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It Started With Copernicus by Howard Margolis, McGraw-Hill, $24.95, ISBN 007138507X Reviewed by Roy Herbert

A SHOCKING table confronts the reader at the beginning of this book. One column shows notable scientific discoveries made around the year 1600: Margolis lists nine fundamental ones, such as the laws of planetary motion, the magnetism of the Earth and the distinction between magnetism and electricity. The other shows notable discoveries made in the previous 14 centuries. It鈥檚 blank.

For all those centuries, Ptolemy鈥檚 model of the Earth as the centre of the Universe, with the stars and planets fixed in invisible concentric spheres had never been questioned. Copernicus鈥檚 proposal of a heliocentric universe, though astounding, was based on evidence that had been available all the time. We commonly think of its acceptance as the start of a scientific revolution. But Margolis doesn鈥檛 say that Copernicus was the leader of a movement. Instead, he maintains, the insight that Copernicus demonstrated inspired others.

Copernicus himself was startled by the discovery of America. That jolt to the conventional idea of the world led him to what Margolis calls 鈥淎C鈥� or 鈥渁round the corner鈥� thinking about well-known astronomical observations. The four men who contributed most to the discoveries shortly after the shattering of the Ptolemaic universe 鈥� William Gilbert, Simon Stevin, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler 鈥� were all AC thinkers too.

Margolis is a forceful writer and It Started with Copernicus is distinctly polemical about the scientific revolution, or 鈥渢he discovery of discovery鈥�. Though he may make you feel that you should keep your head down at times, his arguments are invigorating.