The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory

ONTEMPORARY ASSESSMENT of a new scientific theory will always \.depend upon how that theory is perceived. This may seem an obvious point, yet there exists an understandable tendency among some historians and philosophers of science to treat a later, well-supported version of a theory as though it were the same account available to its earliest recipients. The language which historians often use to characterize the recipients of a new program of scientific research-categories such as Copernican, Newtonian, or Darwinian (not to mention their respective "isms")-all too often masks interesting differences in the meaning of "acceptance." Acceptance may connote provisional use of certain hypotheses (without commitment to truth content), or acceptance of certain parts of the theory as true while rejecting other propositions as false, or the overzealous belief that all propositions of the theory are true even in the absence of sufficient confirmatory evidence, or acceptance of the theory as true without regarding it as a program for further research.