The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Regiomontanus' work attracted so much attention that he was invited to Rome to become the Papal Astronomer and to take up the practical work of correcting the Calendar. Unfortunately he died not long after his arrival in Rome, though not before he had been chosen as Bishop of Regensberg (Ratisbon) as a tribute to his scholarship and his piety. He thus became a successor of Albertus Magnus (in the bishopric), who had been in his time one of the profoundest of scholars and greatest of scientists. The tradition of appreciation of scholarship and original research had evidently been maintained for the three centuries that separate the two bishop scientists.

A distinguished scientific student born at Nuremberg the same year as Regiomontanus was Martin Behem or Behaim, the well-known navigator and cartographer, who on his return to Nuremberg in 1493 made the famous terrestrial globe which was meant to illustrate for his townsmen the present state of geography as the Spaniards and Portuguese had been remaking it. Behem's work is a striking testimony to the excellence of geographic knowledge at this time, and only for the preservation of this globe we could scarcely have believed in the modern time how correct were the notions of the scholars of the period with regard to the older continent at least.

One of the great physical scientists of this time is Toscanelli, the physician, mathematician, astronomer and cosmographer, over whose connection with Columbus such a controversy has raged in recent years. He and Cardinal Cusanus were fellow students at the University of Padua, where Toscanelli's course consisted of mathematics, philosophy and medicine. He settled down as a practising physician in Florence and took up [{349}] scientific studies of many kinds which brought him into connection not only with the students of science, but with the scholars and artists of the time. Brunelleschi and he were intimate friends, but he was well known outside of Italy, and Regiomontanus often consulted him. His services to astronomy consist in the painstaking and exact observations on the orbit of the comets of 1433, 1449-50 and especially of Halley's comet on its appearance in 1456 and of the comets of May, 1457, June, July and August of the same year. These show a most accurate power of astronomical observation and profound mathematical knowledge for that time. His famous chart indicated just how a navigator might reach the coast of India by sailing westward, and Columbus is said to have carried a copy of this chart with him on his first voyage. Whether this is true or not, there is no doubt of Toscanelli's place in the history of science because of original work in astronomy, geodesy and geography.

The most important protagonist of physical science during Columbus' Century, however, was undoubtedly Copernicus. Columbus gave the men of his time a new world, but Copernicus gave them a new creation. When early in the sixteenth century he published a preliminary sketch of his theory, one of his ecclesiastical friends remarked to him that he was giving his generation a new universe. There has probably never been a theory advanced which has changed men's modes of thinking with regard to the world they live in and their relation to it as the Copernican hypothesis has done, though it must not be forgotten that there are some as yet insuperable difficulties which keep it still in the class of scientific hypotheses.

The earth had up to this time been universally thought of as the centre of the universe, much more important than any of the other bodies, sun, moon or stars, and all the others were thought to move around it. Their apparent movement was due to the rotation of the earth, which was quite unrecognized. The immense distances of space were entirely undreamt of. In the new order of thinking the earth became a minor planet of small size in our solar system which was of inconspicuous magnitude when compared to the totality of the other bodies of the universe. The acceptance of the new theory sank man in his own estimation very considerably. The change of point of view of [{350}] the meaning of the universe necessitated by the Copernican theory was ever so much greater than that demanded by evolution in our time.

It took two centuries for men to adjust their thinking to these new ideas. Francis Bacon, a full century after Copernicus' time, declared emphatically that the Copernican theory did not explain the known facts of astronomy as well as the Ptolemaic theory. In Bacon's time Galileo was the subject of persecution and the reason for the persecution was that he was advancing a doctrine which no other great astronomer of his time accepted, and advancing it for reasons which have not held in the after-time. The Copernican theory came eventually to be accepted for quite different reasons from those advanced by Galileo.

How Copernicus succeeded in coming to this magnificent generalization is indeed hard to understand. It is easier to get some notion of it, however, when his achievement is taken in connection with what was being done all around him at this time. Living in a century when great men were accomplishing triumphs in painting, sculpture, architecture that have been the wonder of the world ever since, and when geography was being revolutionized, and nearly every science awakened, it is not surprising that he should have reached a height of mathematical and astronomical expression beyond any that men had ever conceived before and that he should have surpassed many of the generations to come after him, by the clearness of his intuition of the astronomical mystery of the universe.

Copernicus had not made many observations nor were such observations as had been made by him worked out with that painstaking accuracy which might be thought necessary to reach a great new conception of the universe. He had the genius to see from even the few and imperfect data that he had at hand what the true explanation of the diverse phenomena of the heavens was. He had no demonstrations to advance. He argued merely from analogy. Even Galileo, a century later, admitted to Cardinal Bellarmine that he had no strict demonstration of his views to offer, but that "the system seems to be true." While the feeling of many scientists in the modern time is that great discoveries come from patient [{351}] accumulation of accurate observations in large numbers, the history of science shows that almost invariably the epochal steps in progress have come from men who were comparatively young as a rule and who were not overloaded with the information of their time. The great artists of the Renaissance could probably have given no better reasons for their artistic conceptions than Copernicus for his stroke of genius, but they were all working at a time when somehow men were capable as they never have been since of these far-reaching intellectual achievements.

Copernicus was a Pole who, like other students of his time, gladly welcomed the opportunity to go down to Italy for post-graduate work, studied with Novara at Padua mathematics and astronomy and was quite willing to add the study of medicine, because by so doing he could secure an extension of the length of time he would be allowed to remain in Italy. He then returned to be a canon of the Cathedral of Frauenberg, and spent forty years in quiet patient observation and in the practice of his medical profession not for money, but for the benefit of the poor and such friends of the chapter of the Cathedral as he was under obligations to because of the years they had supported him in Italy. He probably reached his great astronomical theory when he was about thirty. He did not publish the preliminary sketch of it for twenty-five years. He did not publish his great book until just before his death, keeping it by him, making changes in it and while thoroughly convinced of its importance, quite sure that, owing to its lack of definite demonstration, it would not be generally accepted.

Like so many of these geniuses of the Renaissance he was a simple kindly man who had many good friends among those around him and who had one of the very happy lives accorded to those who, having some great thought and great work to occupy themselves with, have daily duties that afford them diversion and bring them into contact with friends in many ordinary relations in life. His humility of heart and simplicity of character, as well as his deep religious faith, can be very well appreciated from the prayer which at his own request was the only inscription upon his tombstone: "I ask not the [{352}] grace accorded to Paul, not that given to Peter; give me only the favor Thou didst show to the thief on the Cross."