In Our Time - Tycho Brahe

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) whose charts offered an unprecedented level of accuracy.In 1572 Brahe's observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. He went on to create his own observatory complex on the Danish island of Hven, and there, working before the invention of the telescope, he developed innovative instruments and gathered a team of assistants, taking a highly systematic approach to observation. A second, smaller source of renown was his metal prosthetic nose, which he needed after a serious injury sustained in a duel. The image above shows Brahe aged 40, from the Atlas Major by Johann Blaeu. With Ole Grell Emeritus Professor in Early Modern History at the Open University Adam Mosley Associate Professor of History at Swansea University and Emma Perkins Affiliate Scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, Tico Brahe, 1546 to 1601, was born into a powerful Danish aristocratic family and was destined for the conventional life of a nobleman. But as a young man, he started studying the heavens,

and he's now regarded as one of the great figures in the history of astronomy, even though he was working without telescopes which hadn't yet been invented. In 1572, his observations of a new star challenged the idea, inherited from Aristotle, that the heavens were unchanging. Later, his theory of the structure of the universe appealed to scholars who knew that the ancient model was wrong, but who still wanted to support the Catholic Church's stance that the sun orbited the earth, and not the other way,

ground. He's also remembered for his colourful life, his nose was cut off in a duel. With me to discuss DiCobrahe are Olegrelle, Emeritus Professor in Early Modern History at the Open University, Adam Mosley, Associate Professor of History at Swansea University, and Emma Perkins, affiliate scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Oleg, what's the political and religious situation in Denmark at the time that Brahe was born? Well, Tycho Bras was born 10 years after the Lutheran Reformation had been introduced in Denmark. And it's worth remembering that that was after three years of civil war. So a relatively traumatic period where especially the noble families had been split between the Catholic supporters and the Lutheran supporters.

The Brough family were all Lutherans, so to speak. Because of the Civil War, there were not much money available initially to develop university and other educational avenues apart from the Latin schools. And I mentioned those because they become quite significant in RAS education. So we talk about the most being come from our Iraqi-Cradic family. did that mean he had access to unusual ways of developing his life that were not available to most people? Well, he was certainly different from the average person, if you could talk about the average person. You wouldn't expect him to have a university career that would have been out of the question, as would university exams.

He was expected to go into the royal administration and hopefully get some of the most important royal feasts, which would create for him a lot of money and influence. What made him switch his ambition? Well, that is, of course, anyone's guess. I mean, Pierre Garcendi, who wrote the first biography in 1654, Bra, blamed that it was the eclipse in 1560. But there's no evidence for that. So what's your suggestion?

I think it was a gradual approach. he started taking an interest which was reinforced by his education and travels. And as always with influences, it's very difficult to determine where they came in. But certainly by the end of what you would call his grand tour, there's no doubt that his interest in astronomy and astrology is very central to him. It's quite a long way, isn't it, from astrology and astronomy. to where he started from as a courtyard. So we can't think of any reason he went in that direction

except developed a taste for it. I mean, if you look at his life, he was in many of his contacts and directions on usual. His merits was completely unusual. His other lifestyle was clearly he mixed with people who were learned rather than people who belong to his own class. Adam Mosley, he attended classes at a number of universities in Denmark and Germany. What's significant about it that all these were Lutheran?

So the curricula of the Lutheran universities had been transformed as a consequence of the Reformation. And the man responsible of that was Philip Belangton, who was Martin Luther's closest associate general reformation at Wittenberg. And Melancton placed actually quite a lot of importance upon the study of the heavens. So for Melancton, study of astronomy and astrology could be considered to be part of natural philosophy. So Elancton believed in the idea of causal effects on the earth from the heavens, and he saw all of that as part of the divine providential ordering of the universe. And for Melanchthon, one of the reasons why it was important to study the heavens was that that demonstrated that God had created an orderly cosmos.

