Page 56 - Miracles of The Qur'an Vol. 3

Miracles of the Qur’an

el," from the Greek words
geo (Earth) and kentron (center).
This belief was questioned by the
famous astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus in 1543 in his book De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
(Of the Revolutions of Heavenly
Spheres), in which he suggested
that the Earth and the other planets
revolve around the Sun. As a result
of observations using a telescope
The above manuscript dating from the
performed by Galileo Galilei in
1750s shows the geo-centric (Earth-cen-
tered) model of the universe. It took 1610, it was scientifically estab-
many years for this to be abandoned
lished that the Earth revolves
and replaced by the helio-centric model.
around the Sun. Up until this point,
it had been widely accepted that the
Sun revolved around the Earth – so most scholars of the time stubbornly

rejected Copernicus' theory. The famous astronomer Johannes Kepler's
views setting out the movements of the planets confirmed the heliocen-
th
tric model in the 16th and 17 centuries. In this model, whose name
comes from the words Helios (Sun) and kentron (center), the Sun is the cen-
ter of the universe, rather than the Earth. Other heavenly bodies also re-
volve around the Sun. Yet this was all revealed 1400 years ago in the
Qur'an.
By saying that the Earth was the center of the universe, the ancient
Greek astronomer Ptolemy was responsible for the geocentric idea of the
universe that dominated scientific thought for hundreds of years. For that
reason, at the time of the revelation of the Qur'an, nobody knew that the
Earth-centered model was incorrect. The information in the Qur'an re-
futes the thesis that the Earth is fixed while the Sun revolves around it. It
was believed that the stars and planets revolved around the

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