Revolution copernician

One indicates under the expression revolution copernician the transformation of the scientific methods and the philosophical ideas which accompanied the change by Représentation of the Univers of 16th at the 18th century, making pass the social representations accompanying the mental representations of the universe, of a geocentric model , according to Ptolémée (2nd century, already adopted to the IV E by the majority of the Greek ), with the heliocentric model defended by Nicolas Copernic, improved by Johannes Kepler, Galileo, and Isaac Newton.

The revolution copernician, with the clean direction, consisted in explaining the world, and the objects which compose it, by the Gravitation, called universal Loi of the gravitation because of its character considered as general at the time.

Situation former to the Revolution copernician

For the representation of the world former to the 12th century in Occident, to consult:

Between, the representation of the world which is set up in occident is a géocentrée representation, whose bases are the following:

Only Aristarque de Samos suggested that the Earth turned around the Sun.

After the Great invasions, the occident returned to a representation of the Earth punt. It was necessary to await the Croisade S and the exchanges with the Civilization arabo-Moslem woman so that aware is become that the Earth was spherical. However, at the 13th century, only the most cultivated sections population in occident started to become aware of the spherical shape of the Earth. Indeed Albert Large the and Roger Bacon had introduced this knowledge into the Université S.

After the War One hundred Year old, the people least educated in the Western company were not thus yet aware of the theoretical possibilities of " circumnavigation" what involved the spherical shape of the Earth. This information was diffused gradually, by works such as the Livre of the wonders of the world of Jean de Mandeville (not to be devisement confused with the devisement a world of Marco Polo). Jean de Mandeville was a Explorateur originating in Liege. He was described sometimes of impostor or inveterate liar of genious. Always it is that, after a voyage 34 years in Far East (1322 - 1356), which was considerable for the time, it compiled information of its voyage and those of missionaries franciscains and Dominicain S. the book of the wonders of the world, manuscript written in three versions, then translated into 250 specimens in ten vernacular languages, must have an important repercussion in the company. One is about sure that it influenced the young person Christophe Colomb (circumnavigation…).

Other works presented a cosmographic representation géocentrée, such as the Imago mundi of Pierre d' Ailly. The Imago mundi was written in 1410, and was printed for the first time in 1478). Christophe Colomb had a specimen of it.

The Great discoveries, and mainly the voyages of Vasco de Gama, Christophe Colomb towards the west, and of Magellan, the consecutive discovery of new grounds located between the Europe and the Asia as well as a better knowledge by Europeans of the territories of Far East, had a great repercussion in Europe, which made become aware of the rotundity of the Earth to all the sections of the population.

It is necessary also to have at the head that with, one did not make a large difference between the Astrologie, the Astronomie, the geography, the Cosmologie, cosmography, etc

The equivalent collective awakening on the respective movements of the Earth and the Sun (heliocentrism) will take place only later.

It is necessary to distinguish these two representations well: spherical form (geocentrism)/heliocentrism, even if from a chronological point of view and Sociological, there were coverings between the two cosmological representations.

Chronology of the Revolution copernician

  • Aristarque de Samos (310 - 230 front J. - C.), posterior in Aristote, is the first scientist in the ancient Greece to propose a model Héliocentrique. Its theory is very badly accepted at that time.

  • Nicolas de Cues is one of the first astronomers to propose a representation which approaches the heliocentrism.

  • Regiomontanus is interested in the theories of Nicolas de Cues, but adopts finally the theory of the geocentrism,

  • 1512 : Nicolas Copernic writes a court treated De Hypothesibus Motuum Coelestium with Contitutis Commentariolus , which it finishes towards 1515, but which will not be published of alive sound. In this work, which it dedicates to the Pape, Copernic estimates that the Earth described a circular trajectory around the Sun. A sentence illustrates the extent of the fault well (that Freud will describe according to the expression Brisures of the narcissistic complex) that the work introduced into the geocentric representation of the universe: “All the apparent movements that one notes with the firmament are due to the firmament and earthmovings not” .

  • 1530 - 1543: Nicolas Copernic writes a second treaty, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium ( Of the revolutions of the celestial spheres ), completed towards 1530. This work will be published, by a printer Lutheran of Nuremberg, only on May 24th 1543, little time before the death of Copernic.

