Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How Many Poles did it take.........

Q: How many Poles did it take to determine that the Earth is NOT the center of the Universe?
A: Just one.
Nikolas Kopernik (AKA Copernicus) was Polish. Unfortunately he could not prove his theory -- which "heretically" contradicted the officially held "scientific" belief sanctioned by the "infallible" Catholic Church that the Earth was the center of the Universe -- a heresy punishable by death in Medieval Europe.
That proof wasn't secured until a hundred years later by Galileo, who had access to the newly invented telescope.
Poland was also a hundred years ahead of England with its own version of the Magna Carta (which granted ordinary citizens major legal rights of protection from the state) and a few hundred years ahead of America in being the first nation since ancient Greece to experiment with Democracy -- although a disastrously stilted form, limited to the nobility. (Sort of like the U.S. Senate, come to think of it.)

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