Talk:The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe

message: The Sleepwalkers was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP
Advert for a non-notable book (contrary to the claims made in the article).  Googling "The Sleepwalkers" gets over 5000 hits, many of which are not this book.  Include the qualifier "cosmology" and the number reduces to 787 hits.  SWAdair | Talk  08:32, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Failed deletion proposal

message: I have removed a longish paragraph dealing with Owen Gingerich, almost word-for-word copied from the article on him, including the poor punctuation. I put a link to that article in the "See also" section. We hardly need two copies of the same verbiage on Wikipedia.
In addition to being redundant, the whole thrust of the paragraph missed the mark.
::A similar cherished old belief backlashed on Koestler. In "II THE SYSTEM OF COPERNICUS", he stated on Nicolaus Copernicus seminal De revolutionibus: "The Book that Nobody Read - the Book of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was and is an all-time worst-seller." After finding a richly annotated copy previously owned by Erasmus Reinhold, a German astronomer in Prussia shortly after Copernicus' death there, Owen Gingerich was inspired to check Koestler' claim and research who had owned and studied the books. The decade long quest showed that books were in fact often richly annotated, and thus Koestler was incorrect. It was recounted in The Book Nobody Read, published in 2004.
Now the point that Koestler was making is that it took a surprisingly long time - over 65 years - for Copernicus' ideas to seep into the consciousness of the general public, and only with the discoveries of Kepler and Galileo. One aspect was the abysmal publishing record of De Revolutionibus. That Erasmus Reinhold, a young professor of astronomy at the University of Wittenberg, had a copy and made notes in it does not deal with the issue at hand, nor is it surprising. It is especially unsurprising as the other astronomy professor at Wittenberg was Georg Joachim Rheticus who took a leave of absence to visit Copernicus, became his (only) disciple, and oversaw the publication of De Revolutionibus for the dying Copernicus. I have not read Gingrich's book, but I would lay long odds that Reinhold didn't even buy his copy, but was given it when Rheticus returned to Wittenberg. 
That the few copies that were sold were "richly annotated" by the few professionals who read it, in no way refutes the claim that it "was and is an all-time worst-seller."
B00P (talk) 07:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Gingerich pretty much rips apart every piece of The Sleepwalkers - of course he doesn't; he doesn't cover the same ground William M. Connolley (talk) 19:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Gingerich

message: , The Sleepwalkers has not been moved properly, a primary page should not redirect to a disambiguated title. Incoming links look like they also need to be checked. Boleyn (talk) 09:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: As always, the reminder is most appreciated. Both the redirect and the links will be rectified within 24 hours. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 14:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  I moved it back. There was no need for the move in the first place William M. Connolley (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved page 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved.  – robertsky (talk) 13:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 5 March 2024