May 17, 2017 • 30 mins
While he's known primarily as the astronomer who promoted the idea of a heliocentric solar system, Copernicus was also a master mathematician and a doctor. He worked for the church his entire life, and wrote a manuscript on devaluation of currency.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy, I
had an interesting discussion with one of our colleagues recently
where I mentioned this person that we're covering today, and
(00:23):
so no, I'm thinking about doing that, but I'm worried
it will be one of those things that everybody grows
and says, I know that, huh, And she said astronomer
and I said, Okay, we need to do that episode
because it is one of those things that Copernicus has
name recognition. Some people even know some of the basics
(00:43):
of his work, like his big claim to fame historically
is that he placed the Sun more or less at
the center of the Solar system and at the center
of the universe in astronomical modeling. But for the record, uh,
we should point out that he was not the first
person to think of that. That was going on as
far back as the third century BC went as Starkus
of Samos, who was an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer,
(01:04):
made the same assertion. But while Aristarchus is writing on
the sizes and distances of the Sun and moon survived
the perils of time. His work on a heliocentric model
of the solar system did not. So we only know
about that part of of his work because Plutarch referenced
it in his writing. So that's why Copernicus gets a
lot of the attention in this arena, because we have
(01:25):
his writings. Uh. And we're going to talk today about
Copernicus and his life and his work, how his science
was in some ways very dangerous, and there are also
probably some surprising aspects of his life because it was
really a lot more varied than just astronomy. So the
man we eventually came to know as Kapernicus was born
Mikolai Kopernik Uh. He was named after his father and
(01:48):
was born in Taurun, Poland, on February fourteen, seventy three.
As we said, he was named after his father. His
mother's name was Barbara Watson Road. He was their fourth
child wild and the family was quite comfortable. Their family
business wasn't competrating. Yeah, they did quite well. But when
and I'm gonna go ahead and switch to the more
(02:11):
standard pronunciation of his name, Nicolaus Copernicus. It will get
to when he changed that in just a moment, But
when he was still a young boy. In fourteen eight three,
his father died and his maternal uncle, Lucas vatsen Rode,
who would eventually become Bishop of Varmia, took over the
role of patriarch. And this was a really significant turn
of events for Copernicus. Obviously, the loss of a parent
(02:33):
is immense, but it was also important because his uncle
really prized education and made it one of his goals
that Nicolas would be well educated. And he was also
very well respected in the church, and he would use
his position to ensure that Copernicus had a stable career.
At the age of eighteen, Copernicus went to the University
of Krakau, but even though he would become a famous
(02:54):
historical figure in astronomy, his studies also included mathematics and painting.
This was also the period where he made the switch
to using the Latin version of his name that we're
more familiar with. As Latin was the language of European
universities at the time, this was not an uncommon practice,
not as one might originally conclude, a mark of pretentiousness. Yeah,
(03:17):
you'll see parttically a lot of scientists and astronomers like
they'll be listed by a name that sounds like their
Latin name, and then you'll see their their birth name,
which is you know, some as more European or or
whatnotum very very common. So, thanks to his uncle's connections
as well as his own education, Copernicus who got a
job at the Cathedral Chapter and from Bourg as a
(03:39):
canon in fo and the Cathedral Chapter was basically a
corporate entity that managed the various needs and duties and
finances associated with governing the diocese, and the clerics who
worked there served under the bishop in fulfilling that mission.
This was basically an ideal job for Copernicus that allowed
him to continue academic richment with no limitations, although he
(04:02):
had to astend to his duties as his primary focus,
but any free time he had he could devote to study,
and he was able to take leaves of absence to
focus exclusively on learning. Perhaps not surprisingly, he hung onto
this job for the rest of his life. Yeah. I
don't know why, but when I was doing the research
(04:22):
for this, that seemed so sort of mind blowing to
me that can you imagine getting one job when you're eighteen,
and that being your job forever. Yeah, I feel like
my job has been my job forever, even though I
was thirty when I started. Yeah, but that is really
it speaks a lot to his uncle's influence and his
uncle's um ability to kind of set these things up
(04:45):
for him, that he was set for life because of
the work of his uncle. But before he moved into
that position, he spent two years in schooling. So in
four he went to the University of Bologna, where his
uncle had also gone, and he was there to study
religious law, and this made sense given his job, of course,
But this time at Bologna would also lead to a
(05:05):
really pivotal meeting in his life, because he met Italian
scientist and astronomer Domenico Maria Navara, who was a professor
at the university and who was also boarding Copernicus. Not
only did this form a close friendship, but it also
undoubtedly influenced Copernicus is thinking about astronomy. Malvara thought differently
(05:25):
than a lot of other astronomers at times, specifically about
the work of Claudius Ptolemy. Novara may have been the
first person Copernicus was exposed to who actually questioned Ptolemy's work,
Which isn't to say that no one else was doing it,
but there wasn't a lot of people doing it, and
they certainly weren't talking about it openly very often. It
(05:46):
was kind of a dangerous subject to bring up. Yeah. Uh.
And he also began learning Greek while he was at Bologna,
which would serve him later on when he began to
study the work of Ptolemy and other Greek astronomers, because
a lot of their work had not been trans lated
into Latin at that time. His ongoing Greek studies included
translating a collection of letters in Greek that were written
(06:07):
by author Aphilactus Semicada, and he would eventually publish his
translation after a decade of work on it, which was
his only other published work outside of his astronomy writing. Ever,
a curious learner, Copernicus also studied medicine for a time.
He attended the University of Padua beginning in fifteen o one,
but he couldn't finish his work there belief of absence
(06:29):
that he had taken to do it actually ended before
he could finish his studies, so he basically ran out
of time. Yeah, he actually didn't finish most of his
educational courses, like he never graduated from any of these schools,
but he got enough learning that he was still considered
pretty much uh adequate, if not expert, in most of
those fields. One of the points of note, however, was
(06:52):
that the study of the heavens was still part of
his curriculum while he was in medical school. Sort of. Uh.
It was at that point its standard to include the
study of astrology in Italy's medical schools. This was in
the early sixteenth century, as medical astrology was at that
time believed to be a valuable diagnostic and treatment tool.
