Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton

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Married his mother

Usurped Hamlet’s Crown

Hamlet is Depressed

How Much does Hamlet Know?

Slide 38

Enter Rosenkranz and Guldenstern Hamlet is supposed to take place in late Viking times (ca. 1000 A.D.)

Rosenkranz and Guldenstern are student friends of Hamlet’s from the University at Wittenberg

Which doesn’t exist yet

Recruited by Hamlet’s uncle to console (spy on) him.

Slide 39

Exit Rosenkranz and Guldenstern The king sends the trio to England with a sealed letter instructing the king of England (a relative) to kill Hamlet

Hamlet switches letters on his ex-friends

Hamlet has it out with the king

Bodies all over the stage, curtain falls

See you at the cast party

Slide 40

What does this have to Tycho had published a widely-sold book

Modest chap that he was, he included a portrait and 16 crests showing his lineage over four generations

Tycho was Danish

His estate was right across the strait from Elsinore Castle

do with the planets?

Slide 41

Tycho and Shakespeare

Guess what two of the names on the crests are

Tycho and Shakespeare had a mutual acquaintance

Clearly this was an inside joke for audiences in the know

Slide 42

So Who’s Galileo (1564-1642)? Galileo did not invent the telescope (known since at least 1590).

One of the first to use a telescope on the heavens. Found observational evidence that challenged traditional views.

Craters on moon

Phases of Venus

Satellites of Jupiter

Slide 43

Galileo

Others independently used telescopes on celestial objects at nearly the same time. Galileo had the best publicity.

Main impact: An aggressive popularizer of Copernican viewpoint and satirist of Aristotelian physics.

Very much like a 17th century Carl Sagan

Slide 44

·Kepler and GalileoGalileo and Kepler corresponded.

·Galileo defended Copernican astronomy but never wrote about Kepler's model.

·Galileo may have been repelled by Kepler's mysticism.

·Moral: even the best and most innovative workers can sometimes fail to recognize a major advance.

Slide 45

·Why was the Copernican Revolution so pivotal?Chance (science had to start somehow)

·Intellectually respectable pursuit, suitable for elite