Copernican Revolution

Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, proposing a heliocentric model in which the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun rather than the Earth being stationary at the center. The book offered an alternative to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times. Copernicus's shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric cosmology was a serious blow to Aristotle's science. In 1609 Johannes Kepler modified the theory, stating that the planets orbit the Sun in ellipses rather than circles. The theory was soon attacked with Scripture and with the common Aristotelian proofs, and in 1616 the works of Copernicus were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.