Intellectual Revolution: Copernican Revolution
The story of Copernican Revolution is the classic example of a major
shift in worldview. So, before exploring what is happening in the
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
parallels between what happened then and what may be about to
happen now will begin a journey that will take us far beyond the
current worldview to a startling new vision of reality that has far-
reaching repercussions for both science and religion. We may be
standing on the threshold of changes even more fundamental and far-
reaching than those initiated by Copernicus.
The Geocentric Universe
Five hundred years ago, as the Middle Ages began to give way to the
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
God's eyes. The Old Testament story of Genesis was taken as
historical fact. God had created the Earth and the Heavens around.
Man (and to a lesser extent woman) was the focus of God's attention.
The model of the cosmos was still that formulated by the Greek
philosopher Ptolemy around 140 AD. The sun, moon, planets and
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
stars move smoothly through the heavens along fixed circular orbits,
the planets do not. They wander among the other stars (which is
where the term “planet” came from; it means “wanderer” in Greek).
Their speed varies, their orbits wobble, and they occasionally reverse
their direction of travel -- what is known as "retrograde" motion. At
that time it was believed that planetary motion must be based on
circles. Plato had argued that heavenly bodies were governed by
different laws than those that governed the motion of objects on
earth. Heavenly bodies being perfect, displayed perfect motion, and
the perfect motion, according to Plato, was circular motion. So how
could the planets’ wandering movements be explained in terms of
circles?
The best solution astronomers could come up with was to propose a
system of epicycles. An epicycle is the path traced out by a point on
circle that is itself rolling around another circle. Imagine a wheel
rolling along the ground. A point on the rim of the wheel is almost
still relative to the ground when it is at the bottom of the wheel, but
moving twice the speed of the wheel when it has reached the top.
And a point beyond the rim of the wheel would actually be moving
backwards when it is at the bottom. So if the planets moved around
small circles that themselves rolled along the larger circular orbits
then this could explain some of the strange planetary motions.
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
-- circles moving along circles moving along circles. And when these
failed, added various other oscillations, until the system became very
complex indeed.
The Copernican Revolution
This view of the universe, cumbersome as it was, survived, virtually
unchallenged, for thirteen hundred years, until the early sixteenth
century when the Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, put
forward a radically different model. The reason the stars appeared to
orbit the earth was, he suggested, because the earth itself was
moving, rotating on its own axis once every twenty-four hours. The
apparent movement of the heavens was an illusion, caused by the
movement of the observer.
Suggesting that the earth moved was heresy enough. But Copernicus
went on to argue that the wandering motion of the planets could be
explained if they were orbiting the sun rather than the earth. This led
to the theory that the earth was itself just another planet also in orbit
around the sun. (This was not a totally new theory. A little know
Greek philosopher, Aristarchus, had advanced the idea that the earth
and the other planets moved around the sun in 270 BC. If his views,
rather than those of Plato and Ptolemy, had held sway, history might
have taken a very different course.)
Being a distinguished churchman, Copernicus knew the views of the
Vatican on the earth's all important position at the center of the
universe, and how tenaciously it held to that view. In proposing his
theory, he was not just challenging orthodox science; he was
challenging the established religious view of reality -- which in those
days held even greater sway than the scientific view. So, fearing the
wrath of the church, he kept his ideas to himself for thirty years. Only
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
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
index of forbidden books.
So it remained, ignored and forgotten, for nearly eighty years, until
the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei took up an interest in planetary
motions. Utilizing the newly invented telescope, he found convincing
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.
He also found that Jupiter had its own moons in orbit around it,
dispelling the idea that everything went around the earth.
After publishing his findings, Galileo was contacted by Pope Paul V,
who demanded he retract his heretical ideas. Fearing for his life, he
did so. But a few years later, unhappy that so important a truth should
remain suppressed, he published a brilliantly composed dialogue in
which he defended and supported the Copernican theory. Again,
under threat of torture, he was forced to "abjure, curse, and detest"
the absurd view that the earth moves around the sun. He was then put
under house-arrest so that he could be watched and prevented from
causing any further trouble -- and remained there till his death.
At the same time as Galileo was making his critical observations of
the planets, a German mathematician, Johannes Kepler, was putting
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
adhered to the Platonic ideal of circular motion, and although his
model explained planetary movements much better than the old
geocentric model, there were still unexplained irregularities, which
Copernicus tried to account for with various epicycles. Kepler had the
good fortune to be a student of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe,
who had accumulated volumes of accurate astronomical observations.
Brahe set Kepler to work on the motion of Mars, the planet with the
most troublesome orbit. Kepler’s breakthrough was the discovery that
the movements of Mars, and all the other planets, could be accounted
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.
The final piece of the puzzle was put in place some 50 years later by
the English mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton. He realized that
heavenly bodies were governed by exactly the same laws as earthly
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
would indeed move in an ellipse -- just as Kepler had discovered.
The revolution was now complete. The journey had been started by
Copernicus, but putting it all together had involved other equally
significant breakthroughs in thinking, and had taken nearly 150 years
to complete. (Although it was not until 1992 that the Vatican finally
admitted Galileo been right.)
Reference:
https://www.peterrussell.com/Reality/RHTML/R11.php
ACTIVITY NO. 3.1 (Copernican Revolution)
Guide Questions:
1. Differentiate Geocentric model to Heliocentric model of the
universe.
2. Why does Copernican theory became controversial?
3. How does Copernican theory transform the societies?