And for Melanchthon, that conveyed an important lesson that the social order was also intended by God. And it was a message against rebellion and against revolt. So Melanchthon placed a great old emphasis upon the study of these subjects in the curricula as part of natural philosophy. And that contributed to the promotion of the study of astronomy and astrology in these universities that were reformed along Lutheran lines. So in order to know heaven, they had to know the heavens. Yes, although it wasn't quite as straightforward as being able to learn about God through studying the heavens. It was a kind of indirect route to knowledge of God's creation, which itself implied things about God's intention for the world. world. When he was growing up, the mainstream understanding of the structure of the heavens was the

Ptolemaic system. Can you describe when that came into effect? Why it was held so powerfully for one and a half thousand years? So we call it the Ptolemaic system after the late antique Alexandria astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. But the underpinnings are Aristotelian. So there's a philosophical dimension to this notion of the cosmos, as well as the mathematics of the models, the astronomical models. So the principle of course is that the Earth is at the center of the universe and all the celestial bodies

from the moon through the planets up to the stars are in motion around the stationary Earth at the center. And that is a fundamental basic conceptualization of the cosmos that rests on Aristotelian philosophical

underpinnings. But didn't Aristotle say that the universe was unchanging? Yes, but the circular motion of the heavenly bodies was not change as far as Aristotle was concerned. So motion in the heavens, circular motion was part of his understanding of the universe, but not the generation or corruption of new celestial bodies. So we accepted that and took that on, and the Catholic Church later took it on emphatically. Yes, so there were a number of reasons why the Ptolemaic vision or the Aristotian-Tolomac vision fitted

with Catholic doctrine. Principally it had to do with how the Bible was interpreted. And at the point in the 17th century, when this became most contested, about who should be interpreting the Bible? And that generated some difficulties for individuals who were not Catholic theologians who wanted to argue in favor of an alternative

to the Ptolemaic vision of the universe. Emma Perkins, which Copernicus did, In 1543, he proposed a heliocentric system with the Earth going around the sun. How did that come about and what impact did it have? Yeah, so Copernicus published his heliocentric system in 1543, as you say, in Derevolutionibus. This placed the sun at the centre of the universe with the planets orbiting the sun. So crucially, the Earth has become one of the planets. It's worth bearing in mind that Copernicus himself didn't present this as radically new.

fact he sought to situate it in ancient precedent. So whilst Ptolemy had suggested the Earth was at the centre of the universe, he cited other Greek authors that had proposed the sun at the centre. So his heliocentric system was controversial on a number of levels. So there were physical objections to the system, one being that the earth is too heavy and sluggish to move. And also that if the earth is moving, we would presumably all fall off. But there were also theological objections. So scriptural passages suggesting the stability of the earth, but also a kind of central premise in Christian theology of man's privileged place in God's creation.

So the uptake of the system is relatively slow in the 16th century. It's predominantly taken as a mathematical model. It's very influential in terms of predicting planetary positions, but the physical reality of the system is not really taken up until the later work of people like Kepler and Galileo around the turn of the 17th century. So perhaps less revolutionary than we might imagine when it was published in 1543.

But what was a reaction in 1543? It still must have been some sort of reaction. Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, it was able to predict planetary positions with a kind of better degree of accuracy. So it was very useful for practical applications of astronomy. So things like determining the dates of the calendar. So very useful for the church.

Because of a traditional distinction between astronomy as the mathematics of heavenly motion and natural philosophy as the physics of heavenly motion, Copernicas didn't really fall foul of the Catholic Church until the work of later astronomers when the physical reality of the system begins to be kind of seriously considered. So things went along without this radical discovery

or revelation being thought of as radical? I would say it's more... He was very influential in astronomical circles, but it didn't overhaul the general understanding of the cosmos, which remained Ptolemaic for the most part because of the philosophical underpinnings, the Aristotelian underpinnings, that most people subscribed to. That the earth was the centre of the universe and everything went around there.

Absolutely. Yes. In 1572, he observed a new star. Why was that important for him and for everybody else? So Tico observed the new star when he was at his uncle's estate in Herevod Abbey. And as Adam outlined, the celestial realm was supposed to be unchanging. So citing this new star goes against that foundational aracetylion axiom. So Tico measures this new star.

How does he do that? Using a variety of non-teloscopic instruments, so particularly using a radius or cross-star, he is able to measure it relative to its neighbouring stars. And he's also looking for any discernible parallax, which would indicate that it's moving relative to the sphere of the fixed stars. Well, it's hard you as mathematics, isn't it? It is. Yes, absolutely.

