The process of breaking down the medieval view of
the cosmos was a long one, dependent on the work of such greats
as Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo. But it was Isaac Newton's
laws that finally provided the genius of synthesis necessary to
explain how and why the planets moved.
The Copernican universe views the Earth as neither
immobile nor central to the system; Copernicus's system revolves
around the sun. Improved instruments were able to give people an
idea of what the planets looked like. However, before their sizes
could be known, distances - the dimensions of the solar system -
had to be measured. And before one absolute measurement could be
used to deduce all the others, it was necessary to determine the
relative distance between the sun and the earth, the sun and Mars,
and other similar values. Copernicus broke with the classic view
of the universe by putting the sun at its center. His 1543 publication,
On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, was banned by
the Catholic Church 73 years later.
