Christoph Scheiner**new**2004/05/26 14:50:11.905 GMT-52004/05/26 15:27:07.572 GMT-5AlbertVan Heldenhelden@rice.eduAlbertVan Heldenhelden@rice.eduRobertAhlfingerahlfing@rice.eduChristophScheinerGalileoJesuitsunspotsMarc WelserLyncean AcademyJohannes KeplerCopernican theoryA brief history of Christoph Scheiner (1573-1650).Christoph Scheiner was born in Wald, near
Mindelheim in Swabia (southwest Germany), on 25 July 1573. He
attended the Jesuit Latin school in
Augsburg, continued his studies in the Jesuit college at
Landsberg, and entered the Jesuit order in 1595. Having completed
his preparatory study, he entered the university at Ingolstadt in
1600. Here he studied metaphysics and devoted himself to the study
of mathematics. In 1610 he joined the faculty of the Jesuit
college of the university as professor of Mathematics and
Hebrew. Scheiner's talents lay in the
mathematical sciences and instruments. Early in his career he
became an expert on the mathematics of sundials and also invented
a pantograph (a device for copying and enlarging drawings). Upon
hearing about Galileo's discoveries with the telescope, in 1610,
Scheiner immediately set out to obtain good telescopes with which
to scrutinize the heavens. After verifying Galileo's discoveries
for himself, he turned his attention to the Sun, where, in March
or April 1611, he discovered sunspots. He was neither the first to
observe sunspots nor the first to publish on the subject, but his
publication was the start of a controversy with Galileo over the
nature of sunspots.
Because of the conservative stand of the
Jesuit order on cosmological issues, Scheiner attempted to rescue
the perfection of the Sun, and by implication the heavens
generally, from imperfection. He therefore postulated that
sunspots were caused by satellites of the Sun whose shadows are
projected on to Sun's disk as they cross in front of it. His
tract, Tres Epistolae de Maculis Solaribus ("Three
Letters on Solar Spots") appeared in Augsburg early in 1612, under
the pseudonym "Apelles latens post tabulam," or "Apelles hiding
behind the painting." These letters were written to Marc Welser, an Augsburg banker and
scholar who was a friend and patron to Jesuit scholars. Welser invited Galileo to comment on these
letters, and Galileo responded with two letters to Welser of his
own in which he argued that sunspots are on or near the surface of
the Sun, that they change their shapes, that they are often seen
to originate on the solar disk and perish there, and that
therefore the Sun is not perfect. In the meantime, Scheiner had
written two further letters to Welser on this subject, and after
reading Galileo's first letter he wrote yet another. This second
series of three letters was published by Welser in the fall of
1612, with the title De Maculis Solaribus et Stellis circa
Iovis Errantibus Accuratior Disquisition ("A More Accurate
Disquisition Concerning Solar Spots and Stars [i.e., Satellites]
Wandering around Jupiter"). Again, Scheiner used the pseudonym of
Apelles. Scheiner restated his argument that sunspots were caused
by satellites and argued that Jupiter had more satellites than the
four discovered by Galileo. Upon reading this tract, Galileo wrote
yet a third sunspot letter to Welser, dated December 1612, and in
1613 the Lyncean Academy published
all three letters under the title Istoria e Dimostrazioni
intorno alle Macchie Solari e loro Accidenti ("History and
Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots and their Properties.") A third
of the copies contained reprints of Scheiner's two
tracts. Although he was polite to Scheiner, Galileo refuted his
arguments and there was little doubt as to who was the winner of
this dispute. Scheiner went on to publish
books on atmospheric refraction and the optics of the eye, and in
these works he built on the optical achievements of Johannes Kepler, thus providing important
material for later writers on the subject. He also continued his
research on sunspots. In the meantime, he had begun instructing
Arch Duke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Rudolph II, in the
mathematical subjects, and in 1616 he left Ingolstadt for good to
become Maximilain's advisor. Scheiner henceforth had the patronage
of the Emperor's brother and in 1621 he became the confessor of
Arch Duke Karl, brother of the new Emperor, Ferdinand II. One of
Scheiner's greatest achievements was the foundation of a new
Jesuit college in Neisse in Silesia. When the Arch Duke died on a
voyage to Spain in 1624, Scheiner went to Rome, where he stayed
for the next eight years. It was in Rome that he published his
greatest work, Rosa Ursina (1630), the standard work
on sunspots for more than a century. In
his Assayer of 1623, Galileo had made certain
disparaging remarks about those who had tried to steal his
priority of discovery of celestial phenomena. Although Galileo
almost certainly had others in mind, Scheiner interpreted these
remarks as being directed against him. He therefore devoted the
first book of Rosa Ursina to an all out attack on
Galileo, and it has been said that his enmity toward Galileo was
instrumental in starting the process against the Florentine in
1633. Scheiner's diatribe against Galileo does, however, not take
away from the importance of Rosa Ursina. Here
Scheiner agreed with Galileo that sunspots are on the Sun's
surface or in its atmosphere, that they are often generated and
perish there, and that the Sun is therefore not perfect. Scheiner
further advocated a fluid heavens (against the Aristotelian solid
spheres), and he pioneered new ways of representing the motions of
spots across the Sun's face. Because shortly after the appearance
of Rosa Ursina sunspot activity decreased drastically
(the so-called Maunder Minimum, ca. 1645-1710), his work was not
superseded until well into the eighteenth century. In 1633 Scheiner returned to the German region, where
he spent the rest of his life in Vienna and Neisse, supervising
the building of the Jesuit college. Until the end, he worked on a
massive refutation of the Copernican
theory, the finished part of which was published
posthumously, in 1650, under the title Prodromus pro Sole
Mobili et Terra Stabili contra Galilaeum a Galileis
("Introductory Treatise in Favor of a Moving Sun and a Stable
Earth against Galileo Galilei"). The work remained virtually
unkown and had no effect on the outcome of the debate between
Copernicans and advocates of the geocentric/geostatic
cosmology.
large
version
large
version
large
version
Sunspots (Rosa Ursina, 1630)
Jesuits- The popular name for the
monastic order called the Society of Jesus. The order was
founded by Ignatius de Loyola in 1534, and was recognized by the
pope in 1540. The mission of the Jesuits was in three areas:
teaching, service to the nobility, and missionary work in
foreign lands. Their greatest mark was made in education, and
the Collegio Romano was their primary seminary.Shea, William R."Scheiner, Christoph."Dictionary of Scientific BiographyShea, William R."Galileo,
Scheiner, and the Interpretation of Sunspots."Isis197061498-519Shea, William R.Galileo's
Intellectual Revolution: Middle Period (1610-1632)Science History Publications1972New YorkDrake, StillmanGalileo
studies: Personality, Tradition, and RevolutionUniversity of Michigan Press1970Ann ArborMcColly, Grant"Christoph
Scheiner and the Decline of neo-Aristotelianism."Isis19403263-69Moss, Jean DietzNovelties
in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican
ControversyUniversity of Chicago
Press,1993Chicago