  • 1600 : Giordano Bruno is condemned to roughing-hew more on its theological positions judged heretics and its attacks repeated against dogmatism, that because it had been based on Copernic to develop his philosophical system of an infinite universe populated of identical worlds

  • 1604 : when the supernovas SN 1604 in the Milky Way emerges, the “new star” completes to throw the disorder in the spirits in connection with the dogma of the immutability of the sky. The more so as the experimental measurements made on “new star” bring many astronomers (of which Kepler and Galileo) to more and more openly reject the old system of fixed stars.

  • 1608 : Invention of the Glasses of approach, in Holland about 1608 (enlargement 3 times); the attribution of this invention is difficult to establish, because several people sought to obtain the patent from it: the Dutch optician Hans Lippershey, Jacques Metius, Sacharias Jansen…

  • 1609 : Galileo improves the telescope (enlargement 6 times), it is the first to use it like Telescope for the observation of celestial objects; it observes mountains on the the Moon, the satellite S of Jupiter, the sunspots,…

  • 1609 : Johannes Kepler formula the two first Laws of Kepler on the movement of the Planet S; Kepler thinks that the Trajectoire S described by planets are elliptic S, and not circular, as thought it Copernic.

  • 1610 : Kepler takes note of discovered of four satellite S around Jupiter thanks to the Observation S of Galileo with his Telescope and writes a letter of support published under the title of Dissertio cum Nuncio Sidero ( Conversation with the messenger of the stars ), then after to have observed itself these satellite S, it publishes its observations in Narratio de Observatis Quatuor Jovis Satellibus .

  • 1615 : in a letter with Christine of Lorraine, Galileo gives a report on his interrogations on the observations which it carried out, compared to the cosmological passages of the Bible, like with some passages of the books of Aristote.

  • 1616 : the edict anticopernician of 1616 of the cardinal Bellarmin admonishes Galileo, condemns like heresy the system of Copernic as a philosophical system, but movement of the Ground in a context “  does not prohibit to discuss; purely mathématique  ”.

  • 1618 : Johannes Kepler formulates the third law of Kepler on the movement of planets.

  • 1623 : The father Marine Mersenne, friend very close to Descartes, publishes the Use of the reason and on the Genesis .

  • 1624 : Galileo is received in April goes down for hearing of it by the pope Urbain VIII, which encourages it to take again in writing the analysis and the comparison between more the astronomical great systems, the model copernician also who can be taken into account, provided that it is from the purely mathematical point of view .

  • 1632 : Galileo publishes Dialogo will sopra I due massimi sistemi LED mondo , the dialog on the two great systems of the world , work openly procopernician, in whom it puts in scene three characters, including one Aristotélicien, Simplicio, that it ridicules.

  • 1632 : beginning of the lawsuit of Galileo.

  • June 22nd 1633: Galileo is condemned by the Inquisition for its work dialogo will sopra I due massimi sistemi LED mondo ; Urbain VIII immediately commutes his sorrow to house arrest.

  • November 1633: Descartes learns the judgment from Galileo.

  • 1634 : Descartes receives from his/her friend Beeckman the work Dialog on the two great systems of the world which was worth in Galileo his judgment; Descartes suspends the publication of its own work, the Traité world and light, and prefers to give a philosophical orientation to its career.

  • 1640 - 1641: Descartes requires of his/her friend Marin Mersenne to collect the opinions of the best spirits of the time on its project of book Méditations on philosophy first . Marin Mersenne writes the Seconds objections text ; Hobbes writes the Third Objections, which are an invaluable testimony for the study of its Philosophie first. The objections of Hobbes are transmitted to Descartes in January 1641.

  • 1641 : Descartes does not take account of the objections of Hobbes; it publishes the Méditations metaphysics (1641), the Principles of philosophy (1644), research of the truth by the natural lights ;

  • 1656 : Blaise Pascal writes a series of letters, Provincial the , to defend violently his friend Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, and critical the Casuistique, method introduced into teaching by some Jésuite S at the beginning of the 17th century.

  • 1659 : John Locke reads Descartes and starts to be interested in the Philosophie.

  • 1686 : Robert Boyle written has Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion off Natural .

  • 1687 : Newton formula the theory of the gravitation, which confirms the theses of Galileo.

  • 1690 : John Locke publishes the Essai on the human understanding , first treaty on the modern study of the conscience, left base of the Philosophie of the spirit.

  • 1741 : in front of the optical proof of the Orbital Trajectory of the Earth, the Pape Benoît XIV gives the Imprimatur to the works of Galileo,

  • 1757 : the pope Benoît XIV raises the index on the works relating to the heliocentrism,

  • 1781 : Kant publishes the Critique pure reason , called in question of the bases of the Métaphysique.

