Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae
The Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae was an influential astronomy book on the heliocentric system published by Johannes Kepler in the period 1617 to 1621.[1]
Content
The book contained in particular the first version in print of his third law of planetary motion. The work was intended as a textbook, and the first part was written by 1615.[2] Divided into seven books, the Epitome covers much of Kepler's earlier thinking, as well as his later positions on physics, metaphysics and archetypes.[3] In Book IV he supported the Copernican cosmology.[4] Book V provided mathematics underpinning Kepler's views.[3] Kepler wrote and published this work in parallel with his Harmonices Mundi (1619), the last Books V to VII appearing in 1621.[5]
The term "inertia" was first introduced in the book.
Upon completion, the book was banned by the Catholic Church as heretical.
Translations
- 1939: Epitome of Copernican astronomy. Books IV and V, The organization of the world and the doctrine ...; trans. by Charles Glenn Wallis. Annapolis: St John's Bookstore
- --do.--reissued with Ptolemy's Almagest. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, [1955, c1952]
- 1995: Epitome of Copernican astronomy; & Harmonies of the world; translated by Charles Glenn Wallis. Amherst: Prometheus Books
Notes
- ^ The first volume (books I–III) was printed in 1617, the second (book IV) in 1620, and the third (books V–VII) in 1621.
- ^ Max Caspar (10 October 2012). Kepler. Courier Dover Publications. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-486-15175-5.
- ^ a b Rhonda Martens (29 October 2000). Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy. Princeton University Press. p. 142. ISBN 0-691-05069-4.
- ^ Roy Porter; Katharine Park; Lorraine Daston (3 July 2006). The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 3, Early Modern Science. Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-521-57244-6.
- ^ J. R. Mulryne (1 January 2004). Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-7546-3873-5.
