Copernicus adapted physics to the demands of astronomy, believing that the principles of Ptolemys system were incorrect, not the math or observations. He was the first person in history to create a complete and general system, combining mathematics, physics, and cosmology. Copernicuss system was taught in some universities in the 1500s but had not permeated the academic world until approximately 1600. Some people, among whom John Donne and William Shakespeare were the most influential, feared Copernicuss theory, feeling that it destroyed hierarchal natural order which would in turn destroy social order and bring about chaos. Indeed, some people , used Copernicuss theory to justify radical theological views.
Before Copernicus formulated his theory of the solar system, astronomy in Europe had stagnated. After the Almagest had been translated into Latin, European astronomers such as the Austrian mathematician Georg von Peurbach and the German astronomer Regiomontanus proposed no new theories, attempting instead to refine the flawed system already laid out by Ptolemy. The astronomy textbook used for teaching was still The Sphere, the same book that had been in use since the 1200s. Rather than formulating new theories, astronomers had busied themselves in saving appearances, which consisted of trying to patch it up Ptolemys cumbersome and inaccurate model. Copernicus, however, wiped the slate clean in a single broad stroke, and proposed a fundamentally different model in which the planets all circled the Sun in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. While radically different from Ptolemys model, Copernicuss heliocentric theory was hardly an original idea. Similar theories had been proposed by Aristarchus as early as the third century B. C., and Nicholas de Cusa, a German scholar, had independently made the same assertion in a book he published in 1440. We know for a fact that Copernicus was well aware of Aristarchuss priority, since his original draft of De Revolutionibus has survived and features a passage referring to Aristarchus which Copernicus crossed out so as not to compromise the originality of his theory. In his belief that his theory was an accurate description of nature rather than just a mathematical model, Copernicus was therefore not truly revolutionary.
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