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| Image Source: Famous Scientists |
I've seen this quite often in treatises on science, its general public acceptance and authoritarianism. It's quite typical sadly, of the powerful to "want to control the narrative," thereby remaining in a position of control and influence. Any information counter to their hierarchy is thus heresy, and is usually countered with vigorous dissent and an "alternative" to observation, data, peer review and thus...truth.
On this day (actually, yesterday: 5 March) in 1616 the Vatican's Sacred Congregation of the Index added Nicolaus Copernicus's "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") to its list of banned books. First published in Nuremberg in 1543, the book proposed that Earth, Mars and other planets orbit the Sun. Rejection of Copernicus's heliocentric system was not confined to the Catholic Church. Rumors of his research reached Martin Luther before the book was published. In 1539 the Protestant reformer was quoted as saying: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the Earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the Sun and the Moon. . . . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth."
“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
― P.C. Hodgell, Seeker's Mask, Good Reads
Physics Today: Vatican bans Copernicus' bookStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Nicolaus Copernicus
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