A Scientific Revolution

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Nicholas Copernicus

People usually associate revolutions with politics rather than science. Yet scientists often talk about the Copernican Revolution.

Nicholas Copernicus was a sixteenth century Polish astronomer who challenged the accepted idea that the sun and the planets revolved around the Earth. Ever since the second century when the great Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy had put forward his theory that the Earth was the fixed centre of the universe, people had remained convinced, for philosophical and religious reasons, that this was the correct view of the universe.

Although a fan of Ptolemy, Copernicus couldn’t ignore the failures in his so called geocentric model. These flaws became obvious when he tried to explain the observed behaviour of the planets. Copernicus worked to find a model of the universe that would allow for more accurate predictions. But he still wanted to fit in his religious belief that the sun, as light giver, must be closer to perfection and to God than the Earth.

The stakes were high, for if Copernicus was right in suggesting that the Earth and planets all revolved around the sun, then people’s beliefs about the heavens, held since the time of Aristotle, were wrong. It truly was a revolution in science, when we recognized that our theories about the universe had to both explain and predict real observations.

So next time you get the feeling the world revolves around you, think Copernicus, and re-adjust your perspective.