ii4 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



In a society stirring with so many intellectual 



interests we have a mental environment very different 



from that of a hundred years earlier. 



The theological atmosphere, which saw 



everything in the light of the one overpowering 



motive of salvation, had given place to a much 



more independent outlook, in which many questions 



were freely discussed from a rational point of view. 



The world was still orthodox, but orthodoxy itself 



had been aroused and for a time stretched its bounds. 



Nicolaus Koppernigk (1473-1543), a Polish mathe- 

 matician and astronomer, had long been dissatisfied 

 with the prevalent Ptolemaic system, and he returned 

 from a long stay in Italy, where the Pythagorean 

 heliocentric theory was now well known as a Greek 

 speculation, determined to put it to the proof. With 

 scanty instrumental resources he made a series of 

 observations, and worked out his theory. He showed 

 how much simpler it was as an explanation of the 

 phenomena than the Ptolemaic system of cycles and 

 epicycles, in which the heavenly bodies moved round 

 the earth as centre. He finished a treatise setting 

 forth his scheme about 1530, and published a short 

 abstract in popular form in that year. Pope Clement 

 VII. approved, and sent the author a request for the 

 publication of the work in full. To this Copernicus 

 only consented in 1540, and the first printed copy 

 reached him on his deathbed in 1543. 



But if in 1530 the Papacy showed a liberal interest 

 in the new system, by 1616 it had determined, by the 

 mouth of Cardinal Bellarmine, that it was " false and 

 altogether opposed to Holy Scripture," and Copernicus' 

 book was suspended till corrected. As no one cared 



