Is it Mano Singham debunking the Copernican myths, or are those post-1650 “writers making this revisionist claim”?
Following an earlier reconstruction by Dennis Danielson, Singham bases his objection to the popular mythology on his claim that the Catholic Church did not object initially to the Copernican heliocentric model and that the initial resistance came instead from the physics and astronomy communities. His largely irrelevant (to his main thesis) recounting of some historical events preceding and following Copernicus’s death in 1543 makes for interesting reading but omits certain facts that support the popular historical account that most of us learned.
Although the works of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler did provide much of the factual basis for heliocentricity, the true death knell of the geocentric model was sounded by Galileo’s observation in 1610 of the moons circling the planet Jupiter. Like Copernicus, who avoided exposing his radical ideas to any but a few fellow astronomers until they were published posthumously in his epic De Revolutionibus, Galileo had feared opposition by the church until his friend Cardinal Barberini ascended to the papacy as Urban VIII. Regrettably, Galileo’s maladroitness in court politics led his enemies to denounce him to Pope Urban, who was then currying favor with Protestant princes. The pope issued an edict requiring that Galileo recant his support of the heliocentric model.
As the popular version has it, opposition to the Copernican heliocentric model, both by religious leaders and by some outspoken academics, was based on several factors. Primarily, though, it was based on opposition to any change in the accepted Aristotelian beliefs and adherence to the status quo that has bedeviled scientific innovation to the present day.
