revolution n. a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people’s ideas about it.
The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books – they spread like epidemics through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied form of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.
There are slow spreading epidemics, like polio, and others that strike swiftly, like the plague. The Darwinian revolution struck like lightning, the Marxian took three quarters of a century to hatch. But the Copernican revolution, which so decisively affected the fate of man, spread in a slower and more devious manner than all. The reason for this was not religious persecution or the fear of martyrdom. It was the fact that Copernicus feared ridicule – because he was torn by doubt regarding his system, and knew that he could neither prove it to the ignorant nor defend it against criticism by the experts. Hence, his flight into secretiveness, and the reluctant, piecemeal yielding of his system to the public.
