| Chapter 1: | The New Astronomy |
who have affirmed that [it] has the form of a globe.” In return, Copernicus affirms that scholars “need not be surprised if people like [Lactantius] laugh at us.” Copernicus knew that his mode of inquiry was foreign to the world, and in hindsight his methodology is recognized as the start of the process of replacing the old organon of the Old Philosophy with the New Organon of the New Philosophy.
The Hybrid Model
In 1572 a Danish nobleman named Tycho Brahe observed a New Star that had burst forth upon the Firmament. The phenomenon was a source of consternation to sundry potentates, and in Denmark, King Frederick II
(1534–1588) summoned Tycho (as he is most often called) to apply his astrological expertise to foretell its implications for national security (Christianson 18), as sudden celestial apparitions were routinely regarded as omens of ill fortune. Tycho's work on the New Star so impressed Frederick that in 1576, he ceded the small island of Hven (also known as Ven or Hveen) to Tycho so that he might build an astronomical observatory there. The island lies between modern Denmark and Sweden in the Oresund Sound, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south-southeast of Helsingor. In 1580 Tycho named his completed abode Uraniborg (the Castle of the Heavens), and soon thereafter excavations began for Stjerneborg (the Castle of the Stars). From Hven on the north-northwest horizon, Tycho could see Helsingor where Frederick was building Kronborg Castle, soon to be immortalized in Shakespeare's Hamlet as Elsinore Castle.
Tycho objected to the Copernican model on several grounds, not the least being the seeming ponderousness and inertia of the Earth, which he believed argued against its having any motion. On top of that, Tycho was a dedicated observer who made accurate positional measurements of the stars, but he could not detect a stellar parallax for any of them and thus could find no direct evidence to suggest that the Earth moved. His inability to detect a stellar parallax angle to the limit of his observing accuracy presented the same dilemma to him as it did to Ptolemy and Copernicus, namely that either the Earth was stationary, or if it did move, the stars