It Started With Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution [Hardcover]

Howard Margolis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 007138507X | ISBN-13: 978-0071385077 | Publication Date: April 25, 2002 | Edition: 1

A compelling new theory of the psychological roots of the Scientific Revolution

The standard account of the rise of Western science recently has come under fire by historians who claim that there was nothing revolutionary about the Copernican Revolution and that science did not suddenly become modern in its aftermath. How, then, explain the fact that, after 14 centuries of barely noticeable scientific progress, virtually all of the major discoveries that formed the foundation of modern science were made within a few years of 1600? In It Started with Copernicus, social theorist Howard Margolis answers with a controversial new theory of the psychological roots of the Scientific Revolution. Margolis points out that Copernicus's great discovery was not that the Earth revolved around the sun­­since Aristarchus had proposed it 1,800 years earlier­­but that entertaining such a seemingly unlikely idea would solve other problems. Thus, he provided a model for Kepler, Galileo, Steven, Gilbert, and others who would go on to lay the foundations of modern science.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Margolis's astonishing account of the mental mechanics and gymnastics of scientific discovery works like caffeine for the imagination. It kept me lying awake at night trying to grasp how Copernicus et al.-luckily for us-managed to believe the impossible." -Dennis Danielson, Editor, The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking

"This extraordinary book rethinks the Scientific Revolution in a way that gives new life to Thomas Kuhn's notion of 'paradigm shifts.' And it shows just how exciting the practice of science can be." -Ryan D. Tweney, Editor, On Scientific Thinking

In 1543, Copernicus proposed that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but a planet among planets, engaged in a timeless dance around the Sun. Two generations later, this wild idea inspired a brilliant burst of discovery which marked the opening of the Scientific Revolution. Or did it? In recent years, this old standby in the history of Western science has come under fire from historians who see Copernicus as a fundamentally conservative figure who had essentially nothing to do with the Scientific Revolution. In It Started with Copernicus Howard Margolis provides a powerful argument that Copernicus, as the old view supposed, was indeed the key figure of the Scientific Revolution, but in a way very different from what the old view supposed.

Around 1600, Margolis shows something happened to radically, and permanently, change the pace of scientific discovery. But what occasioned this change? All of the evidence for a revolution is there. The discoveries in science near 1600 easily outweighed everything produced in the previous fourteen centuries. The key, Margolis argues, is to notice that all the discoveries came from a handful of men, each of whom turns out to have been an ardent Copernican. Further, while some of the discoveries turned on new information and devices, most required nothing beyond what had been available to Aristotle. Somehow what had always been at hand now became actually usable.

What appeared, Margolis shows, was a radically novel propensity to look for evidence that was not directly in sight, but hidden around some unexplored corner--a propensity linked to the around-the-corner way Copernicus himself had come to his discovery. For what Copernicus discovered had been logically readily at hand for every astronomer since Ptolemy. But for 1400 years, until Copernicus, no one could see it.

"If you read what has been written over the past half century about Copernicus, or what has been written about the Scientific Revolution, you will have some doubt that anything of deep importance started with Copernicus, least of all something properly labeled 'the Scientific Revolution.' But if you look closely at what was going on in science around the year 1600, you will have no trouble seeing the appropriateness of a story of the Old West about a cowboy wandering over the plateau of northern Arizona. Innocently, he rides right up to the rim of the Grand Canyon. The cowboy sits a long time contemplating the vast gorge. Eventually he mutters, 'Something happened here.' And for the Scientific Revolution, you need not look much further to notice a powerful hint that what happened circa 1600 was somehow linked to Copernicus."--from the Introduction

About the Author

Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and the Fishbein Center for History of Science at the University of Chicago. He has held research appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, publishing extensively on cognition, public policy, history of science, and mathematical models of social choice.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007138507X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071385077
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #247,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and compelling, January 25, 2009

By 

Family Man "Steven" (The Rust Belt) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Started With Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution (Hardcover)

I just finished this book, and found it to be very interesting. Margolis details a significant and observable difference between scientific discovery prior to 1600 and then afterwards.