The idea there was that doctors could use their knowledge
(07:15):
of the patient's birthdate to make determinations about their constitution
and to determine courses of treatment based on celestial conditions
at any given time, and to predict how individual cases
and even larger scale issues like epidemics might behave based
on positions of heavenly bodies. So I imagine he did
very well in that course, considering that he probably already
(07:35):
understood how the cosmos is working better than most other students.
But I am just conjecturing there. Even as he tackled
new subjects such as medicine and astronomy. He continued to
study canon law and he attended the University of Ferrara
in fifteen o three to get his doctorate on the subject.
After this, he returns to Poland and lived with his uncle.
(07:56):
He was elderly at this point and required care, who
lived in the bishop's episcopal palace and served as his
uncle's physician while also busying himself with the work of
the church. And while his uncle may have thought that
he was grooming Copernicus to take over the position of bishop,
Copernicus chosen instead to leave the episcopal palace in because
(08:19):
the many jobs that were required of him there were
cutting too deeply into his astronomy studies, which were really
really kind of the focus of his heart. He stayed
at his residence that he moved to in the chapter
of Fromborg for the rest of his life. Those years
living in his uncle's court were formative in terms of
his understanding of the cosmos. He stayed there for seven years,
(08:40):
and throughout he was studying astronomy, although not enough for
his taste. He wanted more. The exact date that he
began working on his heliocentric theory is unknown, but there
have been some theories that his exit from his uncle's
home was concurrent with this idea. And we know that
at some point he came into contact with Epitome of
(09:00):
the Almagest, which was a book written by Reggio Montanas,
who was born Johannes Mueller von Koenigsberg. And that's another
case where we know him as Reggio Montana's because he
took his Latin name for a lot of his publishing
and his his formal training. Uh. Yeah, there are some
theories that he kind of got this idea in his
(09:20):
head about heliocentrism and was like, I gotta get out
of here. I gotta go work on my own stuff
on my own and I can't be focused on everybody
else's needs. Um, and that's what potentially catalyzed his his
desire to move out. Totally different interpretation was that he, uh,
he wanted to start studying a helio centric view of
the universe and his uncle threw him out. M M.
(09:43):
We don't know, and we'll talk a little bit about
why we don't know at the end of the podcast.
But yeah, there's a there's some some some question marks
around sort of what really catalyzed that exit. And we
are going to take a little side trip because we
have to lay some groundwork and talk about Ptolemy and
the Almagest for con text. But first we are going
to pause and have a word from one of our
(10:03):
fantastic sponsors. So at this point, as I said before
the break, we're doing a little side trip. We're going
to talk about Ptolemy. So, working in Alexandria in the
second century, Ptolemy developed a model of the universe that's
called the geocentric or earth centric model. And the idea
(10:23):
of the Ptolemic system was that our planet Earth was
the center of the known universe, and that it was stationary,
and that the Sun, Moon, Stars, and other planets revolved
around it. Beginning from the Earth at the center. Ptolemy's
model placed the Moon in the tightest orbit around the planet,
and then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,
(10:45):
planets beyond that had not yet been identified, yeah, and
then the stars were kind of out past that. And
Ptolemy felt that mathematics could unravel the mysteries of the
movements of the heavenly bodies so while his model was
not correct, he really did make some re the big
strides in terms of analyzing and measuring astronomical data and
how we should be doing it. And keep in mind
(11:05):
he was doing all of this work without the benefit
of a telescope. So over the course of about twenty
five years, Ptolemy made astronomical observations and compiled data, which
culminated in the writing of his book known as The
Almagist circa one fifty uh C. Having studied astronomy, I
want to note that the math and the explanation you
(11:26):
have to come up with to make the movements of
the planet you can see match this theory is freely
convoluted and complicated, like just it's absurd, which is what
really drove a lot of astronomers after him to be like, wait, wait,
something's messed up here. We're having to do a lot
of weirdness to make this model work. Uh, it's bizarre. Um. So,
(11:51):
while there had been some questions and criticism raised about
the accuracy of Ptolemy's observational claims over the centuries, he's
really continued to be lauded throughout history as a math
master mathematician because as I said, the maths required to
explain his planetary model is complicated. Yeah, it makes me
wonder if math wasn't so sort of natural to him
(12:13):
that he was like, oh, we can figure this out.
And it's kind of like if you ever recall doing
proofs in geometry and school, there was all that always
that kid sometimes me that was not smart. But like
I did the proof the long, weird way, and to
me that made more sense than often the shorter way,
because it's like, no, no, that doesn't. I feel like
his was kind of like that, like no, no, no,
we'll just work this out. We'll add in some more
(12:35):
numbers over here and it'll all be fine. But there
was a more elegant way, and that's what people were
intuiting and what drove them to do their work. Uh.
And we have to mention the fact that it wasn't
as though these concepts of celestial arrangement were happening in
big bursts, as one astronomer or another would pick up
the idea and advance things like we have the big
names of astronomy we'll talk about like Ptolemy and Copernicus
(12:58):
and Galileo will come up. It's not as though like
nothing is going on in between the work of any
of these men. They're always entire societies happening. And before
Ptolemy there had been Aristotle who really established the principles
by which classical astronomy was observed, and there were other
Greek astronomers working during the time of Ptolemy. And while
Europe was going through its Middle Ages period, astronomy was
(13:21):
continuing to be studied and advanced in the Islamic world.
