Moving Heaven and Earth

John Henry did a Ph.D. at the Open University and is now a Senior Lecturer at Edinburgh University. He mostly works on the history of interactions between science, medicine, magic and religion in the Renaissance period.

Contents

Acknowledgements

1 You'd Have to Be Crazy to Say the Earth Moves

Science or insanity?

Nothing new under the Sun

Astronomy rules, OK?

2 Why Did Copernicus Say the Earth Moves?

Heavenly orbs

Science or art?

Ptolemy and the decline of cosmology

How to avoid a crisis: the medieval stand-off

How to create a crisis: Nicolaus Copernicus, cosmologist

3 Who Was Copernicus?

Why Copernicus?

Life and times

Renaissance man

Renaissance mathematician

4 What Was the Reaction?

Small beginnings

Copernicus and the astronomers

Copernicus and the Churches

Copernicus and the Aristotelians

5 What Difference Did it Make?

A world of difference

One physics or two?

How the Earth moves

Space: the final frontier

6 Last Words

Glossary

Further Reading