Moving Heaven and Earth: Copernicus and the Solar System

When Nicolaus Copernicus claimed that the Earth as not stationary at the centre of the universe but circled the Sun, he brought about a total revolution in the sciences and consternation in the Church - a twin upheaval that would eventually lead to the trial of Galileo before the Inquisition in Rome. His astronomical theory demanded a new physics to explain motion and force, a new theory of space, and a completely new conception of the nature of our universe. But that wasn't all. The theory that moved heaven and earth also showed for the first time that a common-sense view of things isn't necessarily correct, and that mathematics - no matter how abstract it might seem - can and does reveal the true nature of the material world. No other single innovation could have had the same far-reaching consequences in sixteenth-century society, where pure knowledge was thought to rest only in surviving fragments of Ancient wisdom. Copernicus sowed the seed from which science has grown to be a dominant aspect of modern culture, fundamental in shaping our understanding of the workings of the cosmos. In this book, John Henry not only explains how these changes followed upon Copernicus's theory, but also reveals why, in the first place, Copernicus was led to such a seemingly outrageous and implausible idea as a swiftly moving Earth.