Every so often, a new idea comes along in science that completely
changes the way that people think about the world around
them. These ideas are so radical that they are known as “scientific
revolutions.” For astronomers, one such revolution took place in
the year 1543. Before this time, most people believed that Earth
was the center of the universe and the Sun, stars, and planets all
moved around us. Then an astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus
published a book suggesting that the Sun and stars stayed
still and it was Earth that moved. It took over 100 years for this
“Copernican revolution” to take hold. This idea completely changed
the way that people viewed the solar system and our planet’s place
in it.
For biologists, a great revolution took place in 1859 when
Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection. In this book, Darwin presented his
ideas about how different animals and plants evolved from other
animals and plants. This “evolution revolution” gave biologists a
whole new way of looking at living things and how they relate to
each other.