In some ways the early stages of the Copernican Revolution resemble those just sketched in connection with the ‘new anatomy’ Like anatomy, astronomy was initially transformed from within, so to speak, by members of a small Latin-writing élite engaged in preserving and transmitting sophisticated techniques first developed in antiquity and later retrieved in the twelfth century. De Fabrica and De Revolutionibus had more in common than their publication date of 1543.

Vesalius' role in the development of anatomy has many parallels to the role Copernicus played in the development of astronomy. Like Copernicus, Vesalius rejected certain crucial assumptions of his predecessors and replaced them with his own speculations…[Each man] produced a comprehensive text that was equal, if not superior to the text that it was designed to replace.

By producing new technical treatises that were no less comprehensive than the old ones and yet diverged from the latter on certain major points, both authors presented the next generation of fellow professionals with alternatives that prior generations had not known. In this way both set in motion a revolutionary sequence whose outcome neither author could foresee. Insofar as they launched a new tradition even while aiming their work at emending an inherited one, both treatises seem to lend themselves to the line of analysis I have been trying out in this book. Both suggest, that is, how old pursuits produced new results after techniques of communication had been transformed.