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Revision as of 19:11, 13 August 2002

The previous talk, about Copernicus' nationality, is now at talk:Copernicus' nationality

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In Padua both , his uncle, the Prince-Bishop and Copernicus had enrolled as student from the ...German Nation (Full name was at that time Holy Roman Empire of German Nation).

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Poland had parts of Prussia occupied, tried to annex and wanted to have Polish coins in Prussia. The cities of Elbing, Danzig and Thorn did not want to give up their individual sovereign rights and continued coining money. In 1519, 1522, and 1529 Copernicus published Money Reform Memoranda. His 1529 writings stated in part :

" Woe to you, unfortunate Prussiland, that you should have to suffer for such a bad money management!.. If we do not have relief here soon, then Prussia is soon going to have only coins left, which contain nothing but copper. Then all trade with foreign countries would stop. Which foreign tradesman would want to sell his merchandise for mere copper?... Such a break-up of Prussiland is silently observed by the big powers; they let our beloved fatherland, to which we owe everything, to which we owe life itself, from day to day collaps miserably.." (excerpt from Hermann Kesten, Copernicus, describing Prussia during the civil wars leading to the Reformation, transl by H. Jonat).

I'm really sorry, but this is just another attempt to throw in the Poland-Prussia debate in another guise. The manner in which the quote is presented, as well as the translation (there really is no such thing as Prussiland in English, and fatherland is doubtful at best), are simply unacceptable. Moreover, if this is a translation of someone's Latin-German translation, than I think that fatherland is simply the Latin patria -- VERY different than the context Helga would like us to accept. Again, there has been so much time spent on this, that it's bordering on the ridiculous. Still, as a professional historian, I cannot sit by and allow this blatant misrepresentation. People in Copernicus' time really didn't understand ethnicity and nationality in the same way that you want to believe, Fr. Jonat. And, contrary to what you may believe, i don't care if Copernicus is Polish, German, or even Thornisch! Gianfranco is correct about placing the man's accomplishments first. What I do care about is that the debate and the entire issue of nationality are framed within the proper context: that context is one of people with an ideological interest allowing that interest to shape a view of history that is in fact inaccurate. J Hofmann Kemp, Tuesday, May 21, 2002

PS: Hermann Kesten's undoubted brilliance as a dramatist and author aside, he was doubtless a man of his time. He was educated at a period when ethnic nationalism permeated the teaching of history, and when it was not only acceptable, but normal, to write history with underlying motives. Today, historians are expected to take the biases and background of the author into consideration. Moreover, we are expected to be more critical of historians who do seem allow their viewpoints to shape their presentation of history. I'm sorry, but all authors are not equal, and some scholarship is better than others. We should try to keep this in mind.

What is this?

Of course, this was very far from what officially accepted in dominant culture. And even farther from the actually ruling religious influence on science was the following conclusion that an infinitive reality rendered de facto impossible the hypothesis of an external "engine", an entity that from outside could give a soul, a power and a life to the World and to Human beings. No transcendence, the most evident inspiring theme of philosophy at that time, could find an explanation in such a cosmic system, none of the most basic dogmas of Christianism (but of other religions too, the same way) could be compatible with such a revolutionary theory; besides, this opened a way to immanence and immanentism, which remained and developed in modern philosophy.

Given that immanentism is the logical foundation of subjectivism, that finds inside the Man the principles that rule thought, history and reality, some find that Copernicanism demolished the foundations of medieval science and metaphysics, therefore giving a start to a general movement that would have brought modern thought to rebel against the objectivism and the authoritarism of traditional thought.

Correctly, his innovation has been quite unanimously defined as a real revolution (despite the unwanted calembour).

Immanuel Kant, for instance, caught the symbolic character of Copernicus' revolution (of which he put in evidence the trascendental rationalism) underlining that, in his vision, human rationality was the real legislator of the phenomenical reality; Copernicanism was in a winning opposition against the scientific and philosophical Aristotelism, a quite subjective position (in a Kantist sense) meant to fight against the ruling dogmatism.