So it's always been on the table for scientists and mathematicians,
but we tend to kind of group it in these
big moments associated with certain people. Yeah. Well, and they're
also uh astronomical schools of thought in other parts of
the world too. But what we're talking, yeah, we're What
(13:41):
we're really talking about are the things that uh, that
these these particular scholars would have known about and had
access to Readio Montanas was a fifteenth century astronomer who
had been tasked with writing an abridged version of Ptolemy's Almagists,
But in his work on that prod deck, he recognized
inconsistencies in it, and he proposed alternative models to Mercury's
(14:06):
and Venus's orbits than those that Ptolemy had described. Yes,
as we were saying, he kind of went, this seems
like something's not right. There's a lot of math we
got to do to make this work. There's a whole
thing of like little epicycles within the orbits. It's very
co it's it is, it's very complicated. And so we
had talked before we went into that sidebar about Kapernicus
(14:30):
coming in contact with Reggio Montanus's work, and that work
shaped the way Kapernicus thought about astronomy, and it may
have been the key to the formation of his heliocentric
model of the Solar system. It's pretty widely believed that
sometime by fifteen o eight this approach to modeling the
Solar system was under development by Kapernicus. So, as we said,
he left his uncle's at so somewhere in those two years,
(14:54):
it does seem like he was really starting to feel
like he was onto something. And even as he worked,
he had to have known that this work, which was
a departure from Ptolemy, was radical in nature. Not only
was Ptolemy's view of the heavens a longstanding accepted scientific fact,
it was also what was endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church,
(15:15):
the very same church that employed Copernicus and for which
his uncle was a prominent bishop. Yeah, that seems like
awkwards um. And that employment, though, did continue to make
demands on his time. So even while he was working
all of that astronomy out, he was still serving as canon,
seeing to both the political and administrative and financial issues
(15:39):
for the church. And he even wrote an essay. This
is one of those factoids about him that I think
goes unnoticed a lot. He wrote this essay on the
debasement of currency as it related to coinage, which was
a problem that he constantly ran into while managing funds
as part of his job. And that work that he
wrote was later referenced by leaders in Poland and Prussia
as both of those countries world with their currencies destabilization.
(16:02):
In fifteen twelve, his uncle, the bishop died, and the
following year Copernicus, still devoted to learning more, built himself
an observatory. Yeah, that was completed in fifteen thirteen, and
then the following year he completed writing commentariolists, which translates
to small commentary. And this was not a lengthy tomb
It clocked in at just forty pages, but it gave
(16:24):
a description of what Copernicus believed to be a more
accurate model of the universe than what had come before it,
and he described that in seven axioms. The first was
that there is no one fixed point that is the
center of the universe. The second, which is pretty groundbreaking,
was that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
The third is that the Sun is near the center
(16:46):
of the universe. The fourth is that the distance from
the Earth to the Sun is imperceptible compared with the
distance to the stars, and that the universe was far
more vast than they had ever conceived of before. The
fifth was that the rotation of the Earth is what
accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars. Sixth
(17:08):
was that the apparent annual cycle of movements of the
Sun is in fact caused by the Earth revolving around it.
And the seventh is that the apparent retrograde moved motion
of the planets, so when you're looking at the stars
from the Earth it seems like they are moving backwards
rather than forwards, is caused by the motion of the
Earth from which one is observing, So In addition to
(17:31):
those seven axioms, the Commentariola's hinted that Copernicus was also
going to publish his supporting mathematical formulas for them. He
also indicated that illustrating planetary motion required no more than
thirty four circles, which is a much smaller amount. Astracy
was referencing earlier than what had come before. He wrote
in the short manuscript his reason for breaking with the
(17:53):
accepted Ptolemaic model quote. Yet, the widespread planetary theories advanced
by Ptolemy and most their astronomers, although consistent with the
numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For
these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain
equalizing circles which made the planet appear to move at
(18:14):
all times with uniform velocity, neither on its defferent sphere
nor about its own epicycles center. Therefore, having become aware
of these defects, I often considered whether there could perhaps
be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles from which
every apparent irregularity would be derived, while everything in itself
(18:35):
would move uniformly as is required by the rule of
perfect motion. And this manuscript was circulated by the astronomer
to his colleagues as a sort of precursor to a
larger work than he expected to produce, and at the
time he didn't really get much in the way of
direct response. He didn't get a whole lot of feedback,
but there was certainly talk about him, if not to
(18:57):
him and his work, and the gossip was not particularly good.
His work was seen in the kindest terms as unconventional,
but mostly because it challenged such deeply held beliefs. It
was also considered flat out wrong, and one of the
criticisms that was leveled at his work and his writing
was that it really didn't provide an explanation for the
(19:17):
switch to the Earth to be orbiting around the Sun
when they all knew in their hearts that the Sun
orbited the Earth. He continued to work on astronomy for
the rest of his life, but again it wasn't his
only focus. After having served as his uncle's attending physician,
he continued that role for members of the chapter and
prominent members of the community, and when West Prussia went
(19:40):
to war against the Teutonic Knights in fifteen twenty, he
served in a leadership role it's basically a busy guy. Yeah, yeah,
he um. He had his hand in many pies, so
to speak. And in fifteen thirty nine, Austrian astronomer and
mathematician George Joachi Rheticus visited Copernicus to study a nder him.
(20:00):
He was, if I remember correctly, he was kind of
touring and visiting a number of different scholars. And while
he did learn from Copernicus, Rheticus actually had some pretty
important things to teach Copernicus as well, in particular that
there had been great advancements in printing achieved in Germany,
and he showcased that by bringing mathematical texts with him
that were really really high quality. And Reheticus is credited
(20:23):
with convincing Copernicus that he should in fact publish his
life's work that he had been writing all of these years,
and he eventually supervised getting that book into print. We'll
talk about the last few years of copernicus Is life
and the publication of his life's work after we take
one more quick sponsor break. So, the book on the
(20:46):
Revolution of the Heavenly Spheares had been more or less
completed when Reheticus arrived for his visit to Copernicus in
fifteen thirty nine. It had in fact been complete for
quite some time. And while the issue of acceptance among
scholars in society is often cited as the reason for
hesitation to publish it, on Copernicus part moreover, he really
(21:07):
wasn't convinced that his work was complete. Rheticus wrote an
introductory document titled Naratio prima, in which he described the
contents of On the Revolutions, which published in fifteen forty
This document both uh pre preluded and praised the research
Copernicus had done, and further encouraged him to publish. On
(21:29):
the Revolutions finally did go to print in fifteen forty three,
and Copernicus dedicated the six volume work to Pope Paul
the Third. There's debate over whether he did that just
as sort of a political move to try to curry
favor with the Church, knowing that he was saying some
things that the Church wasn't gonna like or not. But
before the printing was completed, Redicus, who was, as we said,
(21:50):
overseeing all of it, was appointed to a new position,
and that was professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig.
And he had to leave. He couldn't finish the whole thing,
and he the remainder of the project in what he
thought were very safe hands. Those hands belonged to Andreas Osiander.
Andreas Osiander was a mathematician and an astronomer. He was
(22:11):
also a minister and a follower of Martin Luther, who
thought heliocentrism was heretical. So Osiander took advantage of the
fact that Copernicus was quite ill at the time and
that he was in charge of the book, and he
wrote an addition to the book's preface. This addition said quote,
since he, meaning the astronomer, cannot in any way attain
(22:32):
to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable
the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of
geometry for the future as well as for the past.
