SOURCE: "'Crisis' versus Aesthetic in the Copernican Revolution" in Yesterday and Today: Proceedings of the Commemorative Conference Held in Washington in Honour of Nicolaus Copernicus, Vistas in Astronomy, Vol. 17, 1975, pp. 85-93.

In the following essay, Gingerich argues against the notion that there was an astronomical crisis in astronomy before Copernicus published his theories.

In a chapter in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions entitled "Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories", Thomas Kuhn states: "If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory. On this point historical evidence is, I think, unequivocal. The state of Ptolemaic astronomy was a scandal before Copernicus' announcement."¹ A paragraph later he elaborates:

For some time astronomers had every reason to suppose that these attempts would be as successful as those...