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EDWARD ROSEN
(2) Copernicus possessed such evidence, and deliberately suppressed
it.
The second alternative is based on a deleted passage in the autograph
manuscript of Copernicus' Revolutions. This manuscript is now preserved in the Jagellonian Library of the University of Cracow, where
Copernicus was a student in his late teens and early twenties. A photofacsimile of his autograph manuscript was recently published.10 It plainly
shows the deleted passage (folio 11 verso), which said, in part:
Philolaus was aware that the earth could move. Aristarchus of Samos was also
of the same opinion, as some people say.
These deleted lines make quite clear Copernicus' unfamiliarity with the
Aristarchus passage in the Sand-Reckoner. Had Copernicus realized that
he could cite Archimedes as his authority for Aristarchus as a fifth geokineticist, he surely would not have submerged that renowned mathematician in an anonymous and undistinguished group of "some people"
(nonnulli). Nor would Copernicus have confined his remark about
Aristarchus to the earth's mobility, had he learned about the additional
features of Aristarchus' astronomy from Archimedes' report: the sun's
immobility and centrality, the stars' immobility and enormous remoteness. Had Copernicus known that he could align the great Archimedes on
his side, that he could add the distinctively Aristarchan insights to those
proclaimed by the other four geokineticists, he would have leaped with
joy. For he was painfully aware that, with the theologians and Aristotelian philosophers certain to denounce him, he needed all the support he
could muster.
Copernicus' explicit citations of Cicero and [Pseudo-] Plutarch point
to the same conclusion as the history of the Sand-Reckoner in manuscript
and in print: Copernicus was not familiar with that work by Archimedes.
The Syracusan's numerous treatises on the mathematical sciences were
virtually a closed book for Copernicus, who mentioned Archimedes in
only three connections:
(1) Archimedes made the year 3651/4 days long (Revolutions,
Book 3, Chapter 13);
(2) Archimedes used a square in determining the area of a circle
(Book 3, Chapter 13, a deleted passage); and
(3) Archimedes set limits to the value of rr (Book 4, Chapter 32).
The length of the year, the area of a circle, and the value of 7 were not
discussed in the Sand-Reckoner. Nothing in Copernicus' writings suggests
that he knew Archimedes' Sand-Reckoner, or that he ever heard of it.
10 Nicholas Copernicus, Complete Works, I (London/Warsaw 1972).
