The Copernican revolution was a pivotal event in the history of science. Yet I believe that the lessons most often taught from from this period are largely historically inaccurate and that the most important lessons are basically not taught at all [1]. As it turns out, the history of the Copernican revolution carries important and surprising lessons about rationality -- about what it is and is not like to figure out how the world actually works. Also, it’s relevant to deep learning, but it’ll take me about 5000 words on renaissance astronomy to make that point.

I used to view the Copernican revolution as an epic triumph of reason over superstition, of open science over closed dogma. Basically, things went as follows: Copernicus figured out that the sun rather than the earth is at the center of our planetary system. This theory immediately made sense of the available data, undermining its contorted predecessors with dazzling elegance. Yet its adoption was delayed by the Catholic Church fighting tooth and claw to keep the truth at bay. Eventually, with the emergence of Newton’s work and the dawn of the Enlightenment, heliocentrism became undeniable and its adoption inevitable [2].

This view is inaccurate. Copernicus system was not immediately superior. It was rejected by many people who were not puppets of the Church. And among those who did accept it, better fit to the data was not a main reason. What did in fact happen will become clear in a moment. But in reading that, I’d like to prompt you to consider the events from a very particular vantage point: namely what they would be like from the inside. Ask yourself not what these events seem like for a millennial with the overpowered benefit of historical hindsight, but for a Prussian astronomer, an English nobleman or a Dominican priest.

More precisely, there are two key questions here.

First, if you lived in the time of the Copernican revolution, would you have accepted heliocentrism? I don’t mean this as a social question, regarding whether you would have had the courage and resources to stand up to the immensely powerful Catholic Church. Rather, this is an epistemic question: based on the evidence and arguments available to you, would you have accepted heliocentrism? For most of us, I think the answer is unfortunately, emphatically, and surprisingly, no. The more I’ve read about the Copernican revolution, the l...

Katherine Taylor

Katherine Taylor

Katherine Taylor

Katherine Taylor