These hypotheses need not be true nor even probable. This
is one of those things that makes me really mad.
Because this additional text was added to the preface, readers
presumed that Copernicus himself had written it, and it actually
(22:55):
undermined all of the work that had gone into the book.
It was basically saying, well, I was just playing with
theory and fussing with things to try to make the mathwork.
It was basically denouncing all that he had done. And
it was actually decades before this deception of that preface
was uncovered by Johannes Kepler. In the spring of fifte
Copernicus had a stroke and he was, as we just mentioned,
(23:18):
still ailing. When the book was published, Redicus brought a
copy to his deathbed, and when Copernicus died ont three,
he was allegedly holding a volume of the book in
his arms. We're actually coming up on the four seventy
four anniversary of his death in terms of when we
recorded this episode today. Yeah, and so for the next
(23:40):
five decades on, the revolution circulated throughout Europe, and it's
one of those things where Copernicus probably thought it was
gonna cause some problems, but he probably did not see
how big that problem was going to be in terms
of of really starting some battles. It did, however, have
a second printing in fifteen sixty six, and astronomers, of
course and aalized and debated the merits of the solutions
(24:02):
Copernicus had presented to reconcile his issues with the work
of Ptolemy. While Martin Luther had openly denounced the work.
The Roman Catholic Church had never made an official statement.
We don't know what Pope Paul the Third thought of
the astronomy book that was dedicated to him, even though
he even though that dedication was probably done to curry
favor and to try to soften the church's reaction. Allegedly,
(24:25):
one of the Pope's advisors, Potolomeo Spina, was planning to
condemn heliocentrism and the work Copernicus had done, but he
died before he got a chance to do that. Yes,
there was no official statement. So while there had been
much fewer and criticism since the fifteen forties that the
book contradicted scripture, it actually wasn't until sixteen sixteen that
(24:47):
the Roman Catholic Church placed on the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres on the index of Forbidden books. Although it corrected,
and that's in air quotes version was made available to scholars,
it actually stayed on that index until seventeen fifty eight,
and that was about sixty years after much of copernicus
model had become widely accepted by astronomers and scientists. After
(25:10):
revisions by his successors in the field. Of course, while
copernicus is work advanced human kinds of knowledge of the cosmos,
that still had some significant laws. For example, we know
that our star, the Sun, is not the center of
the universe, nor is it near the center of the universe.
And while both Ptolemy and Copernicus developed celestial models that
(25:31):
feature circular planetary orbits, they are now known to be elliptical,
which means you don't need these weird circular orbits with
smaller circular epicycles in them to explain how the planets move. Yeah,
and in many ways, what's really interesting is that Copernicus
does remain a mystery, even though he's been written about
(25:52):
and studied a lot. But most of what's been studied
is his work. We mentioned earlier in the episode that
there's no known date as to when he began working
on his heliocentric theory, and that is because no existing
notes or records of his astronomical work other than those
actual manuscripts, has survived. So even writings of his student
and friend Redicus detailing copernicus life have been lost. So
(26:14):
most of our knowledge is the result of a lot
of painstaking research on the part of historians who have
assembled this puzzle of his life by studying the various
elements of it and of his friends and his friends
letters over time. So that's a big shout out to
historians solving the mysteries of the past. That's Copernicus. Yeah,
(26:35):
it was. It was a step in the right direction
in terms of understanding how solar system works. Yeah, but
not the final step obviously, No. I mean we could
still discover new things. I'm excited all the time about
new discoveries in uh in astronomy. I don't think it's
any secret at this point to anyone who's listening to
(26:55):
the show that I like astronomy a lot. Yeah. I
don't have listener mail per se, although the things I'm
talking about came to us in the mail. But since
we're talking a lot about books today, I thought it
would be cool to mention a couple of authors who
have sent us their work that is really unique and interesting.
One is first a book of fiction I have not
read it yet by writer Brie Spangler called Beast, and
(27:19):
she sent it to us because and she even highlighted
the pages. Uh. One of her characters listens to stuff
you missed in history class. I think, I think the
most charming things. You sent us an email about it before,
and someone who is a fan of those books also
tipped us off to that fact at one point. I
think it was like, I think it was a fan
(27:40):
of that book and not that seems like it would
be weird if there was some other book where someone
also listens to our show. We definitely got an email
that was from our reader that was like, Hey, I'm
reading these books and this character in the books listens
to your show. Yeah. It's so sweet and so charming,
and what a great honor. Um. And it actually mentions
the the Diatlo Past Incident podcast so episode that we did.
(28:03):
So that was super lovely and Bree wrote us a
lovely um note in the front of the book and
it's gorgeous and I can't wait to read it. Um,
So thank you so much. What again, what a tremendous honor.
The other one is uh was sent to us by
Ronald Wimberley, who is an artist and a writer, and
it is a really really cool book that was published
by Image Comics. But it's an actual bookbook, not the
(28:25):
comics aren't book books. But you know what I mean,
it's like a different style. It's not a comic book,
although it is illustrated, and it is black history and
its own words, and it's his really really striking visual
style alongside quotes prominent people throughout history talking about black history,
and it's kind of in this these um these very
(28:46):
short brief little intros with the quotes and the art
and it's really really lovely. Um So, everyone from Audrey
Lord to Lavern Coxes in here and it's absolutely gorgeous,
and thank you, thank you, thank you, because what a
gorgeous work. I hope he's tremendously proud of this. It's
amazing as well as brief should be. I'm authors are
always uh of great uh what's the word I'm looking for.
