ABSTRACT
It gradually transpired – first with Copernicus’s challenge to Ptolemy and later on with Galileo – that the heavens themselves refused to obey the received version of God’s will. The Earth, far from the being the center of the universe, was not even the center of the local planetary system. Astronomy seemed to show that the divine plan, whatever it was, was much bigger, much more diffuse, and much less concerned with ‘God’s Earth’ and ‘God’s creatures’ than the church would ever be willing to concede.
