A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (2011)

520.9

A very inventive way of telling this story, with Sobel's fictional account of part of it, sandwiched with conventional research. She attempts to explain why Copernicus did not publish until near the end of his life. ( )

Dava Sobel’s A More Perfect Heaven has called attention to Copernicus’ historic scientific findings and the events leading to their publication. Unfortunately, her account is marred by inclusion of a "play" that obscures the relevant history while portraying events that never happened. In a monumental blunder, she has her fictional Rheticus engage in child abuse while her fictional Copernicus virtually turns a blind eye to his malfeasance. Her misguided attempt to entertain her readers is an astonishing lapse of judgement that irreparably harms the book.

The play in question is not an afterthought, but the main rationale for the book. As Sobel reveals in the book’s introduction, she had written an 80 page play to dramatize how she imagined a key event in Copernicus’ life. The rest of this book was written as a vehicle for the play. While the blending of fact and fiction is controversial in its own right, Ms. Sobel’s attempt is clumsy, amateurish, and a gross libel on the names of two eminent scientists.

The centerpiece of Ms Sobel’s account is the historic collaboration between Copernicus and the young mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus. The latter had heard of the unpublished work of the aging Copernicus, and in spring of 1539 traveled to Poland to become his student. Rheticus published a “First Account” of Copernicus’ theory in 1540, and over the next two years of studying with him, convinced him to publish his full account. Following Rheticus’ final departure, Copernicus arranged to have his book sent to Nuremberg to be printed under Rheticus’ supervision. The famous De Revolutionibus was published prior to Copernicus' death in 1543. According to legend, a copy was delivered to the dying Copernicus, who awoke from a coma, looked at his book, and expired.

Sobel presents a serviceable recounting of the major events, told with style. She excels at presenting the historical events in the context of the political and religious turmoil of 16th century Europe. As a resident of Lutheran Germany, Rheticus risked his freedom (if not his life) in traveling to Catholic Poland to work with the famed astronomer. Given the role that Rheticus played in assisting Copernicus to publish, the reader is forced to wonder whether Die Revolutionibus would have ever come to light without the young mathematician’s help.

As for the play, which occupies the central 1/3 of the book, it is an amateurish farce that simplifies, conflates, and ignores the very historical events Sobel took pains to recount elsewhere. In her imagined account, Rheticus is hardly a pupil -- rather, he guides a great scientist more than 40 years his senior in how to write his work and advises him on how to ensure it passes muster with the political authorities. In Scene xv, Rheticus is being forced to leave, and literally tries to wrestle the book away from Copernicus in order to take it to be published. At Copernicus’ resistance, he assents to taking a portion away – presumably this is to become the 1540 “First Account.” The scene ends with Copernicus suffering a stroke. The next scene, the final one, has Copernicus on his deathbed, comatose from his stroke, but reviving in time to receive a copy of his published book. The play misrepresents the events, because years must pass between these two scenes. During this time, Rheticus travels back to work with Copernicus for another two years, followed by his final departure. And so, three years are constricted into a few months, the successive publication of aspects of Copernicus' work is ignored, and events are invented wholesale for entertainment purposes.

And then there’s the unavoidable issue of character assassination. First, to spice things up, Sobel gives Copernicus a mistress. Second, over the course of scenes 9 through 15, Sobel has her fictional Rheticus engage in the pederastic seduction of a 14 year old houseboy named Franz. After episodes of embracing and bottom- fondling , the subplot culminates in the two being discovered in bed together, unclothed and kissing, by Copernicus himself. Little Franz scampers away in fear.

Rheticus: You’ve known all along, haven’t you?
Copernicus: I wasn’t sure.
R: But you suspected.
C: I prayed that my suspicions were unfounded.
R: Now you know the truth
C: Yes.
R: And you despise me
C: No Joachim. Neither do I judge you.
R: You needn’t pretend to understand.
C: But I can no longer protect you.
R: From myself?....
C: You’ve got to get out of here. Go now, before anything else happens.

What is there to say? Even for historical fiction this is far beyond the pale. The reader, if his critical facilities are not too numbed by disgust and outrage at the libel of Rheticus, will note that Sobel’s Copernicus (a canon in the Catholic church) adopts a 21st century tolerance of homosexuality, seeks to protect the perpetrator of child abuse, and gives no thought to the young victim. Historical anachronism is the least of her errors. To view her account as an ironic commentary on institutionalized pederasty of the contemporary church is most likely to give the author more credit than she deserves.

This is surely one of the most ill-conceived literary devices of our time. The so-called "play" contained in this work violates minimal standards of acceptability for a respectable work of history. It irreparably damages what could have been a serviceable historical account.


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Note: Many years later, following a mental breakdown, Rheticus was accused by a person of having had carnal relations with a 17-18 year old male. Whether or not he committed the act in question is not known. It should have no bearing on the libelous, fictional episode of child abuse invented by the author. ( )

Another interesting look at an historical and scientific figure. Sobel does a really good job in making the science understandable. I loved the play in the middle of the work. Another example of how my church demonized smart and inventive people; the process continues to this day. ( )

Sobel follows her success with Galileo's Daugher with a biography of Copernicus, the originator of the heliocentric theory that Galileo so famously propounded. Copernicus' life is less well-documented than Galileo's, between the earlier period and the fact that On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres had little impact when first published, and Sobel chooses to include a brief play, speculating on the meeting and interactions of Copernicus with his sole student, a German Lutheran named Rheticus, interspersed between the two sections of the biography. This unusual technique works well; I doubt the play has much merit on its own as drama, but as a way to convey her own speculations as clearly separate from known historical fact it serves its purpose.

After an initial overview of the theory, and a rare but appreciated nod to earlier Greek astronomers' writings on heliocentricity (several had considered and rejected the notion, on the quite reasonable grounds that if the Earth moved around the Sun the relative positions of the stars would appear to change throughout the course of the year; it was a failure to consider that the distances to the stars could be so much greater than that to the Sun that parallax is unobservable without a telescope, rather than mindless adherence to geocentric theory, that led them to reject heliocentricity), Sobel spends relatively little time on the actual development of Copernicus' theory, perhaps because little of his original notes survive; instead, she devotes most of the biographical portion of the book to talking about his earlier life and his interactions with Rheticus, who had encountered an abbreviated version of the writings and traveled to Poland to convince Copernicus to publish his work, which he did shortly before he died. Without Copernicus' knowledge or agreement, the printer inserted a disclaimer stating that the theory was purely a computational convenience, rather than an actual attempt to explain the structure of the solar system; without Copernicus to contradict the statement, this fig-leaf kept the Church happy until Galileo's later observations and confirmations of heliocentricity.

The final section discusses the impact of the "Copernican Revolution" (pointing out that the word in its now-familiar political sense originated in the astronomical sense employed by Copernicus himself) on astronomy; indeed, one of the most fundamental axioms in modern astronomy is the so-called "Copernican Principle", which holds that the Earth is in no way special in the universe; any theory proposed to explain observations cannot resort to special pleading that the Earth holds a privileged postion (for instance, galaxies all appear to recede from the Earth not because we sit at the center but because the universe itself is expanding). ( )