Bodin on Heliocentrism

Posted by jns on February 27, 2008

After Copernicus published De Revolutionibus in 1543, acceptance of the idea that the Earth orbited the Sun was neither immediate nor universal. Some appealed to common sense:

No one in his senses, or imbued with the slightest knowledge of physics will ever think that the earth, heavy and unwieldy from its own weight and mass, staggers up and down around its own centre and that of the sun; for at the slightest jar of the earth, we would see cities and fortresses, towns and mountains thrown down.
– Jean Bodin (1529–1596), quoted in Peter Watson, Ideas, (New York : HarperCollins, 2005), p. 517

Isn’t it interesting how some common sense becomes uncommon.