Intellectual Revolution: Copernican Revolution

The story of Copernican Revolution is the classic example of a major rather than those of Plato and Ptolemy, had held sway, history might
shift in worldview. So, before exploring what is happening in the have taken a very different course.)
present day and where it may be leading us, let us first go back and
briefly recap the salient features of this earlier revolution. The Being a distinguished churchman, Copernicus knew the views of the
parallels between what happened then and what may be about to Vatican on the earth's all important position at the center of the
happen now will begin a journey that will take us far beyond the universe, and how tenaciously it held to that view. In proposing his
theory, he was not just challenging orthodox science; he was
current worldview to a startling new vision of reality that has far-
challenging the established religious view of reality -- which in those
reaching repercussions for both science and religion. We may be days held even greater sway than the scientific view. So, fearing the
standing on the threshold of changes even more fundamental and far- wrath of the church, he kept his ideas to himself for thirty years. Only
reaching than those initiated by Copernicus. as he was nearing death, and feeling that he did not want to take this
important knowledge with him to the grave, did he finally decide to
The Geocentric Universe publish his little book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.
When it was eventually published, in 1543, (Copernicus first saw a
copy on the day he died) it was immediately placed on the papal
Five hundred years ago, as the Middle Ages began to give way to the
index of forbidden books.
Renaissance, the reality within which most people lived and
conducted their affairs was one in which human beings played a pre-
eminent role; everything revolved around man, both physically and in So it remained, ignored and forgotten, for nearly eighty years, until
God's eyes. The Old Testament story of Genesis was taken as the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei took up an interest in planetary
historical fact. God had created the Earth and the Heavens around. motions. Utilizing the newly invented telescope, he found convincing
Man (and to a lesser extent woman) was the focus of God's attention. evidence in favor of the Copernican model. He saw that Venus had
phases, just like the moon, when only half, or just a crescent, of it
would be lit -- which is what would happen if Venus orbited the sun.
The model of the cosmos was still that formulated by the Greek
He also found that Jupiter had its own moons in orbit around it,
philosopher Ptolemy around 140 AD. The sun, moon, planets and
dispelling the idea that everything went around the earth.
stars all revolved around the earth in circular orbits. Back then,
everyone “knew” that the earth stood still at the center of the
universe. But there were problems with this model. Although the After publishing his findings, Galileo was contacted by Pope Paul V,
stars move smoothly through the heavens along fixed circular orbits, who demanded he retract his heretical ideas. Fearing for his life, he
the planets do not. They wander among the other stars (which is did so. But a few years later, unhappy that so important a truth should
where the term “planet” came from; it means “wanderer” in Greek). remain suppressed, he published a brilliantly composed dialogue in
Their speed varies, their orbits wobble, and they occasionally reverse which he defended and supported the Copernican theory. Again,
their direction of travel -- what is known as "retrograde" motion. At under threat of torture, he was forced to "abjure, curse, and detest"
that time it was believed that planetary motion must be based on the absurd view that the earth moves around the sun. He was then put
circles. Plato had argued that heavenly bodies were governed by under house-arrest so that he could be watched and prevented from
different laws than those that governed the motion of objects on causing any further trouble -- and remained there till his death.
earth. Heavenly bodies being perfect, displayed perfect motion, and
the perfect motion, according to Plato, was circular motion. So how At the same time as Galileo was making his critical observations of
could the planets’ wandering movements be explained in terms of the planets, a German mathematician, Johannes Kepler, was putting
circles? into place another key piece of the puzzle. Copernicus had argued
that the sun, not the earth, lay at the center of things, but he still
The best solution astronomers could come up with was to propose a adhered to the Platonic ideal of circular motion, and although his
system of epicycles. An epicycle is the path traced out by a point on model explained planetary movements much better than the old
circle that is itself rolling around another circle. Imagine a wheel geocentric model, there were still unexplained irregularities, which
rolling along the ground. A point on the rim of the wheel is almost Copernicus tried to account for with various epicycles. Kepler had the
still relative to the ground when it is at the bottom of the wheel, but good fortune to be a student of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe,
moving twice the speed of the wheel when it has reached the top. who had accumulated volumes of accurate astronomical observations.
And a point beyond the rim of the wheel would actually be moving Brahe set Kepler to work on the motion of Mars, the planet with the
backwards when it is at the bottom. So if the planets moved around most troublesome orbit. Kepler’s breakthrough was the discovery that
small circles that themselves rolled along the larger circular orbits the movements of Mars, and all the other planets, could be accounted
then this could explain some of the strange planetary motions. for, without any need for epicycles, if their orbits were ellipses rather
than circles. But as to why the orbits should be ellipses rather than
circles, he had no idea.
As more accurate data was collected, it became apparent that simple
epicycles could not account for all the irregularities in the planetary
motions. So medieval astronomers proposed more complex epicycles The final piece of the puzzle was put in place some 50 years later by
-- circles moving along circles moving along circles. And when these the English mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton. He realized that
failed, added various other oscillations, until the system became very heavenly bodies were governed by exactly the same laws as earthly
complex indeed. objects; the force that causes an apple to fall is the same force that
holds the moon in its orbit around the earth. Working out the
resulting equations of motion he established that any orbiting body
The Copernican Revolution
would indeed move in an ellipse -- just as Kepler had discovered.

This view of the universe, cumbersome as it was, survived, virtually The revolution was now complete. The journey had been started by
unchallenged, for thirteen hundred years, until the early sixteenth Copernicus, but putting it all together had involved other equally
century when the Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, put significant breakthroughs in thinking, and had taken nearly 150 years
forward a radically different model. The reason the stars appeared to to complete. (Although it was not until 1992 that the Vatican finally
orbit the earth was, he suggested, because the earth itself was admitted Galileo been right.)
moving, rotating on its own axis once every twenty-four hours. The
apparent movement of the heavens was an illusion, caused by the
Reference:
movement of the observer.
https://www.peterrussell.com/Reality/RHTML/R11.php

Suggesting that the earth moved was heresy enough. But Copernicus
went on to argue that the wandering motion of the planets could be ACTIVITY NO. 3.1 (Copernican Revolution)
explained if they were orbiting the sun rather than the earth. This led Guide Questions:
to the theory that the earth was itself just another planet also in orbit 1. Differentiate Geocentric model to Heliocentric model of the
around the sun. (This was not a totally new theory. A little know universe.
Greek philosopher, Aristarchus, had advanced the idea that the earth 2. Why does Copernican theory became controversial?
and the other planets moved around the sun in 270 BC. If his views, 3. How does Copernican theory transform the societies?