Why is Nicolas Copernicus so important?
Copernicus was the first to argue that the world we live on, the Earth, revolves around the sun, rather than being the center of the universe around which all other celestial objects, the sun, moon, stars, and planets, all revolve, as had previously been believed. Even aside from the fundamental importance of this observation to the development of the science of astronomy, the Copernican Revolution helped people to overcome naive egocentricism, and to evolve a more sophisiticated understanding of what human beings are, and how we relate to the universe in which we live.
