The Copernican Question: Or, the Lower the Stakes the Greater the Vitriol

 This Fall semester, I completed a seminar on astrology from the Middle Ages to the early 17th century.  The seminar was led by the amazing Mike Shank, a medievalist focusing on the history of astronomy.  We ended the course by reading a chunk of Robert Westman's The Copernican Question.    Put simply, Westman's thesis is that Copernicus' heliocentric astronomy was motivated by a desire to reform astrology in the face of criticism by several influential writers.  On its face, this thesis seems plausible, but in the highly specialized academic worlds of the history of astronomy and the Scientific Revolution it raised many red flags.  Indeed, Westman attempts to build the case for Copernicus' motivations using a modified argument from silence.  Copernicus wrote little to nothing on astrology himself, though he did practice astrology and associated with various astrologers in Bologna. At the risk of oversimplification, Westman seems to argue that despite Copernicus' own silence on astrology, the fact that he worked in a scientific context in which astrology was dominant is sufficient to prove that Copernicus' Heliocentrism was an attempt to reform astrology.  This summary might distort Westmam somewhat--but it captures the flawed logic that bothered everyone in the seminar.

But what really struck about The Copernican Question was the critical response to the book.  Alongside a significant chunk of the book, we read a set of reviews.  They were universally negative, not surprising given the flawed logic that everyone picked up on.  What I did not expect to read were the almost comically snarky and mean tone of the reviews by John L. Heilbron and Noel Swerdlow.  Both Heilbronn and Swerdlow are distinguished historians of science and noted experts in their fields. Both point to legitimate flaws in Westman's use of sources, his translations, and grasp of the astronomical material.  Yet these historical questions were overshadowed by their ad hominum attacks on Westman's writing style and Westman's equally defensive and unpleasant reply to their reviews.  Heilbron basically implies that Westman was an incompetent and sloppy translator, representative of the overall decline in the rigor of historical research.  Similarly, Swerdlow suggests that Westman has no grasp of mathematical astronomy and is therefore unqualified to really say anything about Copernicus' work.  Westman has responded both to these reviews and others by trying to shift focus to other parts of the book, arguing that critics have unfairly singled out the material dealing with Copernicus, which is just one part of a 600 page book.  

Several of my fellow seminar students agreed that if this is what it meant to be an academic, then they wanted no part. Our reaction might help explain why the humanities often has such a difficult job engaging the public.  Reading Nicholas Kristoff's recent op-ed on the declining relevance of academics condemns a lot of what those reviews represent.  In my mind, the history of science is filled with questions that are not only intrinsically interesting but relevant to society.  Westman's question about Copernicus' motivation not only raises questions about what drives scientists to embrace new theories but also touches on how a scientist's social context shapes his or her work.  These are hardly obscure or elitist issues.  But a non-specialist reading these reviews can be forgiven for thinking that the debate is just another irrelevant and pretentious debate on an obscure historical issue.  Even with all of the emphasis on the importance of STEM fields, I find it difficult to convince people that the history of science is not only fascinating but actually matters.  While the persistent obscurity of the history of science as a discipline might result partly from the dwindling number of departments and declining funding, it also stems from a failure by historians of science to make their work relevant to the public.  Certainly, topics like the history of astrology will always only draw a limited audience (in the seminar, we were 9 souls strong).  But even studying a supposedly "dead" science like astrology raises important questions about what counts as a science, how standards for successful theories change, etc.  Turning legitimate historical debates into intellectual pissing contests just reinforces the apparent obscurity and irrelevance of history to the "real world."