A first edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestrium, owned by Cornell Library.
Copernicus published his book on his deathbed in 1543 at the urging of his assistant Georg Joachim Rheticus. Although in 1514 he had already distributed Commentariolus (Little Commentary), a short text describing his heliocentric theory, he was still nervous about the reception of De Revolutionibus – especially by the Church. He shouldn’t have worried; although against Copernicus’s wishes Andreas Osiander added an anonymous preface that implied that the book was just a mathematical hypothesis, and not a serious heliocentric theory. This preface is mostly likely why De Revolutionibus was not forbidden by the Church for over thirty years. In the Middle Ages philosophers debated the cosmological interpretations, and astronomers dealt with the math, which was somehow removed from the actual arrangement of the solar system.
Book I: dedication to Pope Paul III, general heliocentric theory, and a short
explanation
Book II: principles of astronomy and a star list which serves as
data for later books
Book III: movements of the Sun
Book IV: movements and
orbitals of the Moon
Book V/VI: full explanation of the heliocentric
theory
