The above discussion summarizes, from our vantage point in history, the paradigm shift called the Copernican revolution. The main features of this paradigm shift include its substantial length—almost two centuries from Copernicus to Newton; the fact that several brilliant scientists contributed; and its progressive nature. But how would a person living in that era have experienced it? Imagine a person born 10 years after Copernicus’ original ideas were published, and who lived a scientifically informed life of 80 years duration (i.e. 1553–1633). By the time our person completed their education aged around the mid-twenties, Copernicus’ text would have been in wide circulation—as would the awareness that this interesting concept had no better predictive capability than the Ptolemaic system. Kepler published the first of his laws regarding the elliptical nature of planetary orbits only when our person was aged in the mid-50s, and the person would have been around 60 by the time Galileo’s proof of heliocentrism was in circulation. But our person would have died in 1633, almost a decade before Newton was born. In other words, the protracted nature of this paradigm shift was such that contemporaries of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo would not have lived to see it brought to completion by Newton. Paradigm shifts, no matter how clearly discernible from the vantage point of the future, may progress with the main protagonists hardly aware that a shift is underway.
Another important point is the incomplete extent to which the Copernican revolution moved science on from the Greeks. Certainly, the Ptolemaic system had become a relic of scientific history by the time Newton published his laws of motion and gravitation, but crucially, Newton’s mathematics were based on Euclidean geometry, with time as an independent quantity. In addition, although Newton himself accepted the Genesis account, others found his infinite static universe compatible with the ancient Greek idea of an eternal universe. Thus, Newtonian physics was still linked directly and indirectly to Greek science at a presuppositional level. The Copernican revolution, therefore, is a sort of half-way house—a more thorough break with the limitations of ancient Greek presuppositions was yet to come.