Big Bang. Simon Singh
model were reprinted a hundred times in Germany alone during the same period.
However, Osiander’s cowardly and conciliatory preface to De revolutionibus was only partly to blame for its lack of impact. Another factor was Copernicus’s dreadful writing style, which resulted in four hundred pages of dense, complex text. Worse still, this was his first book on astronomy, and the name Copernicus was not well known in European scholarly circles. This would not have been disastrous, except that Copernicus was now dead and could not promote his own work. The situation could possibly have been rescued by Rheticus, who might have championed De revolutionibus, but he had been snubbed and no longer wished to be associated with the Copernican system.
Moreover, just like Aristarchus’ original incarnation of the Sun-centred model, De revolutionibus was dismissed because the Copernican system was less accurate than Ptolemy’s Earth-centred model when it came to predicting future positions of the planets: in this respect the basically correct model was no match for its fundamentally flawed rival. There are two reasons for this strange state of affairs. First, Copernicus’s model was missing one vital ingredient, without which its predictions could never be sufficiently accurate to gain its acceptance. Second, Ptolemy’s model had achieved its degree of accuracy by tinkering with all the epicycles, deferents, equants and eccentrics, and almost any flawed model can be rescued if such fiddle-factors are introduced.
And, of course, the Copernican model was still plagued with all the problems that had led to the abandonment of Aristarchus’ Sun-centred model (see Table 2, pp. 34—5). In fact, the only attribute of the Sun-centred model that made it clearly better than the Earth-centred model was still its simplicity. Although Copernicus did toy with epicycles, his model essentially employed a simple circular orbit for each planet, whereas Ptolemy’s model was inordinately complex, with its finely tuned epicycles, deferents, equants and eccentrics for each and every planet.
Fortunately for Copernicus, simplicity is a prized asset in science, as had been pointed out by William of Occam, a fourteenth-century English Franciscan theologian who became famous during his lifetime for arguing that religious orders should not own property or wealth. He propounded his views with such fervour that he was run out of Oxford University and had to move to Avignon in the south of France, from where he accused Pope John XII of heresy. Not surprisingly, he was excommunicated. After succumbing to the Black Death in 1349, Occam became famous posthumously for his legacy to science, known as Occam’s razor, which holds that if there are two competing theories or explanations, then, all other things being equal, the simpler one is more likely to be correct. Occam put it thus: pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (‘plurality should not be posited without necessity’).
Imagine, for instance, that after a stormy night you come across two fallen trees in the middle of a field, and there is no obvious sign of what caused them to fall. The simple hypothesis would be that the trees were blown over by the storm. A more complicated hypothesis might be that two meteorites simultaneously arrived from outer space, each ricocheting off one tree, felling the trees in the process, and then the meteorites collided head on with each other and vaporised, thereby accounting for the lack of any material evidence. Applying Occam’s razor, you decide that the storm, rather than the twin meteorites, is the more likely explanation because it is the simpler one. Occam’s razor does not guarantee the right answer, but it does usually point us towards the correct one. Doctors often rely on Occam’s razor when diagnosing an illness, and medical students are advised: ‘When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.’ On the other hand, conspiracy theorists despise Occam’s razor, often rejecting a simple explanation in favour of a more convoluted and intriguing line of reasoning.
Occam’s razor favoured the Copernican model (one circle per planet) over the Ptolemaic model (one epicycle, deferent, equant and eccentric per planet), but Occam’s razor is only decisive if two theories are equally successful, and in the sixteenth century the Ptolemaic model was clearly stronger in several ways; most notably, it made more accurate predictions of planetary positions. So the simplicity of the Sun-centred model was considered irrelevant.
And for many people the Sun-centred model was still too radical even to be contemplated, so much so that Copernicus’s work may have resulted in a new meaning for an old word. One etymological theory claims that the word ‘revolutionary’, referring to an idea that is completely counter to conventional wisdom, was inspired by the title of Copernicus’s book, ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’. And as well as revolutionary, the Sun-centred model of the universe also seemed completely impossible. This is why the word köpperneksch, based on the German form of Copernicus, has come to be used in northern Bavaria to describe an unbelievable or illogical proposition.
All in all, the Sun-centred model of the universe was an idea ahead of its time, too revolutionary, too unbelievable and still too inaccurate to win any widespread support. De revolutionibus sat on a few bookshelves, in a few studies, and was read by just a few astronomers. The idea of a Sun-centred universe had first been suggested by Aristarchus in the fifth century BC, but it was ignored; now it had been reinvented by Copernicus, and it was being ignored again. The model would go into hibernation, waiting for somebody to resuscitate it, examine it, refine it and find the missing ingredient that would prove to the rest of the world that the Copernican model of the universe was the true picture of reality. Indeed, it would be left to the next generation of astronomers to find the evidence that would show that Ptolemy was wrong and that Aristarchus and Copernicus were right.
Castle of the Heavens
Born into the Danish nobility in 1546, Tycho Brahe would earn lasting fame among astronomers for two particular reasons. First, in 1566, Tycho became embroiled in a disagreement with his cousin Manderup Parsberg, possibly because Parsberg had insulted and mocked Tycho over a recent astrological prediction that had fallen flat. Tycho had foretold the death of Suleiman the Great, and even embedded his prophecy within a Latin poem, apparently unaware that the Ottoman leader had already been dead for six months. The dispute culminated in an infamous duel. During the sword fight, a slash from Parsberg cut Tycho’s forehead and hacked through the bridge of his nose. An inch deeper and Tycho would have died. Thereafter he glued into place a false metal nose, so cleverly composed of a gold-silver–copper alloy that it blended in with his skin tone.
The second and more important reason for Tycho’s fame was that he took observational astronomy to an entirely new level of accuracy. He earned such a high reputation that King Frederick II of Denmark gave him the island of Hven, 10 km off the Danish coast, and paid for him to build an observatory there. Uraniborg (Castle of the Heavens) would grow over the years into a vast ornate citadel that consumed more than 5% of Denmark’s gross national product, an all-time world record for research centre funding.
Uraniborg housed a library, a paper mill, a printing press, an alchemist’s laboratory, a furnace and a prison for unruly servants. The observation turrets contained giant instruments, such as sextants, quadrants and armillary spheres (all naked-eye instruments, as astronomers had not yet learned to exploit the potential of lenses). There were four sets of every instrument for simultaneous and independent measurements, thereby minimising errors in assessing the angular positions of stars and planets. Tycho’s observations were generally accurate to 1/30°, five times better than the best previous measurements. Perhaps Tycho’s measurements were aided by his ability to remove his nose and align his eye more perfectly.
Figure 11 Uraniborg, on the island of Hven, the best funded and most hedonistic astronomical observatory in history.
Tycho’s reputation was such that a stream of VIPs visited his observatory. As well as being interested in his research, these visitors were also attracted by Uraniborg’s wild parties, which were famous all over Europe. Tycho provided alcohol in excess and entertainment in the shape of mechanical statues and a story-telling dwarf called Jepp, who was said to be a gifted clairvoyant. To add to the spectacle, Tycho’s pet elk was allowed to freely wander the castle, but tragically it died after stumbling down a staircase after drinking too much alcohol. Uraniborg