And he is a mathematician. That is what he is trained as as an astronomer, but he's also asking natural philosophical questions about where is this star located? So through his measurements, he is able to determine that the star is superlunary, i. above the moon, in this realm that is purportedly perfect and unchanging. So the significance of the new star is the,

it really challenges some of those foundational Aristotelian principles of natural philosophy. And it's significant for Tico himself because he cites this as a kind of epiphany moment for him where he decides to dedicate his life to astronomy. Prior to this time, he had been engaged in astronomy, but he was also doing a lot of alchemy, whereas he sees this as his sign to focus principally on the stars and begin a reform of astronomy. starting from the observations. Is you learning this? Does he have fellows along the way?

No, so there are a lot of commentators on the new star. Some place it below the sphere of the moon, i.e. in the realm of the terrestrial of corruption and change, but a lot are placing it above the sphere of the moon. And it's really his tract on the new star that kind of cements his authority, I guess, as an astronomer, as a serious astronomer who is now engaged in this.

this conversation about the nature of the universe. Alder, could you explain clearly the geo-heliocentric system? Yes, this was, of course, Tycho's way of dealing with both the Petrolemaic system and the Copernian system, and it was very much conceived by him around 1583. And it was based on his observations of the supernova or the new star in 1572 and the 1577 comet, which convinced him that the Portolomache system as such could not stand. At the same time, he has his doubts about Copernicus' system. So he basically came up an idea that the deocentrism could be maintained with the sun,

and the moon circling the earth, whereas the rest of the planets would circulate the sun. The reason why he ended up with this system has generally been assumed to be the underestimating of the distances to the stars. But of course, it was a convenient system in the sense that it also fitted the kind of the biblical system, so to speak. From the Bible, it was naturally assumed that the earth was the center of the universe. That is the way the creation is described. And therefore, for someone like Tycho who's grown up with that background, it would have been, in my opinion, very difficult for him to give it up. On the other hand, he had a long line of observations which contradicted it in one way of another, but still lacking some data, he

constructed this system, which I gather had supporters way until Kepler eventually came up with a proper heliocentric system. Thank you. Adam Mosley, can we talk about the support he got for this and how this permeated the area of study? I presume only a very few people who were engaged in, but how he did permeate this area of study. Yes, so during his travels, his youthful travels, which I refer to as a kind of grand tour, which took him around. Lutheran universities, but also not only, I mean, he did go further south. He visited Italy briefly. He also spent some time in Basel. And he thought that he would have to leave Denmark in order to pursue his dream of an astronomical career. Because of persecution?

No, not because of persecution per se, but because it didn't fit with the traditional occupation of a nobleman. And because he thought that he would be able to find a location, and he mentions Basel specifically, where he would be able to engage in correspondence with a wider network, where he would be able to find the resources to pursue his observational reform of astronomy. But the news reaches King Frederick II of Denmark that Ticabri is thinking of leaving, and so Frederick makes Ticabriah an offer, which is to support his astronomical and that I think legitimizes for Ticabrahe this pursuit as a kind of career for a nobleman. But that support also is tangible.

So that includes financial support in the form of lands and offices that bring income. And crucially, it also takes the form of the island of Thien, which is granted to Ticabribe. That's between Denmark and Sweden. Between Denmark and what is modern day Sweden. Both sides were Danish in the 16th century. And that is a place that is close to court, but not troubled by the business of court. It is a semi-isolated spot that Tico is able to turn to his own uses,

to establish as a major center for astronomy. And he uses that site to really attract a team of people who can support his work. And it works. It works. It's tremendously successful. For many, many years, it's a tremendously important site for observational astronomy. And Tika Brahe's other interests are also pursued there. It's also in itself a remarkable structure.

He constructs there. He calls his observatory Uraniburg. So it's founded. It's named after the muse of astronomy. And he develops there. He builds there, the things that he needs, the large instruments that he wants to use to observe the heavens, but also over time he gathers things that are going to help him in his career, such as his own printing press. Of course, he has a printing press. He needs a printer to work it. He needs the type for the press.