More recent philosophers too have found in Copernicus a still valid and valuable philosophical meaning, properly used to describe the position of the modern man in front of cultural traditions. A so-called Homo Copernicanus was then by some described like that modern man whose central themes are to be found in ordinary human problems, as a general cultural reference.

What some consider Copernicus important for. --Gianfranco

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(unfortunately nothing of this remains to us)

I agree with this evaluation, but it's a POV. If someone wants to put this idea back, try "of which nothing remains today" ... Ed Poor

Sorry Ed, I reverted back to an earlier version that reflected huge amounts of work and cooperation in a truly wiki spirit. Much of the discussion seems to have been lost between the old software and the new (or maybe it was archived somewhere, because the talk page was enormous), but this version was deemed acceptable by the largest amount of people involved. You can kind of tell because it's been pretty much left alone until very recently, when Helga started sneaking in her agenda. No offense meant, but you just don't know how hard it was to get it this way -- and if you're wondering, I actually have several strong objections to the way it is, but believe it's best to leave it in what the group found most neutral.J Hofmann Kemp

PS -- weren't the place-name links in German, but pipelined to the Polish names??

After your revert, I changed the birthplace sentence again, to show both variations of the name: Thorn and Torun. And I balanced a parenthesis.

HJ -- that wasn't "information about his studies" that was an unordered list of facts that you were using to try to prove your theory about Copernicus' nationality. We have gone over this topic many times. You clearly do not understand that nationality and citizenship were very differently understood in Copernicus' time that they are today. Moreover, you don't want to understand -- you simply want to try to force some misled artificial construct into this article because that's the only way your world view can function. Please try to be more straightforward and do what you are saying you're doing. Otherwise, is smacks of intellectual dishonesty. J Hofmann Kemp

I am posting the info on Copernicus here, which was removed by J Hofmann Kemp from the article Nicolaus Copernicus:

Why you ,J. Hofmann Kemp, an recent American professor, want to suppress important information. This (and many other attempts to suppress information) is as much a puzzle to me, as your constant insistence on using Polish place names (used since 1945 Soviet take-overs) for German places, when on the other hand you keep writing that original names are supposed to be translated into English language here at wikipedia.

Do you do this on your own or is this a American University System -described action ?

In 1491 Copernicus entered Krakow university, and here he met astronomy for the first time, thanks to his teacher Albert Brudzewski. This science soon fascinated him, as his books (now in Uppsala's library) show. After four years and a brief stay in Thorn, he moved to Italy, where he studied law at Bologna's university. His uncle financed his education and wished for him to become a bishop as well.

"In Bologna's "Annales of the German Nation of 1496" on page 141 Is recorded:Nicolaus Kopperlingk de Thorn and a registration fee of 9 Grosseten (Groschen). This identifies his field of studies. The Natio Germanorum only educated lawstudents at that time, and only those, whose native language was German. Copernicus also studied as Padua. A doctor diplom of 1503 was found in Ferrara, which documents Nicolaus Copernicus from Prussia, who studied at Bologna and Padua... While studying canon and civil law, he met Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, a famous astronomer. He followed his lessons and became a disciple and assistant." H. Jonat

Maybe you could just try to make sense. It's enough to say that he studied law at Bologna. If you add the bit about Bologna's "Annales of the German Nation", you are referring to something that must be explained. Since the title isn't even sensible English (Annales isn't English, but annals is) one has to question the source. What exactly is the Natio Germanorum? this is unclear from what you've written. Where is the proof that it only accepted students whose native language was German -- could it have been German speakers? Was this part of the university of Bologna?

HJ, no one is trying to cover anything up. Unfortunately, what you want to put in just doesn't make a lot of sense and opens up more questions than it answers. Those questions might fit in a book on Copernicus (maybe), but not a brief encyclopedia article. And again, the way you have written it (that is, in a way that implies that Copernicus was German in the modern sense of the word) is meant to mislead readers into making assumptions that just aren't accurate. To do this in public is to encourage a kind of dishonesty. Copernicus may well have spoken German as his first language. That doesn't mean that his allegiance was to a non-existent Germany or to a germanic Prussia. It's just wrong to imply something when there are lots of other factors that make that implication suspect.

