Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton all supported which idea from the Scientific Revolution?
1 Answer
Explanation:
The above mentioned scientists were some of the greatest, if not the greatest minds of their eras. Their influence is still felt today, especially the fact that they were the astronomers who finally convinced everyone that the sun was the center of the solar system.
Now, before I get into their theories, I have to say something that is almost always overlooked per the scientific revolution. Most of us are familiar with the idea that is always pushed that the church was and is against science because at the time the church excommunicated or even imprisoned people who argued that the earth was not the center of the universe. This fact is often misconstrued to the point that the church hates science. It is actually quite the opposite.
Ever since the ancient Greeks, up until Copernicus, most every one believed the earth was at the center of the universe. It made perfect sense to them for many reasons. Namely, Ptolemy's GENIUS and I can't emphasize this enough, GENIUS, although not correct, geocentric theory based on epicycles.
Until Galileo and Copernicus there was no proof for a heliocentric universe. On the other hand, Ptolomy had already come up with a genius theory that the planets rotated around the earth, but also rotated around their orbit. This solved the main issue with geocentricity at the time, the retrograde motion of planets across our sky.
The first real proof came from Galileo, who, with his revolutionary telescope, discovered both Venus and Jupiter's moons experience phases like our moon, which is an observation that no geocentric model can explain.
Finally, Kepler's laws of planetary motion in conjunction with his belief that the universe was heliocentric produced theoretical planetary position predictions that matched the observations perfectly. Newton explained his laws with his idea gravity, and the rest is history!
