Human Beings Literally Lost the Ground of Their View

There are people who regard the deed of Copernicus as the biggest of the cultural revolutions which humanity has ever experienced as far as the historical memory reaches. One has to admit that the impression and the influence of this...

The Earth May Now Be a Mere Planet Moving Around the Sun

The earth may now be a mere planet moving around the sun, but man is no longer confined to it. His spiritual energy, his reason, his brain power, his psyche, his consciousness have become the center and the purpose of...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World  by Frank E. Manuel

To Remove Man From the Centre of Things Was To Raise Him From His Low Estate

And the one change of this kind implied by the abandonment of the geocentric system was, as is evident from what has already been said, the reverse of that often attributed to the new astronomy; to remove man from the...

Source: The Great Chain of Being  by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

A Grander Position Than He Occupied Before the Copernican Revolution

Once we are committed to this ideology of cosmic evolution, the narrow five millennia of recorded history with their minor progressions, regressions, cycles, and sinusoidal curves appear terrifyingly diminished. And yet the neo-evolutionists would insist that their teachings are raising...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World  by Frank E. Manuel

Man on the Moon Viewing the Earth Was in the Service of the Copernican Hypothesis

Moon voyages became popular in the 1630s, their underlying inspiration Galileo’s telescope and the curiosity it piqued about the planet; but the way of reaching the new world on the moon was more important than the substance of an ideal...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World  by Frank E. Manuel

Acceptance of the Copernican Cosmology Was a Religious Act

If there was an infinity of worlds, as Bruno maintained, for whom in particular had Christ died on this earth? If the universe was eternal, what would become of God the Creator? Acceptance of the Copernican cosmology was a religious...

Source: Utopian Thought in the Western World  by Frank E. Manuel

A Radical Change to Astronomy and Cosmology

The years when Jesuits established their first schools coincided with the beginning of the so-called scientific revolution and the origin of modern science. In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus had published his book, De revolutionibus orbium celestium, in which he proposed the...

Source: Jesuit Contribution to Science  by Agustín Udías

It Just Seemed So Utterly Obvious That the Sun Revolved Round a Static Earth

Egocentric attitudes may have been a contributory factor behind the dominance of the geocentric world-view, but there were other reasons for preferring an Earth-centred universe to Aristarchus’ Sun-centred universe. One basic problem with the Sun-centred world-view was that it appeared...

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh

Concept of the Earth Revolving—Axially and Orbitally—Around the Sun

The term [revolution] derives from the Latin substantive revolutio, which was unknown in classical Latin but was used in the early Middle Ages by St. Augustine and other Christian writers. Translated into Italian as rivoluzione in the early Renaissance and...

Source: Fire in the Minds of Men  by James H. Billington

Rolling Round the Central Sun

In his chapter of the antiquity of Masonry, [Captain George Smith] makes it to be coeval with creation, 'when,' says he, 'the sovereign architect raised on Masonic principles the beauteous globe, and commanded the master science, Geometry, to lay the...

Source: On the Origin of Free-Masonry  by Thomas Paine

We Are Using Philosophical Criteria in Choosing Our Models

"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations," Ellis argues. "For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based...

Psychologically There Is a Great Difference

In fact most of Copernicus' book runs closely parallel with Ptolemy's exposition, only the minimum changes being made to adjust the treatment of the Sun-centered theory; and most of the numerical constants are simply Ptolemy's figures transformed. Not unnaturally, Copernicus...

Source: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium  by Nicolaus Copernicus

Do You Suppose It Is Beyond Us to Produce a Dual System of Astronomy?

Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?

Source: 1984  by George Orwell

They Had to Imagine the Sun as Something That Does Not Move

They had to imagine the sun as something that does not move in relation to the earth and the earth even as something moving.

Humans for the Most Part Don’t Have a Clue

Humans for the most part don't have a clue. They don't want one or need one either. They're happy. They think they have a good bead on things. Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it. A...

Source: Men in Black

Did the Earth Really Orbit the Sun?

Another reason why the Greeks rejected Aristarchus’ Solar System was its apparent failure to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Aristarchus had built a model of the universe that was supposed to match reality, but it was not clear that his...

Source: Big Bang  by Simon Singh

Earth Is But a Tiny Speck Whirling Around Our Sun

Thus, we can begin to think of the immense universe in which our green mantled earth is but a tiny speck whirling around our sun, one of the many stars that range throughout space-time.

Source: Nature and Human Nature  by Lawrence K. Frank