(29:10):
I always greatly admire authors because that's that's a whole
job that involves a lot of sitting down and being
focused and really sort of a birthing process of thought,
which I love. So thank you so much to both
of them for sharing that work with us. We appreciate
it always. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at house to
works dot com. You can visit us across the spectrum
(29:31):
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(29:53):
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(30:15):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy, I
had an interesting discussion with one of our colleagues recently
where I mentioned this person that we're covering today, and
(00:23):
so no, I'm thinking about doing that, but I'm worried
it will be one of those things that everybody grows
and says, I know that, huh, And she said astronomer
and I said, Okay, we need to do that episode
because it is one of those things that Copernicus has
name recognition. Some people even know some of the basics
(00:43):
of his work, like his big claim to fame historically
is that he placed the Sun more or less at
the center of the Solar system and at the center
of the universe in astronomical modeling. But for the record, uh,
we should point out that he was not the first
person to think of that. That was going on as
far back as the third century BC went as Starkus
of Samos, who was an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer,
(01:04):
made the same assertion. But while Aristarchus is writing on
the sizes and distances of the Sun and moon survived
the perils of time. His work on a heliocentric model
of the solar system did not. So we only know
about that part of of his work because Plutarch referenced
it in his writing. So that's why Copernicus gets a
lot of the attention in this arena, because we have
(01:25):
his writings. Uh. And we're going to talk today about
Copernicus and his life and his work, how his science
was in some ways very dangerous, and there are also
probably some surprising aspects of his life because it was
really a lot more varied than just astronomy. So the
man we eventually came to know as Kapernicus was born
Mikolai Kopernik Uh. He was named after his father and
(01:48):
was born in Taurun, Poland, on February fourteen, seventy three.
As we said, he was named after his father. His
mother's name was Barbara Watson Road. He was their fourth
child wild and the family was quite comfortable. Their family
business wasn't competrating. Yeah, they did quite well. But when
and I'm gonna go ahead and switch to the more
(02:11):
standard pronunciation of his name, Nicolaus Copernicus. It will get
to when he changed that in just a moment, But
when he was still a young boy. In fourteen eight three,
his father died and his maternal uncle, Lucas vatsen Rode,
who would eventually become Bishop of Varmia, took over the
role of patriarch. And this was a really significant turn
of events for Copernicus. Obviously, the loss of a parent
(02:33):
is immense, but it was also important because his uncle
really prized education and made it one of his goals
that Nicolas would be well educated. And he was also
very well respected in the church, and he would use
his position to ensure that Copernicus had a stable career.
At the age of eighteen, Copernicus went to the University
of Krakau, but even though he would become a famous
(02:54):
historical figure in astronomy, his studies also included mathematics and painting.
This was also the period where he made the switch
to using the Latin version of his name that we're
more familiar with. As Latin was the language of European
universities at the time, this was not an uncommon practice,
not as one might originally conclude, a mark of pretentiousness. Yeah,
(03:17):
you'll see parttically a lot of scientists and astronomers like
they'll be listed by a name that sounds like their
Latin name, and then you'll see their their birth name,
which is you know, some as more European or or
whatnotum very very common. So, thanks to his uncle's connections
as well as his own education, Copernicus who got a
job at the Cathedral Chapter and from Bourg as a
(03:39):
canon in fo and the Cathedral Chapter was basically a
corporate entity that managed the various needs and duties and
finances associated with governing the diocese, and the clerics who
worked there served under the bishop in fulfilling that mission.
This was basically an ideal job for Copernicus that allowed
him to continue academic richment with no limitations, although he
(04:02):
had to astend to his duties as his primary focus,
but any free time he had he could devote to study,
and he was able to take leaves of absence to
focus exclusively on learning. Perhaps not surprisingly, he hung onto
this job for the rest of his life. Yeah. I
don't know why, but when I was doing the research
(04:22):
for this, that seemed so sort of mind blowing to
me that can you imagine getting one job when you're eighteen,
and that being your job forever. Yeah, I feel like
my job has been my job forever, even though I
was thirty when I started. Yeah, but that is really
it speaks a lot to his uncle's influence and his
uncle's um ability to kind of set these things up
(04:45):
for him, that he was set for life because of
the work of his uncle. But before he moved into
that position, he spent two years in schooling. So in
four he went to the University of Bologna, where his
uncle had also gone, and he was there to study
religious law, and this made sense given his job, of course,
But this time at Bologna would also lead to a
(05:05):
really pivotal meeting in his life, because he met Italian
scientist and astronomer Domenico Maria Navara, who was a professor
at the university and who was also boarding Copernicus. Not
only did this form a close friendship, but it also
undoubtedly influenced Copernicus is thinking about astronomy. Malvara thought differently
(05:25):
than a lot of other astronomers at times, specifically about
the work of Claudius Ptolemy. Novara may have been the
first person Copernicus was exposed to who actually questioned Ptolemy's work,
Which isn't to say that no one else was doing it,
but there wasn't a lot of people doing it, and
they certainly weren't talking about it openly very often. It
(05:46):
was kind of a dangerous subject to bring up. Yeah. Uh.
And he also began learning Greek while he was at Bologna,
which would serve him later on when he began to
study the work of Ptolemy and other Greek astronomers, because
a lot of their work had not been trans lated
into Latin at that time. His ongoing Greek studies included
translating a collection of letters in Greek that were written
(06:07):
by author Aphilactus Semicada, and he would eventually publish his
translation after a decade of work on it, which was
his only other published work outside of his astronomy writing. Ever,
a curious learner, Copernicus also studied medicine for a time.
He attended the University of Padua beginning in fifteen o one,
but he couldn't finish his work there belief of absence
(06:29):
that he had taken to do it actually ended before
he could finish his studies, so he basically ran out
of time. Yeah, he actually didn't finish most of his
educational courses, like he never graduated from any of these schools,
but he got enough learning that he was still considered
pretty much uh adequate, if not expert, in most of
those fields. One of the points of note, however, was
(06:52):
that the study of the heavens was still part of
his curriculum while he was in medical school. Sort of. Uh.
It was at that point its standard to include the
study of astrology in Italy's medical schools. This was in
the early sixteenth century, as medical astrology was at that
time believed to be a valuable diagnostic and treatment tool.
The idea there was that doctors could use their knowledge
(07:15):
of the patient's birthdate to make determinations about their constitution
and to determine courses of treatment based on celestial conditions
at any given time, and to predict how individual cases
and even larger scale issues like epidemics might behave based
on positions of heavenly bodies. So I imagine he did
very well in that course, considering that he probably already
(07:35):
understood how the cosmos is working better than most other students.
But I am just conjecturing there. Even as he tackled
new subjects such as medicine and astronomy. He continued to
study canon law and he attended the University of Ferrara
in fifteen o three to get his doctorate on the subject.
After this, he returns to Poland and lived with his uncle.
