Excerpt from Classics of Modern Science (Copernicus to Pasteur) These movements of science have produced a Copious literature which has not enjoyed the same attention and reading as imaginative books, because, once the ideas are known and incorporated into the existing body of scientific knowledge, these scientific writings tend to acquire chiefly an historical interest. Yet they are monuments of the advance of civilization, and deserve a better fate. Many of them are still interesting to read as human documents because they illustrate how painfully and slowly man's exact knowledge of verifiable pheno mena has been accumulated. No one outside of the small company of highly trained scientists can read all of them through, yet most of them have sections which are as readable and as exciting as any mod ern novel. It is the purpose of this book to present to the young col lege student and to the general reader some of the more representative of these classics in the literature of science, bringing together in this convenient form at least some reminders of a vast field of reading where one may browse for a lifetime with interest and profit. If it be used in conjunction with a history of science it will readily supply a vivid sense of the movement of the mind of western civilization, in creasing in us a respect for the effort of our ancestors, and inspire us to encourage and to forward the work of contemporary scientists, and restrain us at least from hindering them in their efforts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The surprising, little-known story of the scientific revolution that almost didn't happen: how cleric and scientific genius Nicolaus Copernicus's work revolutionized astronomy and altered our understanding of our place in the world. Nicolaus Copernicus gave the world perhaps the most important scientific insight of the modern age, the theory that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. He was also the first to proclaim that the earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. His theory was truly radical: during his lifetime nearly everyone believed that a perfectly still earth rested in the middle of the cosmos, where all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. One of the transcendent geniuses of the early Renaissance, Copernicus was also a flawed and conflicted person. A cleric who lived during the tumultuous years of the early Reformation, he may have been sympathetic to the teachings of the Lutherans. Although he had taken a vow of celibacy, he kept at least one mistress. Supremely confident intellectually, he hesitated to disseminate his work among other scholars. It fact, he kept his astronomical work a secret, revealing it to only a few intimates, and the manuscript containing his revolutionary theory, which he refined for at least twenty years, remained "hidden among my things." It is unlikely that Copernicus' masterwork would ever have been published if not for a young mathematics professor named Georg Joachim Rheticus. He had heard of Copernicus' ideas, and with his imagination on fire he journeyed hundreds of miles to a land where, as a Lutheran, he was forbidden to travel. Rheticus' meeting with Copernicus in a small cathedral town in northern Poland proved to be one of the most important encounters in history. Copernicus' Secret recreates the life and world of the scientific genius whose work revolutionized astronomy and tells the fascinating story behind the dawn of the scientific age.