Celestial and Classical Mechanics

The Development of Modern Astronomy, Celestial Mechanics, and Classical

Mechanics in Europe

Sunday, May 17, 2009

PART 1. INTRODUCTION

[Slide 1]: Title slide. The Development of Modern Astronomy, Celestial Mechanics, and Classical
Mechanics in Europe.

Welcome to lecture Six of The Heaven’s Revolve. My name is Stephen Friberg, and this lecture is the second of
three lectures on celestial and classical mechanics. This lecture will review the big changes that happened in
Europe when the ancient models of astronomy of the Hellenistic world were challenged and replaced by new
models and new mathematics.

[Slide 2]: Outline. Copernicus and the Heliocentric Universe.

In this lecture, we will start by reviewing the acquisition of Islamic learning in Europe, and European Astronomy
th
before Copernicus and the 16 century. We will then talk about the Polish thinker and astronomer Copernicus and
his proposal that the earth rotated around the sun rather than the sun rotating around the earth. This was a big
change from the Ptolemaic system. We will then briefly review the life and work of two important astronomers
that followed Copernicus – Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Brahe built an observatory that made highly
accurate measurements of the movements of the planets. Kepler developed a mathematical model that fitted to
Brahe’s data. The mathematical model used ellipses rather than circles, revolutionizing astronomy.

We then review the contributions of the two most famous and important early European scientific thinkers:
Galileo and Newton. Galileo used a new astronomical instrument – the telescope – to observe the planets, the
moon, and the sun. He found that the moon and sun were imperfect and that some of the planets had moons.
Newton took the mathematical models of Kepler and developed the theory of gravity and physical forces that we
now call classical mechanics. The combined impact of the work of Galileo and Newton created modern astronomy
and modern science.

[Slide 3]: Islamic Learning and Europe

Let’s look at the map of Europe and Islam around the year 750. The Islamic Empire under the Umayyad dynasty
extended from Spain in the west to India and China in the east. Under the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs,
learning expanded and grew, bringing together contributions from Hellenistic, Persian, Byzantium, Indian, and
Chinese sources. Western Europe – except in Islamic Spain and Sicily - was poor, backward, rural, uneducated, and
HAD no great cities.

[Slide 4]: Islamic Learning and Europe: The Revival of European Learning

By the year 1000, Europe was starting to change and advance, and part of that change was a growing interest in
Islamic learning, especially astrology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.
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Gerbert d’Aurillac, who lived from 943 to 1003 and became the Pope Sylvester II, is the first major figure of this
movement. He studied in Northern Spain and introduced Arabic arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy, and
calculating engines to Europe. Constantine the African (1020- 1085) was a great translator of Islamic and Jewish
medical texts. Adelard of Bath (1080-1152) traveled throughout the Islamic world, translating the work of al-
Khwarizmi and other great Islamic astronomers and mathematicians into Latin.

[Slide 5]: Islamic Learning and Europe: A Century of Translation

In 1072 and 1085, Christian military forces captured Palermo in Sicily and Toledo in Spain from Muslim rulers and
both cities became major centers of translation for more than a century. Cordoba, the great Islamic capital of
Muslim Spain became a center of discussion and study where Moslem, Jewish, and Christian scholars worked
together to produce some of the greatest philosophical, mathematical, and medical flowerings of the Islamic
civilization.

The century of study and translation in these cities provided Europe with knowledge of Islamic astronomy,
mathematics, engineering, philosophy, medicine and science that supplied the basic textbooks that were used in
European universities for the next 500 years. During that time, Islamic learning – and with it, knowledge of the
Hellenistic world of the distant past – was studied and absorbed. These studies were the starting point of
scholasticism, which you studied in Lecture 5, and the European understanding of the universe.

[Slide 6]: European Understanding of the Universe before Copernicus

Islamic learning, and after that, Greek learning from the Byzantium empire fed the growth of European scholarship
in medicine, logic, the natural sciences, and astronomy. By 1300, there were twenty universities in Europe. By
1500, there were 80. Islamic science, technology, medicine and mathematics and Aristotle’s works were the basis
for the studies at most of these universities.

In astronomy, the Ptolemaic model of the universe and the astronomical texts of the great Islamic astronomers
and mathematicians were universally accepted. This was due to its origins in the teachings of Aristotle, the great
authority extended to Aristotle, and because it was endorsed by all the Islamic sources. By 1500, European
astronomy was probably at the same level as Islamic astronomy, although important mathematical techniques
continued to arrive from Maragha and Samarkand.

