Historians often refer to the renaissance as a Scientific Revolution. It was during this period that Nicolas Copernicus first suggested the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. This was groundbreaking, as previous to this it was generally thought that the Earth was stationary, and all the planets, including the Sun, orbited it. It was also Copernicus' theory that directly led to the discoveries of Kepler, Galileo and Newton. It could therefore be argued that Copernicus' discovery was the most important of the Renaissance. However, the huge advances in the field of astronomy often overshadow many of the developments in other scientific fields, where the scientists Vesalius, Harvey and Boyle also made an impact.

Copernicus' theory, outlined in De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium (`On the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies,' 1543) is often cited as the greatest discovery of the renaissance. However, at the time of its publication, in the...