Tycho Brahe's Critique of Copernicus and the Copernican System

For Luther he was the "fool who wanted to turn the art of astronomy on its head"'; for Frangois Viete he was the paraphraser of Ptolemy and "more a master of the dice than of the (mathematical) profession"2; for nearly every intellectual in the century following De revolutionibus Copernicus was a figure to be evaluated and criticized, if not always understood. Tycho Brahe's critique of Copernicus is not summed up in any pithy statement but rather spread throughout his life's work. Yet it reveals the constant importance of Copernicus and his shortcomings as the point of departure for Tycho's own model and observations. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was not unusual in combining a certain admiration for Copernicus with a consistent rejection of heliocentrism. Beyond the rather commonplace criticisms of the Copernican system based on physical, scriptural, and cosmological arguments, Tycho's published works and astronomical correspondence reveal countless attempts to disprove or discredit the Copernican hypothesis on empirical grounds. This criticism of Copernicus's parameters and observational practice, although less well known,3 is an integral part of, perhaps even a source for, Tycho's influential new agenda of "restoring" astronomy through greater