[Slide 7]: Copernicus and the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System: 1

Around 1505, a major shift occurred in European astronomy, a shift that not only began a new era in astronomy,
but started new developments in science and almost all aspects of organized social life as well. That shift was the
emergence of a new theory of the structure of the universe, the idea that the universe was not centered on the
earth as taught by Aristotle and Ptolemy. That idea, the geocentric system, was taught by all the great
astronomers and mathematicians of Islam and the whole of the scientific and religious establishment of Eastern
and Western Europe.

The new theory, proposed by the Polish astronomer and thinker Nicolaus Copernicus, held that the Sun – not the
earth – was at the center of the universe and that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the sun revolving
around the earth. It took 200 years to be accepted, but the results of its acceptance were powerful.

One result was the overthrow of the authority of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and the science of the past. They were wrong
about one of the most important scientific matter of all – the nature of the Universe. That meant that they were
likely to be wrong about many other things as well. The authority of Greek science was overthrown.
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Another result was the overthrow of the authority of the Catholic Church and its scholastic system of knowledge, a
system built on the authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic philosophy.

The third result, which we will explore in the rest of this lecture, is the astronomical and scientific revolutions that
the Copernican model started.

[Slide 8]: Copernicus and Europe in 1500

Copernicus was born in Northern Poland in the town of Torun, or modern Thorn, in a family of rich and influential
merchants. He went to the university first in Krakow and then in Italy where he studied at the famous universities
of Bologna and Padua. He returned to Poland in 1503 and worked as a high religious official and diplomat until he
died in 1543.

He was both an outstanding thinker and accomplished man of action. Let me quote Wikipedia:

Among the great polymaths of the Renaissance, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, physician,
classical scholar, translator, artist, Catholic cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and
economist.

Astronomy was almost a hobby for him. But it is for his contributions to astronomy that he is remembered.

[Slide 9]: Copernicus’s Publications

Copernicus sent a letter to his friends around 1514 describing his thinking about the sun-centered universe and
outlining his basic assumptions. His central point was that the sun was the center of the universe.

He spent the next 30 years preparing a full description of his model, and it was published in 1543 as he lay on his
deathbed. In six volumes, it outlined his general vision of the heliocentric theory, described mathematical
principles of his astronomy, described the movements of the sun, the moon, and the planets, and showed how to
calculate celestial motions using his system.

Like Aristotle, he saw heavenly motions as circular and eternal. But in almost all other things, he differed greatly.

[Slide 10]: Ptolemaic vs. Copernican Models of the Universe

Ptolemy’s model of the Universe is shown on the left. The moon, the planets, and the sun all revolved around the
earth. There are epicycles – motions of little circles moving with the big circles – to account for retrograde motion.

Copernicus’s model is on the right. The sun is at or near the center, and the earth is the third planet from the sun.
The moon still orbits around the earth and there are still epicycles (which are not shown). As Copernicus kept the
system of circular motion of Aristotle and Ptolemy, he had to include a very complicated system of epicycles using
what are now called Tusi couples to make his system agree with observed planetary motions.

[Slide 11]: The Reaction to Copernicus’s Heliocentric Theory

Copernicus’s book describing his theory was published with a foreword by the Lutheran philosopher Andreas
Osiander saying that the heliocentric model was a hypothesis and a set of mathematical models. Because of this,
the threat of the book’s new ideas were greatly reduced and, and it was not attacked severely at first. Many
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astronomers supported it. One astronomer who didn’t support it was Tycho Brahe, the greatest astronomer of the
th
16 century.

[Slide 12]: Tycho Brahe and Advances in European Astronomy: 1

Tycho Brahe was from a rich and powerful landholding family in Denmark. He was born in what is now part of
southern Sweden. During his universities studies, he developed a passion for astronomy after observing an eclipse
in 1560 and became determined to carry out new and more accurate measurements. After his university
education he observed a supernova – the explosion of a star – and wrote a book about it.

In 1576, the King of Denmark gave him an island and the money to build an observatory. He then built Uraniborg.
At first, he put his measuring instruments high in a castle. Later, when he realized that wind was disturbing them
and destroying their precision, he relocated them in a new observatory underground.

[Slide 13]: Tycho Brahe and Advances in European Astronomy: 2

Tycho Brahe made three major contributions to astronomy, moving European astronomical observations to the
forefront. He observed a supernova in 1572 and determined that it was in the celestial sphere – that it was out
among the stars. This proved, he argued, that the celestial sphere was not eternal and unchanging as Aristotle had
said. In 1577, he observed a comet and showed that its orbit brought it through the spheres of the planets. This
showed that there was no real substance to the spheres or otherwise they would have stopped the comet. Again,
this challenged Aristotle.

Most importantly, he made highly accurate measurements of the movements of the planets over very long period
of time, providing the data that could distinguish between the Copernican and the Ptolemaic models of the
universe. While it is not clear that his observatory was more accurate than those that existed at the same time in
Samarkand, Istanbul, and Jaipur, the long years of observation gave him an advantage.

