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Copernicus

This Copernican innovation may not be so impressive, but considered

in its setting, its significance is great. As one of a number of steps in the same
general direction, it represents a questioning attitude toward the activities
of nature, and a spirit of rebellion against things accepted solely on the basis
of authority and tradition. It represents a search for new standards of truth
and acceptance, and the beginnings of a science that is to stand unaided
upon the foundations of its own.
The effect is almost inevitable: this critical, searching, rebellious spirit
which crops out in the scientific mind is bound to have its counterpart in
the philosophic one. The new development in science, though exhibits
open-mindedness, does not cease to be dogmatic in its way. It is critical
of the old, sure of itself as the old had ever been. The conviction that the
truth is attained and reality lays bare, that the old is wrong while the new is
right, seems to characterize all the innovators of science at this time. It was
responsible for their troubles, for difficulties (i.e., hindered publications),
and in some cases, for imprisonment and death. However, it may have
been responsible, too, for progress they made and the success they had.
Copernicus stands as an example of a science in the throes of
revolution, critical and yet self-as . sured and dogmatic, opening up new
visions of the world of nature, and leaving the thinking world in general
to assimilate these changes and make of them the best it can. By the
beginning of the modern age, the rapid growth of the increasingly
cosmopolitan cities of Europe, with their global reach, their extensive
colonies and their national and international rivalries, required a new kind
of philosophy, intensely self-questioning but arrogant as well (Solomon &
Higgins 1996).

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