By

Skeletal Grace

Dead Rebel Of The Week

~ Nicolas Copernicus ~

Picture the scene:

Three kids standing around on the edge of a forest on the first day of summer vacation. There’s no end to the possibilities of great fun they can have for what, today, seems like an eternity. What great games and characters can they invent on this beautiful day?

“I am Sitting Bull,” says the first kid, doing an Indian dance and waving an imaginary axe in the air.

“I’m gonna be Doc Holliday,” says the second one, blowing smoke from his invisible gun, “cause he killed Johnny Ringo dead!”

The adventure is already being set up in their eager minds. Only the last piece of the puzzle is missing. Then with anticipation shining out of their stupid little eyes, they turn to their friend. “What you gonna be, Frankie?”

The third kid looks at them with pride and glee, stares up at the sky and then back at them again. “I’m gonna be Copernicus.”

See. That will never happen. And if it ever did, natural selection would stop it from ever happening again since that kid would have his gay ass beaten and shoved in a locker.

Doc Holliday was a rebel – he beat a death sentence named tuberculosis for 15 years while living the life of rock star. Sitting Bull was a rebel, uniting the warring Indian tribes in their common cause to throw the White Man out from their Holy Grounds.

Copernicus? What the fuck?

Nevertheless, Copernicus was a rebel.

Some people throughout history have become rebels of the mind, rather than warriors for some noteworthy higher cause, by privately questioning established doctrines or trying to unravel mysteries already considered either solved or unsolvable by the powers that be.

When the world is set in its way, it’s important to look at it from a different angle; poking at it, prodding it, and eventually seeing it in a new light – turning the tables on the universe itself.

Nicolas Copernicus was such a man.

Born Mikolaj Kopernik in 1473 in Poland and raised in a sheltered academic environment, young Copernicus was handed a high clerical position in the cathedral of Frauenberg by an uncle. He studied in Italy and Germany, at the finest universities, and acquired quite an impressive education for himself. After concluding his studies, he retreated to the cathedral, where he spent the rest of his days as the appointed Canon. The story could have ended there. Men of the church were notoriously prone to NOT question the world around them, but rather chalk it all up to God’s mysterious ways and divine design, and to be content with that. Not so Copernicus. Early on he showed a hunger for science in general, and later, astronomy in particular.

After having studied and translated the old Latin and Greek theories on the Universe, he assisted a local astronomer in order to learn the tricks of the trades and to get familiar with the tools. When he felt he had enough meat on his bones, he took his studies to a private level. He conducted all his investigations and observations in the solitude of his quarters, and never discussed it with anyone. Copernicus preferred to find out what was what for himself, without letting himself be colored by another man’s opinion. He spent many cold nights on top of the roof of the cathedral, scanning the heavens, and making notes of how the celestial objects moved in relation to one another. This was long before the invention of the telescope, so you can imagine the strained patience it would take a man to map out movements in an infinite star strewn sky.

At this time the Geocentric Model of the world was already established, written in stone even. It stated that Earth was the only fixed body in the Universe and that everything else rotated around it in elaborate circles. We were the center of a spherical universe, in which we were the one and only important thing. The way God had created us.

Copernicus discovered that this was not true. We are but one of many millions of celestial objects, each and every one tied up in their own little solar systems, possibly with their own little divine agendas, in no greater context than just being a very small part of a much greater universe. The Earth rotates around its shoulder, the moon rotates around Earth, and Earth travels tirelessly around the sun with all the other planets following accordingly in their own elliptical routes. We weren’t that special. Just another speck in somebody else’s night sky. God’s creation didn’t seem so damn unique anymore.

In 1514 he anonymously distributed a little untitled text, popularly named “Little Commentary”, that established his early observations in the shape of a bunch of axioms, of which the following were the most important:

•There is no center in the universe;

•The rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars;

•The apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the Earth revolving around it.

After the exhilaration of secretly publishing his true vision of the Universe, Copernicus started to work on his life work, a journal called De Revolutionibus. He always meant to publish it during his lifetime, but the perfectionist in him never allowed him to feel completely “done” with it. He spent 30 years honing his theories, adding facts and rechecking earlier observations. When it was released in the very last year of his life, 1543, with the help of a fellow astronomer and also great admirer, Georg Joachim Rheticus, De Revolutionibus immediately inspired the underground scientific world. Prominent scientists and astronomers such as Galileo and Bruno wholeheartedly adopted Copernicus’ theories and published refined versions of them under their own names. Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic and the Church made Galileo renounce his scientific beliefs before imprisoning him for life for his pagan ways.

Copernicus himself never got in any troubles for his observations. Since he never publicly proclaimed that the Church was wrong about the way the world worked, he was considered harmless. He did, however, decline an invitation from the Pope to help “fix” the astrological calendar, which was at that time out of sync with the zodiacs. He felt he couldn’t possibly be a part of the investigation of one image of the world while perpetuating another.

See, sometimes it’s not necessary to stand on the barricades waving a red flag in the face of authority to be a rebel. You can be a rebel of the mind in the privacy of your heart, questioning the unquestionable, tipping over the Holy Cows of society and still be smart enough not to get burned at the stake before you can finish your thought process. Everybody has a mind, and the world is served to us on a silver platter. What we make of the world is left up to us. Are we leaders.  Or are we followers? Do we take someone else’s word for that which is true, or do we find it out ourselves? Do we take charge of our own beliefs?

Rebellion can be a state of mind as much as a direct course of action upon authority. Ultimately one thing usually leads to another. The person founding the rebellion is not necessarily the guy leading the charge in the end. In Copernicus’ case, generations of scientists were provided with the tools to turn the world upside down and set it straight. He was a man of the Catholic Church, and knew it was a crime upon his Holy Majesty to pursue these theories. Nonetheless he did it. In his heart and soul he rebelled against what he was and what he was supposed to think and believe. Knowing that God could punish him for his sins on his dying day, he still followed through and reshaped the world according to his inner vision.

That takes balls, stamina and conviction. Copernicus is a Dead Rebel.

Comments on this rebel? Go to the Guest Page.