Farnese Alessandro

PhD student 2007 – In Copernicus’ dedication of On the Revolutions to Pope Paul III—which Copernicus hoped would dampen criticism of his heliocentric theory by “babblers… completely ignorant of [astronomy]”—the book’s author wrote that, in rereading all of philosophy, in the pages of Cicero and Plutarch he had found references to those few thinkers who dared to move the Earth “against the traditional opinion of astronomers and almost against common sense.”