The victory of the theses of Galileo started to intervene with the success of the Newtonian theory. The final victory was obtained by the optical proof of the orbital trajectory of the Earth and measurements of liftings of index of first half of the 18th century.

Philosophical consequences

Questioning on the scholastic and the aristotelism

The controversy ptolemeo-copernician initially shook, then caused the abandonment of certain theories supported by the Scolastique. The school scholastic was based on the description of the physical universe contained in certain passages of some books of Aristote, in particular the Physique: according to these theories, the world was an ordered assembly of objects specific and subjected to their clean Nature: lunar of the light objects and sublunary world of the heavy objects , etc

Initially, the scientific authorities, at that time related to the Catholic church, tried to reconcile the system of Ptolémée and the heliocentric system, by the equivalence of the assumptions, but that is not enough.

In the organization of the lesson of the Scholastic, the Cosmologie formed integral part of the Métaphysique, with the Théologie. This lesson was most prestigious at the university. The new cosmological theories rested on the Expérimentation, in particular the observation with telescopes. The experimentation was precisely one of the weak links of the school scholastic. One sees the franciscain Roger Bacon indeed criticizing the scholastic on these aspects as of the 13th century. One should not underestimate for as much the philosophy scholastic, which included/understood tested methods, so much in Logique, which in ethical, and even in metaphysics.

In fact, the men of the 17th century seem not to have made the distinction between the Philosophie of Aristote based on an observation of the scientific Nature, and its treaties (physics,…). Aristote was a philosopher before being a scientist.

The Cartesian project in reaction to the lawsuit of Galileo

In this context, the Cartesian project of a universal science is conceived like a reaction against the Scolastique, and the " Aristotélicien s" : after having learned in November 1633 the result from the lawsuit of Galileo, Descartes accepted from his/her friend Beeckman the work of Galileo, the Dialog on the two great systems of the world , in 1634, that is to say one year after the judgment of Galileo.

Descartes renonça with the publication of its own work, the Treated world and light (1634), which was published only in 1664. It inaugurated its philosophical career with the Discourse on Method (1637). In the Meditations on philosophy first (1641), Descartes described a form of doubt, very centered on the prone , sometimes qualified the hyperbolic one. Descartes sought with refonder philosophy on a principle first, the Cogito, called to replace the Main cause (Aristote). Descartes wrote also the Principles of philosophy (1644) and research of the truth by the natural lights .

The conversion of Pascal to the theses Jansenists

The conversion of Blaise Pascal, who ends to his adhesion with the theses Jansenists (Jean Duvergier de Hauranne abbot of Saint-Cyran, Antoine Arnauld), is included/understood as for it at the same time like a critic of the Laxisme of the ecclesiastical authorities, particularly of the methods casuistries introduced by the Jesuits at the beginning of the 17th century, and a reaction compared to the Cartesian Rationalisme.

Jean Lacouture ( Jesuits ) note:

“In 1646, it (Blaise Pascal) become acquainted with disciples of Saint-Cyran who make him discover that to go on the traces of Copernic and Galileo to release the physique of the dead load of Aristote and the scholastic is only the step of a vain reason, implied in the stain of very whole humanity, and that all this genius which bubbles in him only results it in diverting it of a terrible revelation and rédemptrice. What means knowledge which does not throw the man with the foot of the Cross?
Consequently, and forever, Blaise Pascal - without giving up for as much its scientific work - will live haunted by the universal corruption of the human nature led invincibly to the evil. In the middle of this ocean of stains, it feels invited to thank you draw up in a combat without truce nor, with the feeling, writing François Mauriac, of living closest to leprous unconscious of their leprosy and dedicated to observe with as much care than gravity air corruption nature. ”

Blaise Pascal criticized the casuistry and his holding Jesuits of the Sorbonne (faithful to the scholastic), in a particularly virulent way in Provincial the (1656) (especially letters IV and V). These letters were published in more than one ten thousands of specimens. They had a considerable impact at the time and still during the Lumières.

