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asr comments on Open Thread, October 20 - 26, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The Copernican Revolution, by Kuhn is one of the best science histories I've ever read.
The folk-tale version of how we adopted heliocentric cosmology is something like this: "Aristotle and Ptolemy thought the world was arranged as concentric crystalline spheres. Copernicus proposed a new model that better fit the data, and it was opposed by the Church. Ultimately thanks to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the correct model won out."
None of those claims is right, and Kuhn does a great job explaining the true story. He explains what problem Copernicus thought he was solving and how well he solved it.
I agree that it is a good book. But it helps to be aware that Kuhn substantially simplifies a lot of what is going on. See for example here and here.
Awesome! I loved Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it seems like an interesting subject, besides.