He then goes on to discover he needs paper, so he's going to build a paper mill on this island. So, you know, it's an incredible, remarkable sight for the pursuit of astronomy and related intellectual endellers. Emma Perkins, something that seems surprising to us today is that he was very keen on astrology. Can you tell us why? Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people in this period subscribe to the idea of celestial influence on Earth. And in fact, in the period, there's very little differentiation between astronomy. concerned with the numbers, concerned with the movement of the heavens,

and astrology in terms of its influence on Earth. So this is a kind of common understanding in the intellectual environment, and it's really the uncertain foundation of astrology that informs a lot of Tico's work. So he cites it as a major motivation for his reform of astronomy, the idea being that by creating a firmer mathematical foundation, astrological prognostications can be improved. And I think it's also worth mentioning that astrology is a very valuable commodity at court.

So princes and rulers were interested in the influence of the stars on worldly affairs, both personal and political. So you often find astrologers at court. and Tico himself engaged in this kind of exchange of astrological gifts. So can you give us a bit more specific as to what they got out of it? What was happening in astrology that made these people at court think, yes, we can use that. That's part of what we want our knowledge to be. Yeah, so some of the products that astrologers would provide for rulers include things like nativities.

So if an air was born, an astrologer would construct a horoscope, plotting the exact position of the planets and stars at the time of birth to predict what sort of character and life that person would have. They could produce horoscopes for particular times. Was the feeling that the stars had an effect on this infant's being born and the effect would, or it was just the luck

that this infant was born at a time when the stars were in such and such a place? Did they think, are the stars in such and such a place, that means that he will be such and such a person? To an extent, yes. So the planets had certain characteristics that would influence the characteristics of an individual. So if you were born with, say, Mars in a particularly dominant position, you would be sort of fiery and liable to war. But there were limitations.

So there was a kind of famous axiom that the stars incline, they do not compel. So the idea being that humans can exercise their free will such that they can overcome this, I guess, determinism of the stars. But there's nonetheless this influence from the stars that can encourage, I guess, certain events on the terrestrial plane. So rulers were particularly interested in knowing about this so they could respond and decide when is an auspicious time to undertake certain activities. Thank you. Adam, how much backing did Brahin receive from the Danish king, Frederick? And how important was it to Brahe? You mentioned it earlier on.

Can you go a bit deeply, more deeply into it? Yeah, I mean, Ticabray was from an aristocratic family. He had a certain amount of wealth that came from that. But with the support of the Danish crown, he was able to construct Uranabor, construct his observatory, and build his instruments. And his instruments are worth noting because of their size and the great care that he takes to determine how accurate they are. Can you give us an example of one or two of these instruments?

He devouts quadrants and sextants. He uses armillary spheres. He uses an instrument called the Triquetrum, which is also known as Ptolemy's rulers. Has he invented these or has you taken them up from other areas? So in some instances, these are adaptations of instruments that exist. But what's remarkable about them, I guess,

is that the concern he has to make them as precise as possible. Now to begin with, he sees that as really about size, but he quickly learns that he needs to pay attention to the materials that they're constructed from, and the fact that the weight of the instruments can make them unwieldy. It can also introduce distortions. He pays great attention to the sites for the instruments and to the scales, so that he really is aiming for a degree of accuracy which is much, much better than any of his ancient predecessors, who really for him are the kind of model of observation astronomers, because most of the astronomers whose work he uses from the Middle Ages up to Copernicus, they may have

taken some observations, but they were not conducting a program of observation of the heavens in the way that Tico does, and his predecessors like Ptolemy and Hipparchus. He sees this hammock done. Emma, Emma Perkins, can we go back to this observatory on this little island? In fact, there were two, aren't there? Can you talk us through both of them? Yes. We've had something about the first, but I wouldn't mind referring to it again, and then why they needed to be a second.

Yes, so Uraniburg is the main observatory structure that he builds, first of all, using the labour of the peasant community on Fen and skilled artisans from around Europe. And he's really able to design it according to his own specifications. according to the needs of his science. And that's what makes it quite unique in this period. So the house itself had an alchemical laboratory in the basement. On the ground floor we have living quarters, as well as his library or museum,

where his students would do their studying. And the upper floors contained further living quarters and also the observational platforms where his astronomical instruments were installed. So that's the main house, and it's surrounded by well-crafted guards, and a large wall, a sort of fortified castle to Urania. He later builds a subterranean observatory outside of the walls of Uraniburg.

