Soru

Although standard histories of astronomy often credit Nicolaus Copernicus with single-handedly initiating the heliocentric revolution, a closer examination of his landmark 1543 treatise, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, reveals a far more conservative thinker bound to ancient traditions. Copernicus indeed placed the Sun at the center of the universe, but he did so not to chart a path toward modern physics, but rather to salvage the classical Greek ideal of uniform circular motion. Frustrated by the Ptolemaic system's reliance on the equant—an imaginary point from which a planet's speed appeared uniform, even though its actual speed along its orbit varied—Copernicus sought a geometrically 'pure' alternative. To maintain perfect circular orbits without the equant, he was forced to introduce a complex web of epicycles and eccentrics, ultimately creating a system nearly as cumbersome as the one he sought to replace. Furthermore, Copernicus retained the Aristotelian belief in solid crystalline spheres carrying the planets, and he remained convinced that the universe was finite and bounded by a sphere of fixed stars. It was not Copernicus, but later figures like Johannes Kepler��who abandoned circular orbits for ellipses—and Galileo Galilei—who dismantled the crystalline spheres—who truly forged the conceptual tools of modern astronomy. Copernicus’s work was less a modern breakthrough than a final, sophisticated attempt to perfect classical geometry.

Based on the passage, which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the author's analysis of Copernicus?