See also: Provincial the

Since the victory of the Jesuits, the official position of the Catholic church is to deplore the blindness of Pascal who did not realize that, in such writings, it gave weapons to the adversaries of the Catholicisme. There will be of it an example in Encyclopedia Catholica:

“That Pascal thought of doing a useful work, it is all its life which testifies some, as well as its declarations with its bed of death. Its bona fide cannot seriously be questioned, but some of its methods are more debatable. If it forever seriously faded quotations of the casuists whom he made, as one sometimes wrongfully showed to have made it, he arranges them a little and in a not very sincere way; he simplifies with the excess of the complicated questions and, in its way of presenting the solutions of the casuists, he sometimes allows himself to mix his own interpretation. But the most serious reproach that one can address to him is to have wrongfully made wrong to the Society of Jesus, by attacking it exclusively and allotting a desire to lower to him the Christian ideal and to mitigate the code of morals in the interest of its policy; it by discredited there the casuistry itself while refusing to even recognize its legitimacy, in certain cases, its need, so that they are not only the Jesuits, but the religion which suffered in this conflict, even if he contributed to accelerate the judgment by the Church of certain theories laxists. Thus, without it to want nor to even realize it, Pascal provided weapons as well to the incroyants and the adversaries of the Church as to the partisans of an independent morals.

The impact will be serious on the image of the Jesuits and the Catholic church. Marc Fumaroli, quoted by Jean Lacouture (Jesuit) note:

“modernity Jesuit, the France proof, appeared at the same time shocking and obsolete, and fidelity Jesuit in Aristote, with Cicéron, holy Thomas, seemed impure and ambiguity. Well quils was in fact, by their encyclopedism, the holding last of the alive Antiquité, the Jesuits passed for traitors to Antiquity. Although they were by their adaptation to realities of the world of the Renaissance, the first historians, sociologists and ethnologists of Catholicism, they were held for its worst reactionaries…”

Spinoza and intuition

Spinoza also approached metaphysics, some time after Descartes, while bringing more importance to the Intuition that this last. Bergson was inspired on this point by Spinoza at the 20th century.

Stamping from the science of the tradition aristotelician

The hesitations of the scientists, who at that time were related to the Catholic church, the errors of Interprétation of certain theologists (Enquiry) of the 17th century, in particular at the time of the lawsuit of Galileo (1633), the confirmation of the heliocentric theses with Newton and the evidence optical of the orbital trajectory of the Earth, had as a consequence which science freed from the tradition aristotelician.

The image of the Church tarnished during the Lights

The too literal reading undoubtedly of the texts at the 17th century, as well of the Bible as of Aristote, and the various quarrels on this subject (conflicts between Jesuit S and Jansenist S), involved a very detrimental polemic for the image of the Catholic church and the Christianisme in general, which feels still today.

There was not, at the 18th century, of Théologien which was with the height of this stake, whereas the translation of the Bible, with modifications Syntaxique S and Grammaticale S (see Logique Port-Royal) probably produced an important effect on the Philosophe S of the Lumières.

The liftings of index of first half of the 18th century (1741, 1757) intervened to too late restore the image of the Scolastique, which was described as obscurantist by certain philosophers of the Lights.

Kant and the survival of metaphysics

The design of metaphysics changed thus gradually. Kant wrote its critical pure reason , mainly to save the metaphysics, which was seriously threatened by the revolution copernician. Kant adjusted the bases and the Concepts of metaphysics, in order to renew ethics and the Droit.

Influence in literature

The style of the translation of the Bible known as of Port-Royal by the Jansenist S, carried out with the participation of Blaise Pascal, influenced the literary creation of French great writers, such as Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud.

Posterity

Change of configuration of the knowledge

The philosopher Michel Foucault, in the words and the things , identifies a change in the configuration of the knowledge (épistémè), which occurred according to him enters the middle of the 17th century (time of Descartes and Pascal) and 1825 approximately.

Rejection of the Metaphysical by the Ideology S

After this period of setting in doubt of the Metaphysical , the period which followed the Révolution and the Empire saw sometimes frankly the emergence of philosophies materialists, ideological.

In the Years 1820, at the 19th century, and in first half of the 20th century developed the doctrines of the Saint-simonisme, of the name of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon (in Saint-Simon summary, not to confuse with the duke of Saint-Simon, celebrates it memorialist Louis XIV).

The count of Saint-Simon claimed to replace God by the universal law of the gravitation. In its letter of an inhabitant of Geneva to his contemporaries (1803), it referred to Isaac Newton, like the Symbole of the ideal scientist, raising a kind of worship to the scientists.

These doctrines were a certain success, in the form of the Philosophie of the networks, according to Pierre Musso.

See also: Claude Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon

The doctrines of Saint-Simon inspired a certain number of Idéologie S materialists, like the Positivisme (Auguste Count), the Marxisme,…

Auguste Count spoke about a Loi of the three states, making pass the Humanité of the theological age, at the age Métaphysique, then at the positive age . It is interesting to bring this law closer to the three states of the chronological terminals indicated by Michel Foucault:

  • the middle of the 17th century corresponds to the Méditations metaphysics (or Méditations on philosophy first ) of Descartes (1641),
  • the year 1825 corresponds to dead of Saint-Simon.