Why is that? He wants to maintain the symmetry of the complex. He also finds that actually having instruments on towers, on platforms, is unhelpful because of the strong winds. So he wants to take the instruments down below ground. but in a structure that has a retractable roof so that they're more stable and more accurate. So this is another building? Yes, absolutely.

So there are five sunken crypts where he installs his largest and most precise instruments and that really becomes the centre of his observational activities once it's built. And then, as Adam has described, he also builds a variety of auxiliary structures to support the science, his printing press, his paper mill, instrument-making workshop, everything is all geared towards serving his reform

of astronomy. One thing I think it's worth noting is that after Tika Brahe published his work, his first book on the Nova 1572, he then conceives of what he's doing as an enterprise that is going to take such a long time and is on such a large scale that actually he has a very ambitious publishing program which doesn't come to completion during his lifetime. So for example, there are a series of novelties in the heavens after the new star 1572. So the next big one is 1577. There's a comet. Lots of people observe the comet of 1577. Tika Brahe again observes the comet of 1577. Again, he is one of several people who is able to ascertain that this thing, this

novelty in the heavens is superluna. It's above the moon. It's in the heavens. So, so comets are celestial phenomena and not as arrethagean tradition would have meteorological phenomena. But Chica Brahe does not publish his findings on that straight away. He writes a book in which he sets out his findings. He also gathers all the other publications on the comet of 1577. And he writes a kind of systematic literature review, which analyzes all those other accounts, criticizes them, and he puts all those together in a book which he publishes in a way in 1588. So 11 years after the comet has appeared, he publishes his kind of comprehensive review

of the literature on the comet. And that's also when he unpublishes his account of his World System, the Taconic World System. But even then, this is not a fully commercial publication. So he prints many, many copies of this book, but he doesn't sell them commercially. He distributes them. So a few people have access to Tika Brahe's findings in the 1580s. He is using his correspondence network, which is connecting him, to many of the practicing astronomers of various kinds, the people interested in astronomy, the mathematicians who have the technical expertise to understand what he's doing.

He is plugged into a network across Europe, but he is not aiming for the public market, the popular market such as it would be for this material at that period. He is postponing the full release of his work until it's completed. And of course, it's never actually completed to his satisfaction. Can I come back to your order? He fell from Royal Favour when Frederick's successor, Christian IV, came to the Danish throne. What happened and what effect did it have on Takeo? Well, I mean, Tycho, you could say, was in many ways, very fortunate because at the time where he was keen of launching himself as an astronomer, astrologer, he benefited from

the fact that Denmark was getting increasingly wealthy from the economic boom of the second half of the 16th century. There was, in other words, a lot of money available. he linked in well with Frederick II, who was keen in taking him on and offered him the island of Vane and quite substantial grants and thieves. It's been calculated that up to 1% of the royal income went to Tycho. But he dies in 1588. His son, Christian, is a minor, and therefore you get a regency government with which Tycho is incredibly well connected. It's basically family and friends all round, and they decide to continue the generous economic sponsorship of him. But that all changes in

1596 when Christian the fourth is crowned and then clearly wants to take control. There's been a number of speculations why Tycho went out of fashion and lost his royal support. Some scholars have thought it was because of the influence of Orthodox or Gnisholusers. Others have seen it as a return of certain noble families who were unfriendly to Tycho and worked against him. But I would say it's probably the fact that by 96, Taiko had been in place for 20 years benefiting from enormous public support. The king, the new king, wanted to get new people in and probably questioned that outlay. And it is quite significant, I think, that already by the autumn of 1596, Taiko loses one of his biggest. fiefs. So I think it was basically a case of new men in and old men out and Tycho just found himself

at the end of it. And it was then that he moved to Prague. That's when he decided to leave. And came in contact with Kepler, one of his assistants. And that conjunction of the two of them was extremely fertile. Would you like to take this up Adam? Yes. So Tika-Brahne needs a new patron. He leaves Denmark. He eventually makes his way to to Prague, which is the imperial capital of the Roman Empire and a Rilford II, himself a great patron of artists and artisans and mathematicians and alchemists and astrologers. Now, on his journey, if you like, on his way there, Tika Brab learns of the existence of a young astronomer called Johannes Kepler. And Kepler himself in the late 1590s is quite a lowly, got a quite a lowly position.