(07:56):
He was elderly at this point and required care, who
lived in the bishop's episcopal palace and served as his
uncle's physician while also busying himself with the work of
the church. And while his uncle may have thought that
he was grooming Copernicus to take over the position of bishop,
Copernicus chosen instead to leave the episcopal palace in because
(08:19):
the many jobs that were required of him there were
cutting too deeply into his astronomy studies, which were really
really kind of the focus of his heart. He stayed
at his residence that he moved to in the chapter
of Fromborg for the rest of his life. Those years
living in his uncle's court were formative in terms of
his understanding of the cosmos. He stayed there for seven years,
(08:40):
and throughout he was studying astronomy, although not enough for
his taste. He wanted more. The exact date that he
began working on his heliocentric theory is unknown, but there
have been some theories that his exit from his uncle's
home was concurrent with this idea. And we know that
at some point he came into contact with Epitome of
(09:00):
the Almagest, which was a book written by Reggio Montanas,
who was born Johannes Mueller von Koenigsberg. And that's another
case where we know him as Reggio Montana's because he
took his Latin name for a lot of his publishing
and his his formal training. Uh. Yeah, there are some
theories that he kind of got this idea in his
(09:20):
head about heliocentrism and was like, I gotta get out
of here. I gotta go work on my own stuff
on my own and I can't be focused on everybody
else's needs. Um, and that's what potentially catalyzed his his
desire to move out. Totally different interpretation was that he, uh,
he wanted to start studying a helio centric view of
the universe and his uncle threw him out. M M.
(09:43):
We don't know, and we'll talk a little bit about
why we don't know at the end of the podcast.
But yeah, there's a there's some some some question marks
around sort of what really catalyzed that exit. And we
are going to take a little side trip because we
have to lay some groundwork and talk about Ptolemy and
the Almagest for con text. But first we are going
to pause and have a word from one of our
(10:03):
fantastic sponsors. So at this point, as I said before
the break, we're doing a little side trip. We're going
to talk about Ptolemy. So, working in Alexandria in the
second century, Ptolemy developed a model of the universe that's
called the geocentric or earth centric model. And the idea
(10:23):
of the Ptolemic system was that our planet Earth was
the center of the known universe, and that it was stationary,
and that the Sun, Moon, Stars, and other planets revolved
around it. Beginning from the Earth at the center. Ptolemy's
model placed the Moon in the tightest orbit around the planet,
and then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn,
(10:45):
planets beyond that had not yet been identified, yeah, and
then the stars were kind of out past that. And
Ptolemy felt that mathematics could unravel the mysteries of the
movements of the heavenly bodies so while his model was
not correct, he really did make some re the big
strides in terms of analyzing and measuring astronomical data and
how we should be doing it. And keep in mind
(11:05):
he was doing all of this work without the benefit
of a telescope. So over the course of about twenty
five years, Ptolemy made astronomical observations and compiled data, which
culminated in the writing of his book known as The
Almagist circa one fifty uh C. Having studied astronomy, I
want to note that the math and the explanation you
(11:26):
have to come up with to make the movements of
the planet you can see match this theory is freely
convoluted and complicated, like just it's absurd, which is what
really drove a lot of astronomers after him to be like, wait, wait,
something's messed up here. We're having to do a lot
of weirdness to make this model work. Uh, it's bizarre. Um. So,
(11:51):
while there had been some questions and criticism raised about
the accuracy of Ptolemy's observational claims over the centuries, he's
really continued to be lauded throughout history as a math
master mathematician because as I said, the maths required to
explain his planetary model is complicated. Yeah, it makes me
wonder if math wasn't so sort of natural to him
(12:13):
that he was like, oh, we can figure this out.
And it's kind of like if you ever recall doing
proofs in geometry and school, there was all that always
that kid sometimes me that was not smart. But like
I did the proof the long, weird way, and to
me that made more sense than often the shorter way,
because it's like, no, no, that doesn't. I feel like
his was kind of like that, like no, no, no,
we'll just work this out. We'll add in some more
(12:35):
numbers over here and it'll all be fine. But there
was a more elegant way, and that's what people were
intuiting and what drove them to do their work. Uh.
And we have to mention the fact that it wasn't
as though these concepts of celestial arrangement were happening in
big bursts, as one astronomer or another would pick up
the idea and advance things like we have the big
names of astronomy we'll talk about like Ptolemy and Copernicus
(12:58):
and Galileo will come up. It's not as though like
nothing is going on in between the work of any
of these men. They're always entire societies happening. And before
Ptolemy there had been Aristotle who really established the principles
by which classical astronomy was observed, and there were other
Greek astronomers working during the time of Ptolemy. And while
Europe was going through its Middle Ages period, astronomy was
(13:21):
continuing to be studied and advanced in the Islamic world.
So it's always been on the table for scientists and mathematicians,
but we tend to kind of group it in these
big moments associated with certain people. Yeah. Well, and they're
also uh astronomical schools of thought in other parts of
the world too. But what we're talking, yeah, we're What
(13:41):
we're really talking about are the things that uh, that
these these particular scholars would have known about and had
access to Readio Montanas was a fifteenth century astronomer who
had been tasked with writing an abridged version of Ptolemy's Almagists,
But in his work on that prod deck, he recognized
inconsistencies in it, and he proposed alternative models to Mercury's
(14:06):
and Venus's orbits than those that Ptolemy had described. Yes,
as we were saying, he kind of went, this seems
like something's not right. There's a lot of math we
got to do to make this work. There's a whole
thing of like little epicycles within the orbits. It's very
co it's it is, it's very complicated. And so we
had talked before we went into that sidebar about Kapernicus
(14:30):
coming in contact with Reggio Montanus's work, and that work
shaped the way Kapernicus thought about astronomy, and it may
have been the key to the formation of his heliocentric
model of the Solar system. It's pretty widely believed that
sometime by fifteen o eight this approach to modeling the
Solar system was under development by Kapernicus. So, as we said,
he left his uncle's at so somewhere in those two years,
(14:54):
it does seem like he was really starting to feel
like he was onto something. And even as he worked,
he had to have known that this work, which was
a departure from Ptolemy, was radical in nature. Not only
was Ptolemy's view of the heavens a longstanding accepted scientific fact,
it was also what was endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church,
(15:15):
the very same church that employed Copernicus and for which
his uncle was a prominent bishop. Yeah, that seems like
awkwards um. And that employment, though, did continue to make
demands on his time. So even while he was working
all of that astronomy out, he was still serving as canon,
seeing to both the political and administrative and financial issues
(15:39):
for the church. And he even wrote an essay. This
is one of those factoids about him that I think
goes unnoticed a lot. He wrote this essay on the
debasement of currency as it related to coinage, which was
a problem that he constantly ran into while managing funds
as part of his job. And that work that he
wrote was later referenced by leaders in Poland and Prussia
as both of those countries world with their currencies destabilization.
