(Wikimedia Commons)
Some point to the proposal of a heliocentric model of our solar system by the cathedral canon Nicholas Copernicus as a watershed moment in what they view as the long and always triumphant war of science and reason against religion. It’s supposed to have shocked people with the realization of how insignificant our planet is, in the great scheme of things.
That’s wrong at virtually every level. For now, though, here’s the British medievalist C. S. Lewis, writing in 1947:
“The immensity of the universe is not a recent discovery. More than seventeen hundred years ago Ptolemy taught that in relation to the distance of the fixed stars the whole Earth must be regarded as a point with no magnitude. His astronomical system was universally accepted in the Dark and Middle Ages. The insignificance of Earth was as much a commonplace to Boethius, King Alfred, Dante, and Chaucer as it is to Mr H.G. Wells or Professor Haldane. Statements to the contrary in modern books are due to ignorance.”
Posted from Cairo, Egypt
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In