Nicolaus Copernicus : Making the Earth a Planet Hardback
by Owen (Senior Astronomer Emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Resear Gingerich, James (Professor of History, Professor of History, Ryerson Polytech Institute, Toronto ( MacLachlan
Part of the Oxford Portraits in Science series
Hardback
Description
Born in Poland in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus launched a quiet revolution.
No scientist so radically transformed our understanding of our place in the universe as this curious bishop's doctor and church official.
In his quest to discover a beautiful and coherent system to describe the motions of the planets, Copernicus placed the sun in the center of the system and made the earth a planet traveling around the sun.
Today it is hard to imagine our solar system any other way, but for his time Copernicus's idea was earthshaking.
In 1616 the church banned his book Revolutions because it contradicted the accepted notion that God placed Earth in the center of the universe.
Even though those who knew of his work considered his idea dangerous, Revolutions remained of interest only to other scientists for many years.
It took almost two hundred years for his concept of a sun-centered system to reach the general public.
None the less, what Copernicus set out in his remarkable text truly revolutionized science.
For this, Copernicus, a quiet doctor who made a tremendous leap of imagination, is considered the father of the Scientific Revolution.
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:128 pages, 57 halftones, maps & line illus.
- Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication Date:16/06/2005
- Category:
- ISBN:9780195161731
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:128 pages, 57 halftones, maps & line illus.
- Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication Date:16/06/2005
- Category:
- ISBN:9780195161731
