Jak (nie) pisać o Mikołaju Koperniku - refleksje na marginesie nowych biografii

Abstract

Two new biographies: Kopernik. Rewolucje (Warszawa 2022) by Wojciech Orliński and Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe oblicze geniusza (Warszawa 2022) by Piotr Łopuszański, along with this year’s 550th anniversary of the astronomer’s birth, have triggered the reflection on how to write about Copernicus’s life and work. The article discusses popular and scientific biography as a genre and narrative model in the history of science and scrutinizes the criteria of “good biographical stories”. The work recalls examples of biographical writing on Renaissance thinkers (Leonardo da Vinci and Girolamo Cardano) and the techniques the authors used to humanize their protagonists for modern readers. The second part of the article focuses on analyzing the new Copernican biographies, noting the authors’ presence in the text, narrative strategies, and their attitude to sources and existing historiography. The final remarks concern the possibility of unifying the polyphonic discourse in Copernican studies and sharing new research with a wider audience.