"Copernican" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his indifference to the teaching of evolution; in other words, his ignorance of, and disbelief in, a scientific theory of nature which has modified the theological and moral creeds of the civilised world more profoundly than did the Copernican ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... ensued, that we can estimate the magnitude of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been added to civilization. In like manner, it is worth while to pause a moment and consider what is implied in the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, regarded in old times as the center of all things, the apple of God's eye, for the sake of which were created sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to be one of the many balls that roll round a giant sphere of light and heat, which is itself but one ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... time burnt at Rome, and that Galileo had been himself condemned to some penalty."[17] He has also seen a copy of Galileo's condemnation at Lige (September 20, 1633), with the words "although he professes that the [Copernican] theory was only adopted by him as a hypothesis." His friend Beeckman lent him a copy of Galileo's work, which he glanced through in his usual manner with other men's books; he found it good, and "failing more in the points where it follows received opinions than where ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... is that of Luther: "Salvation is by faith." This seems at first to be a dynamic answer. It breaks in on the distracted world like a new moral trumpet-call to the soul. It comes to men like a fresh Copernican insight which discovers a new religious world-centre. The soul by its own inward vision, by its moral attitude, by the swing of the will, can initiate a new relation with God, and so produce a new inward ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... speculations of Bruno and Campanella; at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez. The bewildered condition of knowledge is indicated by the fact that while Bruno and Campanella accepted the Copernican astronomy, it was rejected by one who in many other respects may claim to be reckoned as a modern—I mean ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... was introduced and attested—a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say that a future state had been discovered already. It had been discovered as the Copernican System was; it was one guess amongst many. He alone discovers who PROVES; and no man can prove this point but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... and made modern men seem wiser than their sires. For ages the conviction had held the ground that the ancients were the wisest men who ever lived and that we, their children, were but infants in comparison. When, therefore, the Copernican astronomy proved true, when the first terrific shock of it had passed through resultant anger into wonder and from wonder into stupefied acceptance, and from that at last into amazed exultation at the vast, new universe ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... only as a hypothesis. The theory was denounced by Catholics and Reformers, and it did not convince some men (e.g. Bacon) who were not influenced by theological prejudice. The observations of the Italian astronomer Galileo de' Galilei demonstrated the Copernican theory beyond question. His telescope discovered the moons of Jupiter, and his observation of the spots in the sun confirmed the earth's rotation. In the pulpits of Florence, where he lived under the protection of the ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... the new and much more precise evidence now for the first time herewith produced, it is difficult to decide which of them first invented the telescope, or first by actual observation with that marvellous instrument confirmed the truth of the Copernican System by revealing the spots on the Sun, the orbit of Mars, the horns of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, the mountains in the Moon, the elliptical orbits of comets, etc. It is manifest, however, ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... had fortitude to die, not in the cause of religious belief, but in that of scientific conviction. For why did Bruno suffer? He suffered, as we all know, because he refused to recant his persuasion of the truth of the Copernican theory. Why, then, do I adduce the name of Bruno at the close of this lecture? I do so because, as far as I have been able to ascertain, he was the first clearly to enunciate the monistic theory of things to which the consideration of my subject ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... can be derived only from their study; but the attention of the experimenter is necessarily absorbed by the special work he undertakes. I refer to the three greatest events in science: the discovery of the Copernican system, the three laws of Kepler, and Newton's law of gravitation, none of which is due to direct and special experimentation. Copernicus was an astronomer, but the discovery of his system is due chiefly to his study of the complications of the Ptolemaic system. Kepler ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various |
