Medieval and modern times; an introduction to the history of western Europe form the dissolution of the Roman empire to the present time . could not be proved. Theymaintained that the only way to advance science was to set towork and try experiments, and by careful thought and investi-gation to determine the laws of nature without regard to whatprevious generations had thought. The Polish astronomer Copernicus published a work in1543 in which he refuted the old idea that the sun and all thestars revolved around the earth as a center, as was then taughtin all the universities. He showed that, o
Medieval and modern times; an introduction to the history of western Europe form the dissolution of the Roman empire to the present time . could not be proved. Theymaintained that the only way to advance science was to set towork and try experiments, and by careful thought and investi-gation to determine the laws of nature without regard to whatprevious generations had thought. The Polish astronomer Copernicus published a work in1543 in which he refuted the old idea that the sun and all thestars revolved around the earth as a center, as was then taughtin all the universities. He showed that, on the contrary, thesun was the center about which the earth and the rest of theplanets revolved, and that the reason that the stars seem to goaround the earth each day is because our globe revolves on itsaxis. Although Copernicus had been encouraged to write his The Wars of Religion 359 book by a cardinal and had dedicated it to the pope, the Catholic-as well as the Protestant theologians declared that the new theorydid not correspond with the teachings of the Bible, and theytherefore rejected it. But we know now that Copernicus was. Fig. 92. Galileo right and the theologians and universities wrong. The earth isa mere speck in the universe, and even the sun is a relativelysmall body compared with many of the stars, and so far as weknow the universe as a whole has no center. The Italian scientist Galileo (1564-1642), by the use of a Galileolittle telescope he contrived, was able in 1610 to see the spots 360 Medieval and Modern Times on the sun; these indicated that the sun was not, as Aristotlehad taught, a perfect, unchanging body, and showed also thatit revolved on its axis, as Copernicus had guessed that the earthdid. Galileo made careful experiments-by dropping objects from
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