Advancements of Science?

 Georg Joachim de Porris, also known as Rheticus narrates the third part of John Banville's 1975 novel Doctor Copernicus, relating how he convinced Copernicus to publish his book, De revolutionibus. The novel itself is less about Copernicus's work than about his life and the 16th century world in which he lived. In May 1539, Rheticus arrived in Frombork (Frauenburg), where he spent two years with Copernicus.

The author, Banville, in the following excerpt from the novel, presents a picture of Copernicus as a man conflicted in what his life and studies have accomplished. He is a scientist working to find the truths of the physical world in conflict with the Canon whose duty it is to promulgate the Catholic faith. His theory of heliocentric planetary motion will disrupt the prevailing geocentric theory set out by Ptolemy which was the basis of thinking at the time.

Banville’s portrayal of Copernicus presents a man deeply concerned about the effect his radical research will have on the Church and people’s view of the cosmos.

Rheticus here is the narrator:

"Well then, you say, if it was so terrible, why did remain there, why

did I not flee, and leave Copernicus, wrapped in his caution and his bit-

terness, to sink into oblivion? Listen: have said that I was a greater

astronomer than he, and I am, but he possessed one precious thing that

I lacked—I mean a reputation. O, he was cautious, yes, and he genu-

inely feared and loathed the world, but he was cunning also, and knew

that curiosity is a rash which men will scratch and scratch until it

drives them frantic for the cure. For years now he had eked out, at

carefully chosen intervals, small portions of his theory, each one of

which—the Commentariolus, the Letter contra Werner, my Narra-

tzb—was a grain of salt rubbed into the rash with which he had

inflicted his fellow astronomers. And they had scratched, and the rash

had developed into a sore that spread, until all Europe was infected,

and screaming for the one thing alone that would end the plague,

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which was De revolutionibus orbium mundi, by Doctor Nicolas

Copernicus, of Torun on the Vistula. And he would give them their

physic; he had decided, he had decided to publish, I knew it, and he

knew I knew it, but what he did not know was that, by doing so, by

publishing, he would not be crowning his own reputation, but making

mine. You do not understand? Only wait, and I shall explain.

But first I must recount some few other small matters, such as, to

begin with, how in the end he came to give me his consent to publish.

However, in order to illuminate that scene, as it were, I wish to record

a conversation I had with him which, later, I came to realise was a

summation of his attitude to science and the world, the aridity, the

barrenness of that attitude. He had been speaking, I remember, of the

seven spheres of Hermes Trismegistus through which the soul ascends

toward redemption in the eighth sphere of the fixed stars. I grew im-

patient listening to this rigmarole, and said something like:

"But your work, Meister, is of this world, of the here and now; it

speaks to men of what they may know, and not of mysteries that they

can only believe in blindly or not at all. "

He shook his head impatiently.

"No no no no. You imagine that my book is a kind of mirror in

which the real world is reflected; but you are mistaken, you must rea-

lise that. In order to build such a mirror, I should need to be able to per-

ceive the world whole, in its entirety and in its essence. But our lives

are lived in such a tiny, confined space, and in such disorder, that this

perception is not possible, There is no contact, none worth mentioning,

between the universe and the place in which we live."

I was puzzled and upset; this nihilism was inimical to all held to be

true and useful. I said:

"But if what you say is so, then how is it that we are aware of the

existence of the universe, the real world? How, without perception, do

"Ach, Rheticus!" It was the first time he had called me by that

name. "You do not understand me! You do not understand yourself.

You think that to see is to perceive, but listen, listen: seeing is not per-

ception! Why will no one realise that? I lift my head and look at the

stars, as did the ancients, and I say: what are those lights? Some call

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them torches borne by angels, others, pinpricks in the shroud of

Heaven; others still, scientists such as ourselves, call them stars and

planets that make a manner of machine whose workings we strive to

comprehend. But do you not understand that, without perception, all

these theories are equal in value. Stars or torches, it is all one, all

merely an exalted naming; those lights shine on, indifferent to what we

call them. My book is not science—it is a dream. I am not even sure if

science is possible." He paused a while to brood, and then went on.

"We think only those thoughts that we have the words to express, but

we acknowledge that limitation only by our wiifully foolish contention

that the words mean more than they say; it is a pretty piece of sleight of

hand, that: it sustains our illusions wonderfully, until, that is, the time

arrives when the sands have run out, and the truth breaks in upon us.

Our lives—" he smiled "—are a little journey through God's

His voice had become a whisper, and it was plain to me that

guts .

he was talking to himself, but then all at once he remembered me, and

turned on me fiercely, waggmg a finger in my face. "Your Father

Luther recognised this truth early on, and had not the courage to face

it; he tried to deny it, by his pathetic and futile attempt to shatter the

form and thereby come at the content, the essence. His was a defective

mind, Of course, and could not comprehend the necessity for ritual,

and hence he castigated Rome for its so-called blasphemy and idol-

worship. He betrayed the people, took away their golden calf but gave

them no tablets of the law in its place. Now wc are seeing the results of

Luther's folly, when the peasantry is in revolt all over Europe. You

wonder why I will not publish? The people will laugh at my book, or

that mangled version of it which filters down to them from the univer-

sities. The people always mistake at first the frightening for the comic

thing. But very soon they will come to see what it is that I have done, I

mean what they will imagine I have done, diminished Earth, made of it

merely another planet among planets; they will begin to despise the

world, and something will die, and out of that death will come death.

You do not know what I am talking about, do you, Rheticus? You are a

fool, like the rest ... like myself."

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