(16:02):
In fifteen twelve, his uncle, the bishop died, and the
following year Copernicus, still devoted to learning more, built himself
an observatory. Yeah, that was completed in fifteen thirteen, and
then the following year he completed writing commentariolists, which translates
to small commentary. And this was not a lengthy tomb
It clocked in at just forty pages, but it gave
(16:24):
a description of what Copernicus believed to be a more
accurate model of the universe than what had come before it,
and he described that in seven axioms. The first was
that there is no one fixed point that is the
center of the universe. The second, which is pretty groundbreaking,
was that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
The third is that the Sun is near the center
(16:46):
of the universe. The fourth is that the distance from
the Earth to the Sun is imperceptible compared with the
distance to the stars, and that the universe was far
more vast than they had ever conceived of before. The
fifth was that the rotation of the Earth is what
accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars. Sixth
(17:08):
was that the apparent annual cycle of movements of the
Sun is in fact caused by the Earth revolving around it.
And the seventh is that the apparent retrograde moved motion
of the planets, so when you're looking at the stars
from the Earth it seems like they are moving backwards
rather than forwards, is caused by the motion of the
Earth from which one is observing, So In addition to
(17:31):
those seven axioms, the Commentariola's hinted that Copernicus was also
going to publish his supporting mathematical formulas for them. He
also indicated that illustrating planetary motion required no more than
thirty four circles, which is a much smaller amount. Astracy
was referencing earlier than what had come before. He wrote
in the short manuscript his reason for breaking with the
(17:53):
accepted Ptolemaic model quote. Yet, the widespread planetary theories advanced
by Ptolemy and most their astronomers, although consistent with the
numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For
these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain
equalizing circles which made the planet appear to move at
(18:14):
all times with uniform velocity, neither on its defferent sphere
nor about its own epicycles center. Therefore, having become aware
of these defects, I often considered whether there could perhaps
be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles from which
every apparent irregularity would be derived, while everything in itself
(18:35):
would move uniformly as is required by the rule of
perfect motion. And this manuscript was circulated by the astronomer
to his colleagues as a sort of precursor to a
larger work than he expected to produce, and at the
time he didn't really get much in the way of
direct response. He didn't get a whole lot of feedback,
but there was certainly talk about him, if not to
(18:57):
him and his work, and the gossip was not particularly good.
His work was seen in the kindest terms as unconventional,
but mostly because it challenged such deeply held beliefs. It
was also considered flat out wrong, and one of the
criticisms that was leveled at his work and his writing
was that it really didn't provide an explanation for the
(19:17):
switch to the Earth to be orbiting around the Sun
when they all knew in their hearts that the Sun
orbited the Earth. He continued to work on astronomy for
the rest of his life, but again it wasn't his
only focus. After having served as his uncle's attending physician,
he continued that role for members of the chapter and
prominent members of the community, and when West Prussia went
(19:40):
to war against the Teutonic Knights in fifteen twenty, he
served in a leadership role it's basically a busy guy. Yeah, yeah,
he um. He had his hand in many pies, so
to speak. And in fifteen thirty nine, Austrian astronomer and
mathematician George Joachi Rheticus visited Copernicus to study a nder him.
(20:00):
He was, if I remember correctly, he was kind of
touring and visiting a number of different scholars. And while
he did learn from Copernicus, Rheticus actually had some pretty
important things to teach Copernicus as well, in particular that
there had been great advancements in printing achieved in Germany,
and he showcased that by bringing mathematical texts with him
that were really really high quality. And Reheticus is credited
(20:23):
with convincing Copernicus that he should in fact publish his
life's work that he had been writing all of these years,
and he eventually supervised getting that book into print. We'll
talk about the last few years of copernicus Is life
and the publication of his life's work after we take
one more quick sponsor break. So, the book on the
(20:46):
Revolution of the Heavenly Spheares had been more or less
completed when Reheticus arrived for his visit to Copernicus in
fifteen thirty nine. It had in fact been complete for
quite some time. And while the issue of acceptance among
scholars in society is often cited as the reason for
hesitation to publish it, on Copernicus part moreover, he really
(21:07):
wasn't convinced that his work was complete. Rheticus wrote an
introductory document titled Naratio prima, in which he described the
contents of On the Revolutions, which published in fifteen forty
This document both uh pre preluded and praised the research
Copernicus had done, and further encouraged him to publish. On
(21:29):
the Revolutions finally did go to print in fifteen forty three,
and Copernicus dedicated the six volume work to Pope Paul
the Third. There's debate over whether he did that just
as sort of a political move to try to curry
favor with the Church, knowing that he was saying some
things that the Church wasn't gonna like or not. But
before the printing was completed, Redicus, who was, as we said,
(21:50):
overseeing all of it, was appointed to a new position,
and that was professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig.
And he had to leave. He couldn't finish the whole thing,
and he the remainder of the project in what he
thought were very safe hands. Those hands belonged to Andreas Osiander.
Andreas Osiander was a mathematician and an astronomer. He was
(22:11):
also a minister and a follower of Martin Luther, who
thought heliocentrism was heretical. So Osiander took advantage of the
fact that Copernicus was quite ill at the time and
that he was in charge of the book, and he
wrote an addition to the book's preface. This addition said quote,
since he, meaning the astronomer, cannot in any way attain
(22:32):
to the true causes, he will adopt whatever suppositions enable
the motions to be computed correctly from the principles of
geometry for the future as well as for the past.
These hypotheses need not be true nor even probable. This
is one of those things that makes me really mad.
Because this additional text was added to the preface, readers
presumed that Copernicus himself had written it, and it actually
(22:55):
undermined all of the work that had gone into the book.
