I didn't read the book, but from leafing through Stephen Hawking's "On the shoulder of giants" I got the impression this book tries to reconstruct how Copernicu

I didn't read the book, but from leafing through Stephen Hawking's "On the shoulder of giants" I got the impression this book tries to reconstruct how Copernicus, Kepler etc... acquired their understanding of the universe, based on their original texts. So maybe that's the book you want?