Changes

[[Copernicus]]'s ''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, 1543) demonstrates that the sun is the center of the solar [[system ]] and thus destroys the earlier Ptolemais system, which assumed that the heavenly bodies rotated around the earth.The so-called 'Copernican [[revolution]]' has therefore come to be seen as the archetypal example of a [[scientific ]] revolution (or [[epistemological break]]), and analogies with it play an important [[role ]] in attempts to demonstrate or assert the scientific [[nature ]] of emergent theories.

In the preface to the second edition of his ''Critique of Pure [[Reason]]'' (1787), [[Kant]] explains that he proposes to do for [[philosophy ]] 'just what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the celestial movements.'Kant's Copernican revolution in [[metaphysics]] reverses the traditional [[theory ]] of cognition by demonstrating that [[knowledge]] does not conform to a realm of [[object]]s; [[object]]s conform, rather, to ways of [[knowing ]] and it follows that we [[know ]] [[them ]] as they appear to us, and not as they [[exist ]] in themselves.

[[Freud]] describes [[psychoanalysis]] (1916-1917) as the last of [[three ]] Copernican revolutions, or of three major blows to the [[self]]-[[love ]] of man.Copernicus demonstrated that the earth was not the center of the [[universe]], and [[Darwin]]'s [[theory of evolution ]] dethrones man from his privileged [[place ]] in creation.[[Psychoanalysis]] then delivers the most wounding blow of all, as the discovery of the [[unconscious]] reveals that the [[ego]] is not [[master ]] in its own house.

According to [[Lacan]], [[Freud]]'s emphasis on the centrality of the [[conscious ]] [[subject]] and the [[ego]], by [[decentring]] [[The Subject|the subject ]] and demonstrating that it is governed by forces outsides it conscious [[control]].