Nicolaus Copernicus

Metaphysics of Nicolaus Copernicus & the Motion of Earth about the Sun
Uniting Ptolemy & Copernicus - Earth, Sun, & Matter are each Center of own Universe. Quotes, Pictures, Biography.

Once it was recognised that the earth was not the center of the world, but only one of the smaller planets, the illusion of the central significance of man himself became untenable. Hence, Nicolaus Copernicus, through his work and the greatness of his personality, taught man to be honest. (Albert Einstein, Message on the 410th Anniversary of the Death of Copernicus, 1953)

Introduction & Summary of Nicolaus Copernicus' Cosmology

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543) is known as one of the founding fathers of Cosmology, liberating us from the earth centric view of the universe (as formalised by Ptolemy, approx. 90 - 160AD). He discovered that the earth orbits the sun.
As Copernicus wrote in De Revolutionibus Coelestibus;

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.
All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and
the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts,
as they say, 'with both eyes open'. (Copernicus)

We find that the simplest explanation is most likely the true one as Max Born writes;

Nicolaus Copernicus' constructive achievement was that his system explained in a simpler way the phenomena which the traditional world system was able to explain only by means of complicated and artificial hypotheses. (Max Born, Einstein's Theory of Relativity)

The scientific truth of Copernicus' Theory (that the earth orbits the sun) was not recognised within his own lifetime. It was not until Galileo Galilei peered through his telescope, that Copernicus' Theory was proved by Empirical Science (and still faced extreme opposition from the orthodoxy who refused to look).
We can learn from great scientists of the past that important scientific discoveries are often first ignored, and then violently rejected, by the society of their time. As Nicolaus Copernicus confirms;

.. astronomers of my day are so inconsistent in these [astronomical] investigations ... that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year. With them, it is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part excellently drawn, but not related to a single body, and since they in no way match each other, the result would be monster rather than man. (Copernicus, Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

This webpage on Nicolaus Copernicus deals with three very interesting problems of Cosmology.
i) Is the universe Finite or Infinite?
ii) Are we at the center of the universe?
iii) Does the Earth orbit the Sun?

You may think the answers are now fairly obvious, the universe is finite and roughly spherical, we are not at the center of the universe, and we do orbit the sun. The metaphysics of Space and the Wave Structure of Matter (Wolff, Haselhurst) suggests differently, that only two of the above three conclusions are correct.
Please Cosmology and Simple Science to properly understand, but here I will simply state the solution.

i) Yes the universe is spherical and finite. In fact matter and the universe are one and the same thing, as matter is formed from Spherical Standing Waves which determine the size of our finite spherical universe within an Infinite Space. Thus the conception of matter as tiny particles is wrong, matter is large not small, but the Wave-Center of the Spherical Waves forms the tiny 'particle' effect.
ii) This is the surprise. We are actually at the center of our own universe, but within an infinite Space (thus there is no center of Space). So Ptolemy was correct (for the wrong reasons) and Copernicus made an error (he correctly showed that the Earth orbits the Sun, he incorrectly assumed this meant we were not at the center of the universe).
iii) Yes, the Earth does orbit the Sun.

I hope that you will read on the Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) as a way of understanding not only Ptolemy and Nicolaus Copernicus, but also the modern Cosmology which evolved from Albert Einstein's Relativity. Below are some links to more information on Nicolaus Copernicus.

Geoff Haselhurst

Nicolaus Copernicus & Ptolemy Links

Nicolaus Copernicus Biography
http://www.phy.hr/~dpaar/fizicari/xcopern.html

Nicolaus Copernicus Museum in Frombork - Lovely site with cool animated image. Life of Nicolaus Copernicus. De Revolutionibus. Portraits of Nicolaus Copernicus. Discovered that the Earth is not in the center of the Universe but it circles the Sun.
http://www.frombork.art.pl/Ang02.htm

Ptolemy: Man, Astronomer & Geographer - Ptolemy lived in Alexandria (Egypt) from approx. 87 - 150 AD. He synthesized and extended Hipparchus's system of epicycles and eccentric circles to explain his geocentric theory of the solar system.
http://www.seds.org/billa/psc/theman.html

Biography of Ptolemy - Ptolemy believed the planets and Sun to orbit the Earth in the order Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Ptolemy.html