Polish - Scientist | February 19, 1473 - May 24, 1543
Near the sun is the center of the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus
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Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place.
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In so many and such important ways, then, do the planets bear witness to the earth's mobility.
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Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.
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Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
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Not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of Mathematics.
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I shall now recall to mind that the motion of the heavenly bodies is circular, since the motion appropriate to a sphere is rotation in a circle.
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So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.
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Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.
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We regard it as a certainty that the earth, enclosed between poles, is bounded by a spherical surface.
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The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.
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The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.
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