It was basically saying, well, I was just playing with
theory and fussing with things to try to make the mathwork.
It was basically denouncing all that he had done. And
it was actually decades before this deception of that preface
was uncovered by Johannes Kepler. In the spring of fifte
Copernicus had a stroke and he was, as we just mentioned,
(23:18):
still ailing. When the book was published, Redicus brought a
copy to his deathbed, and when Copernicus died ont three,
he was allegedly holding a volume of the book in
his arms. We're actually coming up on the four seventy
four anniversary of his death in terms of when we
recorded this episode today. Yeah, and so for the next
(23:40):
five decades on, the revolution circulated throughout Europe, and it's
one of those things where Copernicus probably thought it was
gonna cause some problems, but he probably did not see
how big that problem was going to be in terms
of of really starting some battles. It did, however, have
a second printing in fifteen sixty six, and astronomers, of
course and aalized and debated the merits of the solutions
(24:02):
Copernicus had presented to reconcile his issues with the work
of Ptolemy. While Martin Luther had openly denounced the work.
The Roman Catholic Church had never made an official statement.
We don't know what Pope Paul the Third thought of
the astronomy book that was dedicated to him, even though
he even though that dedication was probably done to curry
favor and to try to soften the church's reaction. Allegedly,
(24:25):
one of the Pope's advisors, Potolomeo Spina, was planning to
condemn heliocentrism and the work Copernicus had done, but he
died before he got a chance to do that. Yes,
there was no official statement. So while there had been
much fewer and criticism since the fifteen forties that the
book contradicted scripture, it actually wasn't until sixteen sixteen that
(24:47):
the Roman Catholic Church placed on the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres on the index of Forbidden books. Although it corrected,
and that's in air quotes version was made available to scholars,
it actually stayed on that index until seventeen fifty eight,
and that was about sixty years after much of copernicus
model had become widely accepted by astronomers and scientists. After
(25:10):
revisions by his successors in the field. Of course, while
copernicus is work advanced human kinds of knowledge of the cosmos,
that still had some significant laws. For example, we know
that our star, the Sun, is not the center of
the universe, nor is it near the center of the universe.
And while both Ptolemy and Copernicus developed celestial models that
(25:31):
feature circular planetary orbits, they are now known to be elliptical,
which means you don't need these weird circular orbits with
smaller circular epicycles in them to explain how the planets move. Yeah,
and in many ways, what's really interesting is that Copernicus
does remain a mystery, even though he's been written about
(25:52):
and studied a lot. But most of what's been studied
is his work. We mentioned earlier in the episode that
there's no known date as to when he began working
on his heliocentric theory, and that is because no existing
notes or records of his astronomical work other than those
actual manuscripts, has survived. So even writings of his student
and friend Redicus detailing copernicus life have been lost. So
(26:14):
most of our knowledge is the result of a lot
of painstaking research on the part of historians who have
assembled this puzzle of his life by studying the various
elements of it and of his friends and his friends
letters over time. So that's a big shout out to
historians solving the mysteries of the past. That's Copernicus. Yeah,
(26:35):
it was. It was a step in the right direction
in terms of understanding how solar system works. Yeah, but
not the final step obviously, No. I mean we could
still discover new things. I'm excited all the time about
new discoveries in uh in astronomy. I don't think it's
any secret at this point to anyone who's listening to
(26:55):
the show that I like astronomy a lot. Yeah. I
don't have listener mail per se, although the things I'm
talking about came to us in the mail. But since
we're talking a lot about books today, I thought it
would be cool to mention a couple of authors who
have sent us their work that is really unique and interesting.
One is first a book of fiction I have not
read it yet by writer Brie Spangler called Beast, and
(27:19):
she sent it to us because and she even highlighted
the pages. Uh. One of her characters listens to stuff
you missed in history class. I think, I think the
most charming things. You sent us an email about it before,
and someone who is a fan of those books also
tipped us off to that fact at one point. I
think it was like, I think it was a fan
(27:40):
of that book and not that seems like it would
be weird if there was some other book where someone
also listens to our show. We definitely got an email
that was from our reader that was like, Hey, I'm
reading these books and this character in the books listens
to your show. Yeah. It's so sweet and so charming,
and what a great honor. Um. And it actually mentions
the the Diatlo Past Incident podcast so episode that we did.
(28:03):
So that was super lovely and Bree wrote us a
lovely um note in the front of the book and
it's gorgeous and I can't wait to read it. Um,
So thank you so much. What again, what a tremendous honor.
The other one is uh was sent to us by
Ronald Wimberley, who is an artist and a writer, and
it is a really really cool book that was published
by Image Comics. But it's an actual bookbook, not the
(28:25):
comics aren't book books. But you know what I mean,
it's like a different style. It's not a comic book,
although it is illustrated, and it is black history and
its own words, and it's his really really striking visual
style alongside quotes prominent people throughout history talking about black history,
and it's kind of in this these um these very
(28:46):
short brief little intros with the quotes and the art
and it's really really lovely. Um So, everyone from Audrey
Lord to Lavern Coxes in here and it's absolutely gorgeous,
and thank you, thank you, thank you, because what a
gorgeous work. I hope he's tremendously proud of this. It's
amazing as well as brief should be. I'm authors are
always uh of great uh what's the word I'm looking for.
(29:10):
I always greatly admire authors because that's that's a whole
job that involves a lot of sitting down and being
focused and really sort of a birthing process of thought,
which I love. So thank you so much to both
of them for sharing that work with us. We appreciate
it always. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at house to
works dot com. You can visit us across the spectrum
(29:31):
of social media as missed in History, so that includes
Twitter as missed in History, Facebook dot com, slash missed
in History, missed in History, dot tumbler dot com. We're
on Instagram as missed in History, and we're on pinterest
as missed in History. If you would like to come
and visit our parents site that's how stuff Works, you
could go there Houston Works dot com. Type in the
word astronomy in the search bar. You're gonna get so
(29:53):
much stuff to look at. UH. You can also visit
me and Tracy at missed in History dot com. Or
we have back episodes of every show we have ever done,
both us and previous hosts, as well as show notes
for the episodes Tracy and I have worked on. We
include those show notes now in the UH in the
show page, so it's all in one handy place. So
we encourage you come and visit us at misston history
(30:15):
dot com and how stuff Works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com
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