SOURCE: "Copernicus: Science versus Theology" in The Tradition of Polish Ideals: Essays in History and Literature, Orbis Books (London) Ltd., 1981, pp. 132-49.

In the following essay, Norris discusses the reception of Copernicus's astronomical findings by the Catholic and Protestant churches during the sixteenth centuryry,

This paper is about a Polish citizen and about a revolution which he made. Unlike most Poles, he didn't know he was going to make a revolution, and he probably didn't intend it. He wrote a great and abstruse work, De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which hardly any of his contemporaries could read, let alone understand. It was intended to correct astronomical measurements; instead it revolutionized man's ideas about the universe and his place in it. We have never been quite comfortable in it since.

This paper is like Johann Kepler's ellipse—that is, it has two foci: the accomplishments of Copernicus and the question...