in the Austrian city of Gratz, which is under threat because of the counter-reformation. So Kepler, another Lutheran, living in Styria, which was a region where Lutherans were being purged in the late 1590s

by the Archduke Ferdinand. So Kepler is looking for new opportunities. Tika Brahe is always on the lookout for talented young men to assist him in his labour. And Kepler comes to Tico Brise's attention for two reasons. One is Kepler publishes a curious book called The Mysterio Cosmographicum. The secret of the universe would be one way of translating that,

in which Kepler claims to have discovered the pattern on which God created the universe and spaced the planets in the cosmos. Tico is impressed to a point. He doesn't believe this Copernican vision, because it is a Copernican vision, but he is impressed by Kepler's talents. It's also true that Kepler is useful to Tico because Kepler inadvertently has stepped into the middle of a dispute between Tico Brahe and another mathematician called Usses,

who was his predecessor, in fact, as imperial mathematician. And that's a dispute over whether or not Usses has plagiarized Tico's world system. Kepler has written in praise of both. men. So Tico finds Kepler to be useful to him in the course of waging his dispute against Ulysses, which happens when they come together in Prague. But the key thing, the key thing about the relationship between them is that it leads to something that Kepler is once or long, which is access to Di Gebrahe's observations. And it's because he has access to that data in the long run, and because he has great confidence in that data, in the accuracy of Tika Brahe's observations,

that Kepler is able to move from the orthodoxy that planets move in circles or combination of circles to understanding that planets have elliptical orbits. Now, then itself is not something that people are ready to accept straight away, but it is an enormous transformation of understanding of planetary motion in the early 17th century. Emma, can we come back to his instruments? And he's with Kepler. They've got a friendship and they've got a professional companionship. Are they developing instruments?

Does it move on very quickly because of the conjunction of these two men? And if so, how, in Prague? So Tico actually struggles to get his instruments to Prague, partly because they're so large and some of them are permanently installed in Uraniburg or his subterranean observant. So it's actually quite difficult to transport them. He also doesn't move directly from Vien to Prague.

So there's a kind of lag in terms of bringing the instruments to Prague. So Tico does the bulk of his observations at Uraniburg. And it's that data primarily upon which Kepler is relying when he derives his laws of planetary motion. And then following Tico's death, there's all sorts of wranglings over the instruments. controversy with Tico's heirs in terms of who owns them and these sorts of things. And regrettably, the instruments themselves don't survive to the present day.

So actually the closest approximation we have to the ticonic instruments are the ones made for the Beijing Imperial Observatory in the 17th century, which were based on ticonic prototypes, albeit incorporating Chinese iconography. Olai, his private life was eventful, we're told. Let's just take one instance. How do he come to lose his nose? Well, he did that in a duel with another Delaney's nobleman, Mandor Parsberg. We don't know what the fight was about, but the outcome was, of course, that Tycho lost part of his nose,

which was then replaced with either a brass insert for daily events or apparently a silver one for more upmarket events. but that perhaps is less significant than his merits, which was, of course, a common law merit to a woman called Cristina Barbara, who was probably the daughter of the local clergyman in Knudstrup. But we do not know that for certain there is a possibility could be one of two farmers with a similar name. He stayed incredibly loyal to her, and it clearly caused him agony in later life because his children could not inherit his estates being non-noble.

And he therefore was seeking ways of making sure they had an inheritance. Initially, he was trying to make sure they could inherit the island of Vien, as long as they took an interest in a strong. and claimed that Frederick II and his Queen Sophia had agreed to that, but that was basically swept aside. He then eventually sold his part of the Knudstrup estate for 10,000 Reichshadler in order to monetarise it so he could distribute the money to his children. And I suppose one of the reasons he left that would have encouraged him to leave was the chance of improving his children's condition in another country. Thank you.

