With regard to the apparent motions of the Sun and Moon, it is perhaps possible to deny what is said [by
Copernicus] about the motion of the Earth. … But if anyone desires to look either to the order and
harmony of the system of the spheres, or to ease and elegance and a complete explanation of the causes
of the phenomena, by no other hypotheses will he demonstrate more neatly and correctly the apparent
motions of the remaining planets. For all these phenomena appear to be linked most nobly together, as by
a golden chain, and each of the planets, by its position and order and very inequality of motion, bears
witness that the Earth moves.
What, specifically, does Rheticus have in mind as the evidence that favors Copernicus’s view? Give some
interpretations of Rheticus’s argument for the truth (not merely the empirical adequacy or the
convenience) of Copernicanism, where no interpretation that you give treats this argument as reflecting
what Kuhn calls a merely “aesthetic” preference for harmony or unity. How powerful (or weak) do you
believe this argument for Copernicanism to be?