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...
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...
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...
