Copernican Revolution
The Copernican Revolution was the paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. This revolution consisted of two phases; the first being extremely mathematical in nature and the second phase starting in 1610 with the publication of a pamphlet by Galileo.[1] Beginning with the 1543 publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, contributions to the “revolution” continued until finally ending with Isaac Newton’s work over a century later.
For other uses, see The Copernican Revolution (disambiguation).Metaphorical usage[edit]
Immanuel Kant[edit]
Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1787 edition) drew a parallel between the "Copernican revolution" and the epistemology of his new transcendental philosophy.[23] Kant's comparison is made in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (published in 1787; a heavy revision of the first edition of 1781). Kant argues that, just as Copernicus moved from the supposition of heavenly bodies revolving around a stationary spectator to a moving spectator, so metaphysics, "proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis", should move from assuming that "knowledge must conform to objects" to the supposition that "objects must conform to our [a priori] knowledge".[b]
Much has been said on what Kant meant by referring to his philosophy as "proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis". There has been a long-standing discussion on the appropriateness of Kant's analogy because, as most commentators see it, Kant inverted Copernicus' primary move.[25]
According to Tom Rockmore,[26] Kant himself never used the "Copernican revolution" phrase about himself, though it was "routinely" applied to his work by others.
