Abstract
IT is just four hundred years since Copernicus died. A very short time before his death the first printed copy of his work, “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium”, was placed in his hands, but in his semi-conscious state he was unable to realize the implications of his views expressed in his book, or the revolution which they were destined to effect in scientific thought. Before his time the Aristotelian scheme of cosmology was generally accepted-the earth being the centre of a system of spheres, to which the planets were rigidly attached. Outside this system was another sphere to which the stars were attached, and this sphere, with the stars, rotated once in twenty-four hours. To account for the erratic motion of the planets it was believed that the planetary spheres rotated in a direction opposite to that of the sphere of stars, but were dragged along by the superior force. Saturn was then considered the outermost planet and therefore nearest to the stellar sphere; for this reason it had the greatest difficulty in overcoming the force of the stellar sphere, and hence required a long time to complete a revolution. In contrast with Saturn the moon- the nearest to the centre-had little force to overcome and so completed a revolution in the least time.
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Copernicus and his Influence on Astronomical Thought. Nature 151, 583 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151583a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151583a0