ABSTRACT

Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a new arrangement of the universe in a short work, which long remained in manuscript, that came to be known as the Commentariolus. Dating from around 1512, the work proposed that the system of the universe inherited from the writings of the ancient Greeks Aristotle and Ptolemy, in which the heavens revolve around a stationary, central earth, be replaced by one in which the spheres of the heavens revolve around the Sun, itself now stationary at the centre and with the earth and the five planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, rotating about it. Copernicus developed the idea into its full mathematical form in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543. The new system was not in itself productive of better predictions of celestial motions, but the new, restructured universe was to cause much controversy due to its overturning of established authority and apparent violation of literal readings of Scripture.