Finally, he hired a genius – Johannes Kepler – to process and understand his planetary data.

[Slide 14]: From Circles to Ellipses: Kepler and New Motions of the Planets 1

Johannes Kepler was born near Stuttgart, Germany in 1517. As a child, he was week, sickly and astonishingly good
at mathematics. He seems to have fallen in love with astronomy at an early age. He observed Brahe’s comet
when he was six and watched an eclipse of the moon when he was nine. He initially studied theology at the
University of Tübingen, but accepted a job teaching mathematics and astronomy when he left the university in
1594.

His greatest work as an astronomer was to analyze Tycho Brahe’s planetary data and to find a mathematical fit to
it. What he discovered, apparently in 1605, are now called Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion. One of them
is diagrammed on the right. These laws made it possible for Newton in 1687 to derive the laws of gravity, of
dynamics and of motion, the most significant discoveries of the European scientific revolution.

[Slide 15]: From Circles to Ellipses: Kepler and New Motions of the Planets 2

Kepler’s first model of the motions of the planets was based on the ancient Greek concept of the Platonic Solids.
Highly mystical, it described the motion of the planets as nested spheres.

He exchanged letters with Brahe, criticizing Brahe’s model of the universe, supporting Copernicus. Brahe had the
sun and moon rotating around the earth and the planets rotating around the sun. Brahe asked Kepler to analyze
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his data on the motions of the Planet Mars and invited him to Prague where he had just been appointed court
astronomer to Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. When Brahe died that year, Kepler replaced him as the court
astronomer.

[Slide 16]: From Circles to Ellipses: Kepler and New Motions of the Planets 3

After years of hard work, Kepler published his analysis of Brahe’s data. He proposed three laws of planetary
motion:

1. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at a focus.

2. A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time, and

3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

These were big challenges to Aristotle and Ptolemy. Ellipses, not perfect circles, were used to describe the motion
of the planets. There were no epicycles, and the speed of the planets changed.

[Slide 17]: The Invention of the Telescope

Around the same time that Kepler was analyzing Brahe’s data, a new invention appeared that transformed
astronomy. The telescope was discovered and it made it possible to look at the sky in much more detail.

[Slide 18]: Galileo’s Telescope

The first telescopes appeared in the Netherlands in 1608, although it is not clear who invented them.

At first, they were of low power with magnifications of 3 or so. They rapidly became popular and were sold all
over Europe. A friend of Galileo’s told him about then in 1609, and he quickly started building his own, grinding his
own lenses. He greatly improved the telescope, giving it much better image quality and much higher
magnification. He eventually built telescopes with magnifications of 30 times. He then turned his telescope to the
heavens for scientific astronomy.

[Slide 19]: Galileo’s Galilei

Galileo is one of the most famous scientists that ever lived, and for good reasons. His work on physics transformed
the science and began the process that Newton completed. His work with telescopes and astronomy
revolutionized the way we see the heavens and provided strong support for the Copernican heliocentric theory.
And, in one of the most famous historical event in the history of science, he was convicted of heresy – denying
truth and God – for denying the validity of Ptolemy’s model of the universe by the Inquisition of the Roman
Catholic Church. And, yes, he was an extremely interesting person and a good communicator.

[Slide 20]: Galileo’s New Science

Modern scientists view Galileo as the "father of modern astronomy", the "father of modern physics", and "the
father of modern science”. In describing how science should work, he was very influential; teaching that the laws
of nature are mathematical, and that experiment, not authority, was what determined the truth. This brought him
into conflict with the church.
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He made major contributions to physics, showing that heavy and light objects fall at the same speed, contradicting
Aristotle. He also discovered the principle of inertia, the idea that a mass, once moving, would keep on moving in
a straight line unless stopped, again contradicting Aristotle. He also invented a number of measurement tools,
including pendulum clocks, thermometers, and other useful devices.

[Slide 21]: Galileo’s Observations of the Heavens

Shortly after building improved telescopes, Galileo turned them towards the night sky. In 1610, he observed what
appeared at first as moving stars near the planet Jupiter and realized that they were moons. The same year, he
observed that Venus had phases like our moon. This was proof, Galileo said, that Venus orbited the sun.

He also observed that there were mountain and craters on the moon, sunspots on the sun, and a large number of
stars in the Milky Way. Clearly, the heavens were not as Aristotle described them.

[Slide 22]: Galileo’s Support for Copernicus and Heliocentrism

In 1632, after being urged the Pope, Galileo wrote The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. In it, he
compared the Copernican and Ptolemaic system. It is written as a discussion between the philosopher Salviati,
who supports Copernicus, the philosopher Simplicio who supports Ptolemy and Aristotle, and Sagredo, an
intelligent citizen. In the book, Galileo answered questions about the Copernican system, described his
observations which supported Copernicus and showed how Ptolemy’s system could not explain his new telescope
data.

