OBJECTIONS TO COPERNICUS

However, it must not be thought that Copernicus's views swept Europe: there were many learned men who put up strong objections to heliocentrism.

They argued that if the planet Earth moved, where was the energy for that movement coming from?

If one dropped a weight from a high tower would it not be deflected from a straight line, if the ground below it was moving?

If the Earth was moving and one fired a cannonball in the direction of the motion then it would not travel as far as if one fired in the opposite direction.

Copernicans in general were not able to answer these objections because the physics necessary to answer them had not been devised.

The answers were not available until the time of Galileo and Newton and the theories of universal gravitation and inertia.

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