Recentering the Universe: The Radical Theories of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo

"This title shows how a group of European scientists, in the span of roughly one hundred and fifty years (early 1500s to the mid-1600s) and working through direct observation, overturned the centuries' old accepted view of a geocentric universe. Through their research and writings, they proposed and described a new order of things in which the Earth orbits the Sun. In so doing, these scientists--Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton--challenged the accepted wisdom of the ages, specifically that of the Catholic Church. Galileo was accordingly tried and condemned to house arrest in 1633; the works of many others were banned. Not until the late 1900s did the Church revisit the Galileo case, ultimately concluding that it had made a mistake in suggesting that humans must accept biblical cosmology in literal terms. The book also includes a fascinating chapter exploring sects such as the 19th-century Muggletonians, the 20th-century Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, and the 21st-century Association of Biblical Astronomy, all of which insist(ed) on variations of a geocentric cosmology."--Provided by publisher.