[Slide 23]: Galileo’s Censure by the Catholic Church

In the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, it says that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved," and
that "the sun rises and sets and returns to its place.” This led many to view Galileo’s support of the Copernican
theory as heresy – as against Biblical teachings.

In 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine, a leading church intellectual, ordered Galileo not to "hold or defend" the heliocentric
point of view. Galileo did as ordered for several years. But, in 1632 Galileo wrote The Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems at the request of the pope. The Pope was angered by the work, and Galileo was tried for
heresy.

He was found guilty of “having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy
Scripture: that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is
not the center of the world.” . He was arrested and his publications were banned, along with other books on
heliocentrism.

[Slide 24]: Isaac Newton

Galileo died in 1642. The next year, Isaac Newton, a scientist who is thought even greater than Galileo, was born
in England. England had had a long tradition of interest in the sciences. It also was Protestant and out of reach of
the authority of the Catholic Church. With the help of Newton and a small group of extremely capable scientists, it
was about to take the leading role in the development of European science.

[Slide 25]: Isaac Newton’s Life

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Newton was born in the English countryside in 1643. He attended Cambridge University, but apparently his genius
only became apparent after he graduated. He was made a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge in 1667, and
stayed there until 1696. In 1696, he was appointed warden and master of the Royal Mint, elected several times to
parliament, and elected head of the prestigious Royal Society of London many times over.

Newton is universally considered the world’s greatest scientist. He discovered the laws of gravity, the basic laws of
physics, invented calculus, explained color, and did much else besides. In astronomy, Newton showed that the
force of gravity is the same on earth as it is in the heavens and explained the motions of the planets in agreement
with Kepler’s laws. He also invented the reflector telescope that is widely used today for optical astronomy.

[Slide 26]: Newton’s Laws

Newton first studied the motion of the planets and the nature of gravity in 1665 –1667 after he finished at the
university. In 1677, he returned to the subject by studying Kepler's laws of planetary motion. He further
developed his work on gravity and his theory of motion. In 1687, he described his three laws of motion and the
law of gravity in the book usually called the Principia.

[Slide 27]: Newton’s Law of Gravity

Newton’s law of gravity is written on the left in equation form. What it says is illustrated on the right: “All objects
attract other objects by a force proportional to the product of their mass and inversely proportional to their
distance squared.”

Or, to say it another way, Newton’s law of gravity says that the force between two objects –say, the sun and the
earth –is inversely proportional to the distance between their centers. If the distance is two times larger, the force
is four times smaller. Newton’s law of gravity also says that gravity is a force that works at a distance. It doesn’t
need a direct physical connection. This was highly controversial when he proposed it, and is even puzzling today.

The bottom part of the slide shows a picture of a planet orbiting in an ellipse around the sun. Newton’s laws
explained the motion perfectly and allowed for any needed corrections from the gravity of other planets.

[Slide 28]: Isaac Newton Three Laws of Motion

Let’s briefly review Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.

The first law:

“A moving object continues to move and a resting object continues to rest unless acted on by an external force. “
This is basically what Galileo discovered.

The second law:

F=ma

“Force equals mass times acceleration. The acceleration of an object is proportional to the applied force and
inversely proportional to its mass. “ This basically states the bigger masses are harder to move than smaller
masses

The third law:

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To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

These simple and basic laws are the foundations of physics.

[Slide 29]: Newton’s Universe

Let’s take a quick look at what the universe looked like after Newton’s laws. It is basically the heliocentric universe
of Copernicus with the elliptical orbits of Kepler. It is our modern view of the solar system with the sun at the
center. But, with the invention of the telescope, the universe was growing rapidly and the sun was not to stay at
its center for very long.

[Slide 30]: The Implications of Newton’s Laws

We will end this lecture by looking at the implication of Newton’s Laws. These are just some of them.

In astronomy, they resolved the 2000 year old question about the structure of the universe. They provided the
mathematical and physical methods to model celestial phenomena with extremely high accuracy. And they
provided new and powerful methods to understand the stars, the galaxies, and even the beginning of the universe.

In science, they firmly established that science was a powerful inductive/deductive/empirical method for
understanding the world. They established that science and its methods were a leading, if not the leading, method
to determine the truth. They established the success of and the completion of the scientific revolution.

In society, their success provided the foundation for the Enlightenment, the influential European movement that
held that scientific-based rationality would transform the world. They established that science was a necessary
part of the advancement of a country’s economy and social development. And, yes, they threw the validity of
religious belief into doubt.