6.4 1543
6.4.1 Copernicus' book on astronomy
6.4.2 Vesalius' book on the human body
6.4.1 Copernicus' book on astronomy
On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, by the Polish canon and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, was first. printed in Nuremberg in May 1543, Copernicus' revolutionary book overturned the medieval belief that the earth lay at the centre of the universe. Copernicus' vision of the heavens showed that the earth, along with all the other known planets, rotated around the sun. Copernicus subtly revised the work of classical Greek and Arabic astronomy scholars. He argued that 'they did not achieve their aim, which we hope to reach by accepting the fact that the earth moves'.
Copernicus' attempt to limit the revolutionary significance of his ideas by accommodating them within a classical scientific tradition failed. The Catholic Church was horrified and condemned the book. Luther also angrily denounced Copernicus, exclaiming, 'This fool wants to turn the entire art of astronomy upside down'. Copernicus' argument overturned the biblical belief that the earth—and humanity with it—was at the centre of the universe. This was a dangerous but liberating idea: the individual adrift in a meaningless universe, free from the divine order imposed by the church.
6.4.2 Vesalius' book on the human body
On the Structure of the Human Body was published in Basle in June 1543.  This marked the beginning of modern observational science.  The dramatic title page depicts Vesalius conducting a graphic public anatomy lesson, held in a Palladian-style 'theatre', surrounded by students, citizens, and fellow physicians. Vesalius calmly returns our gaze as he peels back the female cadaver's abdomen. This gesture voyeuristically invites the reader to open the book and follow the anatomist as he reduces the human body to the skeleton that hovers above the dissected body. Vesalius revealed the mystery of the inner body as a complex map of flesh, blood, and bone, a potentially infinite source of study.
Like Copernicus, Vesalius' anatomical studies were based on methodical observation and analysis. For Copernicus, this meant gazing at the stars through scientific instruments of his own invention. For Vesalius it meant stealing the bodies of the condemned and the diseased, to which he confessed: 'I was not afraid to snatch in the middle of the night what I so longed for'. While Vesalius discovered the microscopic secrets of the human body, Copernicus explored the macrocosmic mysteries of the universe.
The implications were profound. Copernicus ultimately transformed scientific apprehensions of time and space by undermining the notion of a divinely ordered world awaiting the final biblical Day of Judgement. Instead, the earth was envisaged as one planet amongst the vast, empty time and space of the universe. Vesalius envisaged the individual as an infinitely complex and intricate mechanism of blood, flesh, and bone.
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