This chapter discusses the development of cosmological thought from the oldest times — as in Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures — to the early 17th century. A high point in this development was the geocentric Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture, which in a christianized version was adopted by the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. The stable medieval view of the world was challenged by the Copernican heliocentric system of 1543, which marked the beginning of the scientific revolution and also of increased tensions between science and faith. Not only was the new universe much larger than the old one, with Kepler's innovations of the early 17th century the privileged circular motions of the celestial bodies had to be abandoned.
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