30 Phil, Chapter 21, Galileo, Touchstone 54: Modern Cosmology.
The story of Galileo is also the story of Copernicus, and the story of modern cosmology. To properly tell the story of Copernicus, we need to mention Aristarchus of Samos, a Greek astronomer and mathematician born around 310 BCE. Aristarchus put forth a heliocentric model, proposing that the Earth and other planets orbited the Sun. Unfortunately, his ideas did not gain widespread acceptance. Over the millennia some scholars had the idea that the universe was vast, but no proof. With the invention of the telescope in 1608, the proof was within reach. This was the time when our human-centric world expanded into the vastness of space.
