EQUANTS AND MINOR EPICYCLES College of （对和次要本轮大学）.pdfVIP

EQUANTS AND MINOR EPICYCLES Copernicus did not like the equant. At the very beginning of the Commentario- lus, the first thing he ever wrote on planetary models, he announced that the equant is an entirely unsatisfactory device, because it violates the principle of uniform cir- cular motion. His objection is even more cogent if we recall that the “real” physical picture was that of the Aristotelian spheres. The equant preserves uniform motion, but about a point that is off-center. What would a sphere rotating uniformly about an off center point look like?! Kuhn tells us