See also: Auguste Count

Today

Beyond the model copernician

The scientific discoveries of second half of the 19th century, and especially of the 20th century showed that the Gravitation is not the only force of the universe. One indeed finds the electromagnetism, the weak Interaction, and the strong Interaction. The discoveries of relativity (general and restricted), as well as the Quantum physics, resulted in re-examining the claim according to which the universe is prédictible according to " lois" scientists. The concept of chance was reintroduced, for example the Game theory.

Thus, today, the heliocentric model of the universe appears insufficient: it does not make it possible to explain the deviation of the Périhélie of Mercure, the curve of the luminous rays in the vicinity of the Celestial body S of strong Masse, the black holes, the Pulsar S, the Quasar S, etc

Remainder, the Sun is not fixed, as one believed it at the time of Galileo: it turns around the center of the Milky Way, which is composed of a cloud of Hydroxyde (OH), from which the isotopic composition is a little different from that besides that we know on our planet. These new cosmological theories could be obtained thanks to the Radioastronomie, with new types of instruments, the Radiotélescope S, like that of Nançay.

Uses of the expression apart from the astronomical field

The expression revolution copernician has really direction only employed in its historical context. It however became of everyday usage to employ it in a metaphorical way in contemporary contexts, in particular to justify changes of prospect in a given discipline, in particular in the scientific discipline. Thus, in Neither God, nor gene , Jean-Jacques Kupiec and Pierre Sonigo support that the Génétique carried out its revolution copernician yet, and is still captive of the concept aristotelician of Espèce.

In philosophy, the most famous use of the expression is that of Kant, which qualifies “revolution copernician” the new theory of knowledge that he proposes: by considering that knowledge does not result from a simple passive observation of the world but of an act of our spirit (which works out concepts, carries out experiments), it estimates to have placed the prone to the center of knowledge and not the object like its predecessors. See the article on Emmanuel Kant.

Michel Foucault speaks, for our time, of a new change of design of the world. It qualifies the designs of the world related to the times of the History of épistémè. According to him, we enter the Hypermodernité.

Renewal of the biblical studies

One can distinguish two causes with the controversy ptolemeo-copernician:

Philosophy scholastic appeared too much “speculative” (it is the term employed by Descartes in the Discourse on Method ) to the scientists of the time, because it consisted only of dialogs, but did not take into account the results of the scientific experiments.

To this reason is added some one second on the Traduction S of the texts of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, as lets it think the letter of Galileo of Christine of Lorraine. The successive translations of the Hebrew text in Greek (Seventy), then in Latin (Vulgate) probably involved deformations of direction on some key passages for interpretation by scientists. The method of interpretation (Hermeneutics) of the Scriptures, namely the doctrines of the Four directions of the Writing, defined by Origène (3rd century) and Jean Cassien (5th century) was taken at fault. This method was at the base of the readings in the monasteries (Lectio divina), and was closely related to theology Scolastique.

Complements of research are necessary on the context of the lawsuit to confirm the reasons of the judgment and its impact (see article Galileo).

It would be thus about a problem of Exégèse rather than of a problem of Herméneutique.

The Protesting S looked further into the study of the Old Testament at the 19th century.

Starting from Leon XIII, then with Pie XII, the Catholic church introduced instructions for the biblical studies: in Hermeneutics (interpretation of the texts) like in Interpretation (study of the old texts).

The pope Pie XII was not particularly moved by the theory by the Big bang, to which it reacted by this expression: FIAT lux!

The modern Pape S recognized the exceptional talents of Galileo and the errors made by some Théologien S at the 17th century. The pope Jean-Paul II renewed this recognition of the errors made by certain theologists of the 17th century following the work undertaken by a commission of study between 1981 and 1992

See also: Purification of the memory

It does not remain about it less than the philosophy of Aristote was almost excluded from the philosophical lesson in France until the Second world war, and than one hardly referred there still today in the programs of philosophy.

Quotation

“Pay to me only your attention; I will lead you further you do not think. Indeed, it is of this universal doubt that, like fixed and immutable point, I solved to derive knowledge from God, yourself, and all that the world contains. ”

Descartes, Research of the truth by the natural lights .

See too

scientific Aspects

philosophical Aspects

historical Aspects

religious Aspects

media Aspects

  • Galileo or the love of god

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