Copernican revolution

The expression Copernican revolution is often used to refer to the set of physical, astronomical and cosmological transformations that happened between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth centuries. It is often regarded as beginning with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (About the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, 1543) and ending with the publication of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The mathematical principles of natural philosophy, 1687). The concept and its name come from the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, who developed it in his book The Copernican Revolution.