Nicolaus Copernicus Quotes
All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe.
The Roman Catholic Church had stultified scientific thinking for over a thousand years where differing with accepted church doctrine was not only discouraged but was dangerous. Hicletas—see {590328}—realized that the earth rotated around its own axis three centuries before Christ, and his view was in the literature to which learned people had access. Copernicus later communicated this idea to the Pope but in much more delicate terms—see {590327}. He did not have the problems that Galileo endured with the Church for several reasons. There were different men controlling the church, the printing press had been invented and Galileo published a book that many could read, the Protestant Reformation had really frightened the Church fathers who felt more vulnerable and less tolerant.
Nicolas Copernicus, 1473-1543, [Mikolaj Kopernik], Polish Astronomer, 'The Commentariolus', ~1510
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Roman Catholic Church had stultified scientific thinking for over a thousand years where differing with accepted church doctrine was not only discouraged but was dangerous. Even though Hicletas—see {590328}—realized that the earth rotated around its own axis three centuries before Christ, and his view was in the literature to which learned people had access, even in 1543 Copernicus had to tread lightly with the church. He enlisted the aid of the Pope to “response block” the opposition of other church authorities. Galileo later did not play politics and had a more narrow minded Pope and Vatican to contend with, and as the world knows, came into unfortunate conflict with the Church.
He was the first known person who realized that the earth revolved rapidly about its own axis—which few believed in his day and into modern times until Copernicus (See {590327}). Intuitively, most people assumed that if the earth were spinning, the people and things would fly off. Most ancients believed that the earth was stationary and the heavens were moving because they could see the stars move.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance-era mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.