Oh -- and the Polish names are used when they are used because that's what the cities are called in English today. It doesn't matter what my grandfather learned to call them (for example, Danzig) -- it's what they are now called that counts. That said, an article on St. Petersburg, would include the name changes to Petrograd and Leningrad within the article -- and if I were talking about the city in 1950, I'd call it Leningrad, because that's what the city was officially called at that time. With Danzig, I'm not positive that the Polish-speaking inhabitants didn't call it Gdansk or one of the Latin names in, say 1400 -- are you? There probably wasn't agreement then, because educated people often used Latin. But if you read the Gdansk article, it's clear that English speakers called it Danzig till 1945, and that the German name was more commonly used for the city. But we don't call it that any more, and that's what counts here. J Hofmann Kemp

HJ, maybe this will help, since it's not touchy for you. THere are some islands off the coast of Argentina that a huge number of the locals and especially the neighbors call the Malvinas. But the official name of the islands is the Falklands. That's the name that all English-speaking countries recognize as the official name. If I were to continuously refer to those islands as the Malvinas on the wikipedia, it could be taken as a statement that the wikipedia believed that the UK had no claim to those islands. By the same token, people on either side of the political fence have different names for the country whose official name is Northern Ireland. By using the official name, we stay as neutral as possible -- although in this case, staunch Republicans would certainly object to that choice. J Hofmann Kemp

To JHK, I thought, that you did some research into Hanseatic League cities when you started writing something about it. Apparently you are not aware of the fact, that Hanseatic League cities, had a requirement, to be a burgher of the city, one had to be a German language native speaker. This was certified. Thorn was a Hanseatic League city and took part in Hansa Days until 1669, so did Danzig. Elbing dropped out a few years prior to that, because of the English trade. There were no Polish people living in the cities of Thorn, Danzig nore Elbing. The Copernicus or rather the Nicolai family is recorded to have lived in the center of the city, well within the city walls. And as I wrote previously somewhere Nicolaus signed into the German school in Bologna for German language native speakers as Kopperlingk, after his father's business of dealing with copper.

There was no written Polish language until the 16th century. Therefore whatever was written down by who knows what in 1400 was not Polish language. Perhaps something that looks like Gdansk was written by a Danish or in Danish language: Dansk person. Beside the Hanseatic League cities all had Hansa Seals and the Hansa Seals had/have Latinized names.

Lets stay with the subject and lets not jump from the Baltic Sea to South America.

H. Jonat

HJ -- either you want to deliberately misunderstand everything I say, which is simply rude, or you are incapable of understanding the points I make which is plain stupid and ignorant. I didn't say that Polish burghers, which would be citizens with full rights -- just inhabitants. AFAIK (and I could be wrong), there were colonies of traders from other countries often posted in Hansestaedte. As I remember, they were allowed little movement. Whatever the case, there is plenty of evidence for interaction between Polish and German speakers in the area which encompassed Thorn and Danzig. I am not concerned with whether or not it was written in Polish -- I only mentioned that Poles may have called it something different when speaking among themselves. Perhaps if these types of differentiations are too difficult for you to understand, you should take some remedial English (and history) courses. J Hofmann Kemp

"The earliest evidence for Polish comes from various sorts of names for persons, places and tribes recorded in medieval Latin documents going back to the ninth century. From then until the fourteenth century other attestations can be found in other Latin texts, but these are mostly single lexical items. In the fourteenth century whole texts in Polish begin to appear, the earliest being religious in nature, for example, a collection of sermons and a translation of the Psalms. Medieval Polish is well attested through court depositions where reported speech is recorded in Polish. Portions of the bible were translated by the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of these early texts exhibit a rudimentary standaridization process. Printing arrived in 1513 and with it greater standardization of spelling. The sixteenth century--the Golden Age of Polish literature--saw the first printing of dictionaries, grammars, and spelling guides..." - UCLA Language Project