Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae
{{Short description|Book by Johannes Kepler}}
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File:Phases of Venus from Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Kepler 1620.png
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The Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae is an astronomy book on the heliocentric system published by Johannes Kepler in the period 1618 to 1621. The first volume (books I–III) was printed in 1618, the second (book IV) in 1620, and the third (books V–VII) in 1621.
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.{{cite book|author=Max Caspar|title=Kepler|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cYQUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA239|date=10 October 2012|publisher=Courier Dover Publications|isbn=978-0-486-15175-5|page=239}} Divided into seven books, the Epitome covers much of Kepler's earlier thinking, as well as his later positions on physics, metaphysics and archetypes.{{cite book|author=Rhonda Martens|title=Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ATfXOItxNQC&pg=PA142|date=29 October 2000|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=0-691-05069-4|page=142}} In Book IV he supported the Copernican cosmology.{{cite book|author1=Roy Porter|author-link=Roy Porter|author2=Katharine Park|author3=Lorraine Daston|title=The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 3, Early Modern Science|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2kvjAp92zcYC&pg=PA41|date=3 July 2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-57244-6|page=41}} Book V provided mathematics underpinning Kepler's views. Kepler wrote and published this work in parallel with his Harmonices Mundi (1619), the last Books V to VII appearing in 1621.{{cite book|author=J. R. Mulryne|title=Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-eW-RUKAicC&pg=PA12|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-0-7546-3873-5|page=12}}
Kepler introduced the idea that the physical laws determining the motion of planets around the Sun were the same governing the motion of moons around planets. He justified this claim in Book IV using the telescope observations of the moons of Jupiter made by Simon Marius in his 1614 book Mundus Iovialis. The period of orbits and relative distances of the four moons satisfied Kepler's third law and he argued the Jovian system was like a mini Solar System.{{cite book |last=Linton |first=C. M. |date=2004 |title=From Eudoxus to Einstein |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=218 |isbn=978-0-521-82750-8 |quote=Kepler invoked numerous justifications... One of these involved applying his third law to the four newly discovered moons of Jupiter, the data for which he obtained from Simon Mayr's World of Jupiter}}
The term "inertia" was first introduced in the Epitome.Lawrence Nolan (ed.), The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, Cambridge University Press, 2016, "Inertia.", p. 405
Reception
Due to the book's support for heliocentrism, the first volume was put on the Index of Prohibited Books on 28 February 1619.Maurice Finocchiario, Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992, Chapter 1, page 20
Editions
- 1635 reprint: [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_KUE1AAAAcAAJ Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae], Vols. 1–3, Schönwetterus.
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.
- 1955: Reissued with Ptolemy's Almagest. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica (1955).
- 1995: Epitome of Copernican astronomy; & Harmonies of the world; translated by Charles Glenn Wallis. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Notes
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{{Johannes Kepler}}
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