urals, in a letter dated March 21, 1908, advised teachers, when introducing students to the Copernican system, not to give it "unconditional justice", but to teach it "like some kind of fable." The last work in which the heliocentric system was criticized was the book published in 1914 by the priest Job Nemtsev. He claimed that "the circle of the earth is motionless, but the sun walks," and he justified his assertions with the help of quotations from the Bible.

Even today, however, illiterate people are subject to ancient delusions. According to a survey conducted in 2011 by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), 32% of Russians agree that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Meanwhile, we must remember that the heliocentric system of the world is not the truth in full measure. After all, the Sun is not the center of the universe. It is just one of the many billions of stars in our galaxy, visible from the earth as if in profile (the so-called "Milky Way"), and also moves in its huge orbit. Our galaxy is one of the many galaxies in the Universe, the definition of the boundaries of which is not included in the task of this message.

In preparing this report, the following were used: Eremeeva A.I., Tsitsin F.A. History of astronomy. M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1989; as well as Internet data.