Sane people right now are celebrating Valentine's Day. I am holed up trying to read Nicholas Copernicus's On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium). Having been an official student of the history of science for two weeks now, and not feeling particularly satisfied with my progress, I've decided it is far past time for me to cast aside Ptolemaic and Aristotelian things, and enter the modern world. I'll have plenty more to say about the experience of reading Copernicus once I've gotten somewhere. And after Copernicus, it's Galileo. But for now, here's an invitation: Anyone care to read along? The image links to the version I'm working from, a paperback with an introduction by Stephen Hawking. If you ever wanted to experience how radically strange--and yet strangely modern--the granddaddy of the scientific revolution's great work is, now's the time!
