| Summary: | The publication of <i>De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium</i> by Nicholas Copernicus in 1543 exerted major intellectual and disciplinary effects on the field of astronomy. By promoting a heliocentric view of the world, and not merely offering a series of technical improvements to cosmology, Copernicus also affirmed the need for scholars to have mathematical expertise in that part of astronomy that dealt with the physical reality of the heavens. “Mathematics is written for mathematicians” (<i>Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur</i>) became a rallying cry for later Copernicans, which recognized in this claim a sort of Pythagorean heritage. Indeed, in the preface of <i>De Revolutionibus</i>, Copernicus had unequivocally depicted himself as a staunch Pythagorean, declaring his original unwillingness to publish his work to avoid the comments of the “babblers” – or the unlearned.
This work examines the institutional impact of Copernicus’s demand for technical expertise. As numerous scholars have shown, his statement was effectively a plea for astronomers to speak authoritatively in areas that had previously been the preserve of natural philosophers. However, I argue, it also inaugurated a new template for the relationship between master and disciple, a structure that would constitute the foundations underpinning the successful transmission of varieties of the “new philosophy”. As Copernicus claimed, it was only on the insistence of his disciple, the young mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus, that he agreed to publish his work. The doctrine was recondite, difficult to acquire in its detail, and because of its unorthodoxy, easily misunderstood by any but the select few.
The case of Copernicus represents the starting point of my doctoral research. In the decades following the publication of <i>De Revolutionibus</i>, novel discipleship practices became essential to the development and spread of what became known generically as the “new philosophy”. In this context, my work explores the fundamental role that the emergence of post-Copernican discipleship relations played in the achievements of the great new <i>auctores</i> Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. The analysis of these four cases offers a kaleidoscopic view of the evolution of the master-disciple relationship in astronomy and natural philosophy from 1530 to 1720, and highlights how different social, religious, and political contexts shaped this process both inside and outside the university.
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