The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory

Westman, Robert S.

doi:10.1086/351431

Cited by 260 publications

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“…For instance, the heliocentric astronomy was pursued by several notable individuals throughout the 17th century 1 Albeit very interesting, the task of differentiating between subtypes of use is beyond the scope of this paper. 2 While it is certainly true that some individual scientists accept one version of string theory or another, no version of string theory is currently accepted by the physics community at large. From the communal perspective, string theories are merely pursued, not accepted.…”

Section: A Prospective Taxonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Can a Taxonomy of Stances Help Clarify Classical Debates on Scientific Change?

Barseghyan

Shaw

2017

Philosophies

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Abstract:In this paper, we demonstrate how a systematic taxonomy of stances can help elucidate two classic debates of the historical turn-the Lakatos-Feyerabend debate concerning theory rejection and the Feyerabend-Kuhn debate about pluralism during normal science. We contend that Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos were often talking at cross-purposes due to the lack of an agreed upon taxonomy of stances. Specifically, we provide three distinct stances that scientists take towards theories: acceptance of a theory as the best available description of its domain, use of a theory in practical applications, and pursuit (elaboration) of a theory. We argue that in the Lakatos-Feyerabend debate, Lakatos was concerned with acceptance whereas Feyerabend was mainly concerned with pursuit. Additionally, we show how Feyerabend and Kuhn's debate on the role of pluralism/monism in normal science involved a crucial conflation of all three stances. Finally, we outline a few general lessons concerning the process of scientific change.Keywords: Feyerabend; Kuhn; Lakatos; stances; acceptance; use; pursuit PreambleThe historical turn was one of the most exciting periods of 20th century philosophy of science. This excitement was largely generated by Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which prompted intense debates about the foundations of scientific rationality, the importance of the history of science to philosophy of science, and the conception of philosophy of science itself. However, at least some of these debates were never satisfactorily resolved. Two debates which we focus on in this paper are the Lakatos-Feyerabend debate concerning theory rejection and the Feyerabend-Kuhn debate about pluralism during normal science. In this paper, we contend that these debates were not properly resolved partly because Feyerabend, Kuhn, and Lakatos conflated distinct stances that scientists can take towards theories. By providing a taxonomy of stances, we show how these debates could have been resolved.The paper is structured in the following way. In the first section, we provide a motivation for a well-defined taxonomy of stances. In the second section, we distinguish between three stancesacceptance, use, and pursuit. In the third section, we show how this taxonomy would have helped clarify the Feyerabend-Lakatos and Feyerabend-Kuhn debates. We conclude by drawing three important lessons on how science changes through time. Why Do We Need a Taxonomy of Stances?There are two primary motivations for constructing an agreed upon taxonomy of stances. The first is pragmatic: it ensures that we can communicate effectively. Along with this is the more distinctly philosophical motivation: it ensures that we refrain from equivocating distinct stances and amplifying conceptual confusions. While this seems obvious, there has been a great deal of terminological

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Section: A Prospective Taxonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Can a Taxonomy of Stances Help Clarify Classical Debates on Scientific Change?

Barseghyan

Shaw

2017

Philosophies

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“…There was also the mechanical natural philosophy in all its different versions (Beeckman, Descartes, Huygens, and Boyle, among many others). 94 In addition, there were those who worked on the magnetical 91 See Westman ( 1975), p. 165. 92 Fine ( 1982), p. 740.…”

Section: Yes Nomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Laws of Scientific Change

Barseghyan¹

2015

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“…He rejected the assumption that the motion of the Earth should necessarily be detectable from stellar observations. Rather, as he explained in Chapter I, 6 of De revolutionibus, one should enlarge the boundaries of the celestial sphere so much as to make no unequal partition of the celestial sphere result during the annual revolution. One would expect that Reinhold, who was well acquainted with Copernicus's work, would mention Copernicus's criticism, if not in Chapter Four, maybe in his commentaries to Chapter Five of Book One of the Almagest, "Quod terra velut punctum sit ad coelum collata [That the Earth has the ratio of a point to the heavens]" or at least in Chapter Six, on terrestrial immobility.…”

Section: The Earth Does Not Have Any Motion From Place To Placementioning

confidence: 99%

The Post-Copernican Reception of Ptolemy: Erasmus Reinhold's Commented Edition of the Almagest, Book One (Wittenberg, 1549)

Omodeo

Tupikova

2013

Journal for the History of Astronomy

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In the years immediately following the publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg, 1543), the illustrious Renaissance astronomer Erasmus Reinhold of Saalfeld (or Rheinholt Salveldensis, 1511-53) issued a commented Greek-and-Latin edition of the first book of Ptolemy's Almagest under the title Ptolemaei Mathematicae constructionis liber primus. It first appeared in Wittenberg, in 1549, from the academic printer Johannes Lufft, and was reprinted in 1569 under the variant title Regulae artis mathematicae. The 'cosmological' book of the Almagest, presenting famous arguments in favour of terrestrial centrality and immobility, appeared thus in a university centre that played a deciding role in the early dissemination of Copernicus. Reinhold himself was one of the astronomers who most significantly contributed to Copernicus's reputation. 1 The printer Guilliaume Cavellat reissued Reinhold's translation of Ptolemy (without the original text) in Paris several times (1556, 1557 and 1560), probably for the students of the Collège de Cambrai. 2 Erasmus Reinhold has been regarded as "the leading mathematical astronomer of the sixteenth century", second only to Copernicus. 3 He was appointed as a professor of mathematics at Wittenberg in the years in which Melanchthon attracted and forged there an entire generation of Lutheran humanists. As a colleague of Nicholas Copernicus's only pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-74), Reinhold was one of the first readers of De revolutionibus and also contributed to its success thanks to his Prutenicae tabulae (Tübingen, 1551), based on it. These constituted an alternative to the tradition of ephemerides computed from the Alfonsine Tables. 4 Most of the sixteenth-century compilers of new astronomical tables and many ephemerists relied on Reinhold's tables -among them John Field (1520-87) in England, Johannes Stadius (c. 1527-79) in Flanders, Michael Mästlin (1550-1631) and David Origanus (1558-1628) in the German Empire, and Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555-1617) south of the Alps. Thus, Reinhold's tables facilitated a wide dissemination of Copernicus's numerical parameters and, indirectly, of his geometrical models and theories. 5 Still, unlike his colleague, Reinhold kept silent about the heliocentric theory and limited his reception of De revolutionibus to celestial parameters and geometrical modelling. His approach became quite common for mathematicians belonging to the network of Lutheran universities gravitating about Wittenberg and it is currently known as the "Wittenberg interpretation". 6 In the Prutenicae tabulae, Reinhold did not make his 'cosmological' presuppositions explicit, i.e., he did not express his

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The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory

Cited by 260 publications

References 0 publications

How Can a Taxonomy of Stances Help Clarify Classical Debates on Scientific Change?

How Can a Taxonomy of Stances Help Clarify Classical Debates on Scientific Change?

The Laws of Scientific Change

The Post-Copernican Reception of Ptolemy: Erasmus Reinhold's Commented Edition of the Almagest, Book One (Wittenberg, 1549)

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