Essentially, he determines that early followers of Copernicus (ie, Galileo, Kepler, Stevins, and Gilbert) used 'around the corner' investigation to explain and discover scientific principlals that had evaded discovery for two thousand years.

Critic of the "Scientific Revolution" assert that nothing fundamentally changed with Copernicus, and Margolis makes a strong arugument that their investigation and conclusion are flawed.

This is a solid book, and is organized in a logial and clear manner.

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but hardly convincing, December 28, 2005

By 

Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: It Started With Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution (Hardcover)

This book is a valiant but perhaps futile attempt to rescue the reputation of Nicholas Copernicus from the disdain of "historians who see Copernicus as a fundamentally conservative figure".

Jacques Barzun, a prolific author on history and science, in April 1966 summed up the role of Copernicus and Galileo as "the first great shock administered by scientific thought, because their discoveries had religious implications". He also said, "the advent of science as a social institution, as I see it, should not be dated any earlier than the eighteen-eighties, at the end of the hundred years of controversy about evolution, which proved to be the great populizer of science".

Obviously, in America where Creationism and Intelligent Design are now hailed as fundamentalist classroom science, Barzun may be as far off base as Margolis. Both overlooked the obvious: science is a search, a course of inquiry, to learn how things work and thus predict the future. It is a way of thinking, not a destination of thought. Modern science was nicely summed up by Auguste Comte as all natural laws once we discover the mathematics, which succeeded the earlier attribution of everything to mysterious forces, which toook over from the idea that gods are responsible for everything.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems Margolis fails to recognize a basic human instinct is to predict. It explains projects from Stonehenge to last fall's National Institute of Standards and Technology discovery that half-a-dozen beryllium atoms can simultaneously spin clockwise and counterclockwise.

Let's start with Stonehenge and the winter solstice. In those days, when the sun has gone far away enough, festivities are held to invite the sun back. For thousands of years, this ritual never failed; the sun always came back. However, just because the solstice frestival "worked" doesn't mean it was the real reason the sun returned. Likewise, although you can't PROVE the sun will rise tomorrow, it's safe to assume it will. So, you could say that eating a bowl of cherries every night will make the sun rise tomorrow . . . sure enough, do it and the sun will rise. If you live in a world which believes your actions directly influence the gods, then it is "cause and effect" proven.

It is what Thomas Kuhn meant in 1962 when he said the bulk of science exists in a given framework for arbitrary historical reasons until too many problems arise and a revolution, or paradigm shift, occurs. Thus, the Stonehenge Festival and cherries fade away as knowledge increases. Karl Popper said the same thing in a different manner, he viewed science as a system of testing definitions until they are proven false, and this falsifiability doctrine produces a paradigm shift in thinking.

The 'too many problems' and 'falsifiability' ideas came much earlier than 1600; it began with people such as Jan Hus who challenged the tyranny of the existing religious orthodoxy. Stonehenge was abandoned because, several millennia earlier, someone had the courage to point out "it ain't necessarily so". If gods can be challenged, then the gods' explanations of the universe and everything else can be challenged.

Copernicus was as prescient as the modern beryllium researchers, and probably as equally mystifying to the average person. Instead of accepting the orthodoxy of centuries, he sought independent answers. Because the whole state of knowledge had grown vastly in the two millennia since Aristotle, he had stronger shoulders on which to stand to peer into the future.

The presumption by Margolis is that Copernicus did it all, instead of having vastly superior knowledge with which to work. It's like saying Mozart invented music, instead of using the notes and instruments of his time to compose the world's finest music. Who launched the American Revolution? The farmer who fired the first shot at Lexington? Or was it somewhat more involved?

It's an interesting book, with a good outline of what used to be -- but it's not convincing about the "scientific revolution" supposedly launched by Copernicus.