h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: An Outline of The Copernican Revolution - A997347
Author: Twophlag Gargleblap - now paying a little bit of attention to H2G2 once again. - U109577

Boring but true.

Great stuff. I really enjoyed reading it. Fascinating, convincing and extremely well written.

Not sure if the "An Outline of" part of the title is necessary. It doesn't read as an outline, it remains focused on the subject, and, within the context of the guide, I think that all entries are outlines to some extent.

its good, - but it needs structure. Names and facts are thrown at the reader with machine gun rapidity and after a while they blur.

I would suggest using footnotes to identify a lot of the quotes, and develop a straight timeline through the article.

I think an article on Copernicus is a worthy addition, and I think this could be it, but I'm only a passing layman, to whom this is supposed to be legible.

At times parts of the piece read like an anti-Catholic crusade, and it may pay to reduce the references to Catholicism and religion through the piece.

Thats all for now.

The article, I'm afraid, stands 'as is' though unless some sub-ed wants to flesh it out and take a co-author credit on it. This is because the article was written for another purpose and 'adapted' to an H2G2 format, and I've spent as much time as I'm willing to spend on it. Perhaps it could be included as an adjunct to another piece which aims at a more narrative approach which 'laymen' such as yourself would find easier to read.

Footnoting this piece seems like an exercise in cruelty, since as you have noticed the article is mostly a series of footnotes.

"At times parts of the piece read like an anti-Catholic crusade, and it may pay to reduce the references to Catholicism and religion through the piece."

Hey, I didn't make this up... it's called history, and even devout Catholics will have to admit that the history of their Church is somewhat checkered. You'll notice that I haven't made any comments about Catholicism as a practice or about Catholics as practitioners, simply about the organization's role in 16th century politics. That said, I have very little problem with people reading it as a criticism of Catholicism; if I had been writing about the U.S.S.R. would you accuse me of being anti-Stalinist?

I know the antagonism of the Catholic church to the Earth being the centre of the universe, and I'm aware of the punishment meted to heretics. I'm not even a Catholic, I just thought a single mention would have been sufficient.

Like I said its a good article, just a little confused in lay out.

<<< The article, I'm afraid, stands 'as is' though unless some sub-ed wants to flesh it out and take a co-author credit on it. This is because the article was written for another purpose and 'adapted' to an H2G2 format, and I've spent as much time as I'm willing to spend on it. Perhaps it could be included as an adjunct to another piece which aims at a more narrative approach which 'laymen' such as yourself would find easier to read. >>>

I think it needs a lot of adaption to be Edited Guide material. As you say, it's not something particularly easy for a layman to read. If you don't plan to change it, I think perhaps peer review isn't the best place for it, unless of course some scout wants to pick it and feist it off on a defenceless sub-ed.

Currently the narrative bits are a bit too technical and a too large part of the entry is a rapid listing of facts. A pity since the subject is very interesting.

Yes. the subject is interesting and clearly extensively researched. It wouldn't need an enormous amount of extra work from the author to make it ready, just a bit more explanation and some flesh on the bones.

If it's pitched to a sub-editor as is though, they will have to do a fair bit of research in order to make it that bit more user-friendly.

I don't see how it could work as an adjunct.

Sprout

There seems to be some consensus here then that the entry isn't ready as is, and the author isn't willing to work on it further.

Twophlag, would you be willing to remove the entry from Peer Review for us then?

I came here to say that I really like this entry and think it is suitable for the Edited Guide as it is (with the addition of GuideML, of course). But I find that you've all got here first and disagree with me.

Does the fact that this entry was written for a different purpose mean that it has been published elsewhere? This could affect its eligibility, as the other publication might own the copyright.

One important misprint: Entymologically should be Etymologically.

I agree with the others - it neeeds work, especially in Guide ML. Also, you should explain, for example, what the ptolymaic (or whatever it was) model is, becaucse, call me thick, I don't know.

Twophlag, if you're unwilling to work on this entry, could you please remove it from PR? At the moment, it's in a sort of no-mans land, as PR is meant for entries that are ready (or only need very minor alterations).

If you can find someone who is willing to take on this entry, I'm sure teh editing rights can be passed over - you will of course still be credited for the work you did.

I might be interested in helping to fix this up, and here are some suggestions:
1(!) You misspelled Copernicus several times
2 Try to put things into paragraphs intsead of the bullets(or whatever those little slashily blighters are called)
3 I would be willing to help you work on it but they are right, currently it doesn't belong here.

Cheers!
Intersturber

simply stated, the ptolymaic model is an earth centered universe which required lots of epicycles to get the maths to work.

at the time of proposing, it was no less awful than the alternatives, it just had the problem of both being picked by the church as the official view, and of being seriously wrong in the detail, whichshowed up once tyco brahe made sufficiently accurate measurements.

It's interesting to note that an ellipse is a type of epicycle. THe earth and all the planets do go around the sun in epicycles, just a particular type of one. But the major breakthrough made by Kepler was that they don't travel along these paths at a constant speed.

It's also worth noting that, though ellipses are indeed a type of epicycle, Ptolemy's perfect-circle orbits with perfect-circle epicycles acually needed all sorts of sub-epicycles to work, and ended up looking hopelessly artificial. The beauty of Kepler's work is that he showed the solar system to be much simpler.

The author has left the building.

This is another researcher who has a history of disappearing for a few months and then coming back, I believe. And he also appears to be a college student on summer vacation.

That said, I think it would be appropriate to move this thread back to the entry, just not to the FM.

Fair enough, I'll second that.


Geggs

I'm back, sort of. Internet access is intermittent at the moment, as is time. I've revamped the format of the piece a bit, I'll try to do a sweep for spelling errors and typos when I can, though I'm afraid I'm mildly dyslexic and also majorly spaced-out, which makes me one of those authors who really does need an editor (adjunct - I've never met so many ninnies in my life who think that pointing out a spelling error is a really resounding and effective critique of an idea's veracity or relative meaning - H2G2 nitpickers need their own club or something).

Anyways, remind me again what else is wrong with the piece? I think it reads reasonably well, but I'm me.

This is good! One thing I don't think you've mentioned is that Copernicus's system was actually less accurate that the old Ptolemaic system for predicting the positions of the planets. This is because he used circles with constant motion rather than ellipses with varying speed. This was not rectified until Kepler came up with his model.