Copernican Revolution (metaphor) in the context of "Paradigm shift"

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⭐ Core Definition: Copernican Revolution (metaphor)

In the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a major shift in the understanding of the cycle of the heavenly spheres. Driven by a desire for a more perfect (i.e. circular) description of the cosmos than the prevailing Ptolemaic model - which posited that the Sun circled a stationary Earth - Copernicus instead advanced a heliostatic system where a stationary Sun was located near, though not precisely at, the mathematical center of the heavens. In the 20th century, the science historian Thomas Kuhn characterized the "Copernican Revolution" as the first historical example of a paradigm shift in human knowledge,. Both Arthur Koestler and David Wootton, on the other hand, have disagreed with Kuhn about how revolutionary Copernicus' work should be considered.

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Copernican Revolution (metaphor) in the context of The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West (German: Der Untergang des Abendlandes; more literally, The Downfall of the Occident or even more literally, "The Going-Under of the Evening Lands") is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler. The first volume, subtitled Form and Actuality, was published in the summer of 1918. The second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, was published in 1922. The definitive edition of both volumes was published in 1923.

Spengler introduced his book as a "Copernican overturning"—a specific metaphor of societal collapse—involving the rejection of the Eurocentric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval-modern" rubric. According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. In his framework, the terms "culture" and "civilization" were given non-standard definitions, and cultures are described as having lifespans of about a thousand years of flourishing, and a thousand years of decline.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← The Decline of the West
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Sun → Earth → Mars → Heliocentrism → Geocentrism → Apparent retrograde motion → Orbit → Epitrochoid → Nicolaus Copernicus → De revolutionibus orbium coelestium → Geocentrism → History of science → Thomas Kuhn → Paradigm shift → Arthur Koestler → David Wootton (historian) →