Anyway. To just sort of restate what I'd said before... or maybe I'm puttin' down the final words about it given that I really finished the chapter this time. Copernicus was not like the rest of the great philosophers (well he's a mathematician). He may rank right up there, but he's the only one who pussed out on his hypotheses and didn't put them right out there with vigor. The irony is that he had the best idea of all of his predecessors but the worst self esteem about them. He knew he was right but that his book was crap. He wanted to keep his hypotheses following Aristotelian physics when in truth that was what was wrong with his hypotheses. He worried too much about being put in a bad place or being looked down upon that he forsook his very student Rheticus, among others. As far as I could tell, he was a wet rag, not this high and mighty God-Man of philosophy.
And I sort of like that. As to why, see previous entry.
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