We're near the end now. Adam, his geo-heliocentric system was ultimately proved wrong. Is that a reason to applaud his attempt or to say he wasn't up to it? So, well, all of the systems that people were imagining in the 16th and 17th century were wrong, in that they were restricted to what we would think of as the solar system. He did think that he had observational grounds on which to support his system, and his system did become more important after his death in the 17th century. As you noted, after the Catholic condemnation of the Copernican system,

astronomers, mathematicians weren't able to support heliocentrism, But with the telescope, there was new observational evidence against the Ptolemaic system, against geocentrism. So for many Catholic mathematicians and astronomers in the 17th century, the geohelocentric system looked like, or a version of that system, looked like the best system, the best candidate system for understanding the structure of the cosmos. I think he's important in many other ways. I think his observational work was in many ways unprecedented. it was novel, it was systematic. He, I think, evolved a sense of observational error and chased down errors of multiple forms

in ways that none of his predecessors or many of his contemporaries undertook. I think his life and work is also very interesting because you can see there quite clearly in a way that's harder to spot earlier than that, I think, that the physical sciences were a collaborative enterprise, right? astronomy, to do astronomy the way he needed to do it, empirically, he needed a team, and he also demonstrated acute awareness of the value of communicating with a wider community

of mathematicians, philosophers, astronomers, people whose support and whose recognition he required to establish any kind of new orthodoxy about the heavens. Thank you. Finally, Emma, can you give us a... sketch of the influence he might have had on later future astronomers? Yes, absolutely. I mean, we've already noted the influence his geoheliocentric system had, particularly in Jesuit circles. We've seen that his data informed Kepler's laws of planetary motion. But I think moving forward into the 17th century and beyond, the lasting legacy of his work has been his empiricism. So the fact that he employed a large number of students or assistants in a systematic program of observation,

where he is using multiple instruments to take multiple observations to enable collaboration and corroboration of data. This becomes really appealing, particularly with the rise of experimental philosophy and a more mechanical worldview. And so we see a lot of astronomers in the 17th century really seeking to align themselves with Tico's observational and instrumental practices even while not subscribing to his theoretical claims. So people like Johannes Havilius, John Flamsteed, presenting themselves as sort of second Ticos, and it's on the basis of his empiricism

and his commitment to accuracy and precision in his data. Well, thanks very much to Emma Perkins, Adam Mosley, and Ola Grell and our studio engineer Tim Hever. Next week, the Chartists, the first national mass working class movement in this country, which campaigned for all men to have the vote in the mid-19th century. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now

with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Thank you very much. What did we miss out? I think we could have spent some more time talking about Tico's character, which is very much debated in the literature. I think that has depended upon the point of view that people have taken in relation to some of the disputes that he got into. There were lots of them in his lifetime.

That's interesting in itself because it tells us quite a bit about concepts of credit, priority, intellectual property. So he did accuse people of stealing his world system or his mathematical technologies or his instrumental technologies and taking them to other places and then passing them off as,

and their own. Was he right in those disputes? Well, it's not entirely clear because we do have, in some cases, we have two sides of the dispute. Neither side prosecuted with great temperance. So these disputes often generate a lot of heat and not so much light. It seems clear that in some cases, what perhaps was more innocent transfers of technology, happened. In some cases, he was dealing with people who, with whom he entered into a very bitter dispute about, this world system, for example, this dispute with Usis, this German self-taught

mathematician, where Tico says, well, Usis came to Uranaborg, he was part of a conversation about my world system, he stole the idea, he then published it as his own. Usis's response to that is, well, these things are trivial. You know, anyone can come up with these things. This is, you know, and by the way, you know, these things aren't real. So Tika Brahe was promoting the idea that he had come up with the model of the reality of the universe. Other people around him in that culture the 16th century were playing around with these mathematical versions of the world systems for calculating. And sometimes they were saying, well, this is.

just, I've just taken the Copanagan system. I've just reverted it back so that, because we're on Earth, right? We observe everything from Earth. It's just convenient if we take those models and we invert them so that the models give us planetary positions from our perspective. So the quarrels are about credit, not about cash. The quarrels are about credit, about priority, yes. And of course, because he's an herbalman, Tika Brahe's sensitivity,

to questions of credit and the honour may have been heightened, may have been different from some of the people with whom he was in dispute. Yeah, I'd just add to that, the centrality here of the printing press. So it's a major tool for Tico to really establish his priority. So the fact that he had access to his own printing press and could oversee his publications, he's able to almost construct his presentation in the astronomical community.

And it forms a central role in, yeah, claiming priority for the world system, also claiming priority over instrument designs. And he really circulates those things to influential people who will be on his side. And, you know, he recruits Kepler into this enterprise to publish a defence of Tico against Ursus. Does he become notorious for doing all this stuff?

