True Picture of the World

Does absolute truth exist? And if so, how can we get close to it? Even in the natural sciences, truth is often relative. For centuries, humanity adhered to a geocentric picture of the world, with the Earth at the center of the universe, until Nicolaus Copernicus published his magnum opus De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, in 1543, demonstrating that the sun is the center of our planetary system.

 

For the Church, this meant a crisis for the hitherto valid Ptolemaic worldview: humanity – the crown of divine creation – had been displaced now from the center of the universe. For researchers, however, a heliocentric worldview marked a decisive step toward the modern conception of science.