Overview
In 1543 the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the prevailing view of the world: he claimed that the Earth was not the immovable centre of the world but a planet in orbit around the sun. To the Christian church this was a heresy that contradicted the Bible. For centuries to come great scientists like Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton wrestled with the question of a moving earth in the face of opposition from the church, which sentenced Galileo to house arrest and burned the philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. Their struggle led not only to a new view of the world, but also to the modern natural sciences and thereby the way we view the world today.
