The Copernican Revolution Author:Thomas S. Kuhn In the Copernican Revolution Thomas Kuhn tells the unexpected story of how a scientist trying to solve a seemingly small technical problem ended up altering attitudes about the basic questions of life. In the year of his death, 1543, Nicholas Copernicus published his life's work: De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium. Attempting to de... more »vise an astronomical theory that would more accurately predict the position of celestial bodies, he found he had to challenge the view of the universe inherited from Ptolemy and Aristotle: that the earth is the motionless center of a system around which the sun, stars, and planets evolve.
The implications of this challenge affected far more than astronomy. As Kuhn persuasively argues, the Copernican Revolutiom was really several revolutions, ultimately transforming not only science, but also philosophy, religion, and social theory. By focusing on this larger impact of Copernicus' ideas, Kuhn's book becomes a revolutionary work in its own way, with implications beyond its subject. First published in 1957, The Copernican Revolution was a conscious attempt to expand the sphere of intellectual history to include the history of science. Kuhn saw the need to tear down the boundaries that separate readers of science and readers of history.« less