Tico. Yeah. Yes and no. So I think, again, I think the print press is important, and Tika Bari knows how to use it, but also it's not very fast. So one of the things that Tika Barae does is he uses his correspondence to wage the first stages in this conflict. Now, by the way, he goes on to publish some of his correspondence, and he has plans to publish more. He's published his one volume of correspondence in 1596. That's his correspondence with the castle astronomers.

but he has plans to publish more of his correspondence. So he writes letters to scholars across Europe with the full intention of publishing them and their responses in due course. He includes with his letters, extracts from his printed publication. So that's one way he gets some of the material out early. He also uses his correspondence, therefore, to establish his claims to priority,

but also to conduct some of the debates about the fundamentals, right, about the philosophical issues. Well, did you want to come in here in any way? Well, I thought we could have made a bit more of his kind of artisan interests in terms of instrument making. I mean, not only is he very unusual as a nobleman to be academically interested in astronomy and undertaking all the observation he does, but he's very, as far as I understand it, I think it's more MS territory than mine, involved in creating or refining his instruments of observation, which for a nobleman is quite an extreme thing to do. Yeah, absolutely. I think his instruments are so central to his enterprise,

not just because they produce the data from which he's going to come up with his theoretical claims. But they're also a really valuable means of presentation. he produces images of his instruments that he publishes alongside theoretical claims like his geoheliocentric system. But he also uses these images to send to patrons to secure financial support. So they really are the foundation of his reputation as an observational astronomer. And I think that's something that's quite unusual in the period. and I think we often take for granted that astronomy is an observational activity. But prior to Tico, we didn't really have this sense of systematic observation.

It was principally mathematical, geometrical calculations that occupied, for the most part, what astronomers were doing. So Tico's instruments are really crucial to his whole enterprise. And we haven't even talked about the fact the instruments are work. of art. Absolutely. Yes. And are decorated and you know have have emblems on them, have symbolism. They serve a function both in situ in Urinaryborg to represent what the Tychonic Enterprise is, but also then his illustrations of his instruments and his descriptions of them form a really important role then in presenting a vision of the Tyconic Enterprise that helps him

secure his second waiver patronage from the second, but also, you know, is about reputation. And Antica Brahe, through a variety of mechanisms, really presents himself, seeks to present himself as a princely astronomer and as a prince and astronomer. So he picks up on the long-standing confusion between Claudius Ptolemy and the Ptolemy's who ruled Egypt. So Ptolemy was often depicted as a king with a crown. And so Tico Brahe is very interesting, placing himself in a lineage of astronomers that uses that symbolism. Well, again, I think it's worth emphasizing that all these enterprises, the buildings, and the printing press benefited to a large extent from all the artists coming into Denmark at this time,

mainly to work on royal enterprises. You wouldn't have found the graphic talents in reproducing Tycho's instruments in Denmark at this time unless there were a number of royal enterprises going on. And the same could be said about the building of Uranus. Raniborg, especially, with all its kind of beautiful figures and fountains, that would not have been easy for Tyco to produce on his own. I mean, just to build on that point, I think it's also important to recognize that Yeraniburg isn't this sort of very modern scientific research institute. It is also a castle to the muse, Urania, and that's kind of reinforced by this emblematic iconography.

It really is a place in which he is, that connection, I guess, between the heavens and earth, is manifest through the whole structure, through his activities, through the decoration. And I think that's why it's important to kind of recognize that, yes, his empirical method is very important, but it's only a part of what he considers himself to be doing and he's bringing together all these skills and ideas

in one location that really, yeah, is characteristic of 16th century ideas even while it's innovative, if that makes sense. Finally, is it, was he known around the place in Europe in his lifetime as this tremendously provincial astronomer? So yes and no, I think that he was known amongst the community of scholars. He was known amongst the Republic of Letters. His name pops up here and there in publications.

But my sense is that he wasn't as well known as he might have been had he published his findings in a more timely fashion and circulated them when they're ready. Because he had this ambitious plan of public. applications, he kept hold of so much of the material he printed. He didn't circulate it. It circulated after his lifetime. His airs sold on the printed stock. And so that, I think, meant that he was known to a large community. It's harder to judge, I think, how much anyone else really had a sense of what he was up to. Well, thank you all very much. It'll be much enjoyed. And Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson.

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