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For Barfield, the
nature of this revolution, like all else, must be understood as a stage
in the evolution of consciousness: Unless we realize, with the help of a little historical excavation . . . what from the epistemological point of view astronomy signified and had signified for almost ten thousand years, we shall not understand the real significance of Copernicus and Galileo. The popular view is that Copernicus "discovered" that the Earth moves around the sun. Actually the hypothesis that the earth revolved round the sun is at least as old as the third century B.C., when it was advanced by Aristarchus of Samos, and he was neither the only nor probably the first astronomer to think of it. Copernicus himself knew this. Secondly it is generally believed that the Church tried to keep the discovery dark. Actually Copernicus did not himself want to publish his De Revolutionibus Orbium, and was only eventually prevailed on to do so by the importunity of two eminent Churchmen.
When the ordinary man hears that the Church told Galileo that he might teach Copernicanism as a hypothesis which saved all the celestial phenomena satisfactorily, but "not as being the truth," he laughs. But this was really how Ptolemaic astronomy had been taught! In its actual place in history it was not a casuistical quibble; it was the refusal (unjustified it may be) to allow the introduction of a new and momentous doctrine. It was not simply a new theory of the nature of the celestial movements that was feared, but a new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances. It is identical with truth. (SA 50-51)
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