Copernicus had come up with the notion that the earth must be going around the sun along with the other planets without making any new astronomical observations. He had simply found the idea in a book on the ancient Greek mathematician Aristarchus.§ Again, the chief reason Copernicus did not publish his theory during his lifetime was not that he feared the disapproval of the Church—he was worried it was so contrary to our everyday experience, it would be laughed off the stage.26 Nothing any astronomer had ever seen, not even Tycho Brahe’s meticulous observations from his island observatory
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