Copernican Revolution (metaphor)

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The Copernican Revolution, which in terms of astronomy amounted to the acceptance

of heliocentrism as suggested by Nicolaus Copernicus, has also been used widely as
a metaphor supporting descriptions of modernity. A particularly prominent case was the
selection of this comparison by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1787 edition)
to explain the effect in epistemology of his newtranscendental philosophy.
[1]

Contents
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1 Characteristics of the metaphor

2 The "Copernican Revolution in philosophy"
3 Usage
4 See also
5 Notes

Characteristics of the metaphor[edit]

David Luban has analysed four different sides of the metaphorical usage, deriving from
different aspects of the Copernican Revolution as it is understood in the history of science,
and its wider impact on thought:

a sense of uprootedness within cosmology;

a way of representing the path of reason and Enlightenment;
mistrust of common sense as a guide to truth;
a world-picture based on scientific laws rather than narratives.

[2]

The "Copernican Revolution in philosophy"[edit]

The attribution of the comparison with Copernicus to Kant himself is based on a passage in
the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (published in 1787; a heavy
revision of the first edition of 1781). In an English translation, it begins:

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our
knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this
assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of
metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired,
namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior
to their being given. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. Failing of
satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all revolved
round the spectator, he tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the
stars to remain at rest. A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics, as regards the intuition of objects.[3]

Much has been said on what Kant meant by referring to his philosophy as proceeding
precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. There has been a long-standing
and still unresolved discussion on the inappropriateness of Kants analogy because, as most
commentators see it, Kant inverted Copernicus' primary move. This inversion is explained
by Victor Cousin:
[4]

Copernicus, seeing it was impossible to explain the motion of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that these bodies
moved around the earth considered as an immovable centre, adopted the alternative, of supposing all to move round
the sun. So Kant, instead of supposing man to move around objects, supposed on the contrary, that he himself was the
centre, and that all moved round him.[5]

According to Tom Rockmore, Kant himself never used the "Copernican Revolution" phrase
about himself, though it was "routinely" applied to his work by others.
[6]

Don Schneier has recently proposed an alternative interpretation. On that interpretation, the
Copernican thesis that is relevant to Kant is not the Heliocentric one, but that the Earth
rotates on its own axis. The relevance of this example to his doctrine is that it familiarly
illustrates how what appears to be a property of an object of perception, e. g. the motion of
the Sun in its daily transit across the sky, is actually a condition of the subject of perception,
i. e. its rotating around the axis of the Earth. This interpretation is supported by the text, and
avoids some of the peculiarities that attach to the standard interpretation.

Usage[edit]
The phrase is now widely used, particularly in the humanities, for a simple change of
perspective, connoting a progressive shift. Examples:

By defining hysteria as an illness whose symptoms were produced by a person's unconscious ideas, Freud started what
can be called a Copernican Revolution in the understanding of mental illness which put him into opposition both to
the Parisian Charcot and to the German and Austrian scientific community. [7]

Jacques Lacan's formulation that the unconscious, as it reveals itself in analytic phenomena, is structured like a
language, can be seen as a Copernican revolution (of sorts), bringing together Freud and the insights of linguistic
philosophers and theorists such as Roman Jakobson.[8]

Fredrick Barth (1969), in what could be called a Copernican revolution in the understanding of ethnicity, suggested that
rather than anthropology focusing on the cultural stuff contained withinethnic groups, it is also the task of
anthropology to focus on the problematic and socially constructed boundary between ethnic groups.[9]

See also[edit]

Paradigm shift
Copernican principle
Mediocrity principle

Notes[edit]
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Jump up^ Ermanno Bencivenga (1987), Kant's Copernican Revolution.

Jump up^ David Luban, Legal Modernism (1997), pp. 1820.
Jump up^ Preface to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason
Jump up^ For an overview see Engel, M., Kants Copernican Analogy: A Re-examination, Kant-Studien, 54, 1963, p. 243
Jump up^ Cousin, Victor, The Philosophy of Kant. London: John Chapman, 1854, p. 21
Jump up^ Tom Rockmore, Marx After Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx (2002), p. 184.
Jump up^ Jos Brunner, Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis(2001), p. 32.
Jump up^ Ben Highmore, Michel de Certeau: Analysing Culture (2006), p. 64.
Jump up^ Gailyn Van Rheenen, Contextualization and Syncretism: Navigating Cultural Currents (2006), p. 306.