COPERNICUS AND ITALY 2023

Session

The Education between Cracow and Italy: Becoming Copernicus

002

28 Sept 2023, 11:00

Istituto Polacco di Roma, Palazzo Blumensthil (Rome)

1. From Toruń to Bologna—The Education of a Late-Medieval Astronomer

André Goddu (Stonehill College, Easton MA)

28/09/2023, 11:00

Most of the research on the education of Nicolaus Copernicus has been focused understandably on his astronomy and natural philosophy. Burning questions about his own statements and arguments in support of heliocentrism, however, led me to focus more on his education in logic. This paper does discuss Copernicus’s natural philosophy, trigonometry, and astronomy, but its most substantive and...

2. Role and meaning of the 'methodos' in the foundation of Copernican Heliocentrism

Anna De Pace (Università di Milano)

28/09/2023, 11:45

This paper dwells on the methodos that Copernicus presents in the Dedication to Paul III as the demonstrative path leading man to comprehend the true foundations of the universe, the Earth’s motions. These not only accurately account for celestial phenomena without departing from the first principle of the uniformity of circular motions, but reveal the divine creator’s imprint on the...

3. How did Copernicus become a Copernican

Matjaz Vesel (Institute of Philosophy, The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts - Ljubljana)

28/09/2023, 12:15

A close reading of Copernicus’s two key texts, Commentariolus and De revolutionibus, reveals his commitment to the Platonic program of True astronomy, which is to discover the well-proportioned, harmonious universe hidden beyond visible phenomena but accessible through mathematical reasoning. There are several types of evidence of varying weight that support this claim, both textual and...