The Revolutions Of The Heavenly Bodies Summary

Copernicus and the Heavenly Revolutions.
Nicolaus Copernicus’s book “The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies” was a book that challenged the way people think and made them rethink what they knew as fact. When Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, there was only one view/model of the universe, which was Ptolemy’s model. His Geocentric Universal model, where the earth is the center of the universe and everything rotates around us, there was no question that this was fact. That was the case until Copernicus came and opened their minds to another possibility. Copernicus was a man who was born into a merchant family, but was soon orphaned at the young age of 10, he then lived with his aunt and uncle, the latter was an important bishop. This
Copernicus had an influential background with the church through his uncle and his own time working with/ for the church. Copernicus knew that the release of his book would upset most of the church and their officials. People and the church in the late 1400’s and early 1500’s had accepted Ptolemy’s geocentric universal model as being the fact of how the universe was, they knew no other way. They attached their theological stand point to this model thinking, the heavens were perfection and the least perfect place in the universe was the center of the earth. They believed that the sky in all its perfection was heaven, and the center of the earth, lacking any sort of perfection was hell, and people were right in between living on earth. This is the view that they had had for years and anything new would be nearly impossible for them to understand, and to believe as true. Copernicus knew that through the publication of his book the church might be made angry and frustrated with him and they may accuse him of heresy. Due to his history with the church he did not want to offend the church or anger them in any way, he had a sort of respect for the church. There was also a rebellion in the church at this time, Martin Luther was criticizing the church and many of their teachings. It is said that
His work is said to have started the scientific, or Copernicus revolution. It is called this because his work completely changed how people saw the universe and the earths place within it. People’s view of the earth went from a stationary focal point in the universe to a planet that orbits the sun: from the center of everything to just another planet that orbits the sun. Although it took a while people eventually accepted his research and findings as the new truth about the earth and the