Up until 500 years ago mathematicians and astronomers were trying to bang a square peg into a ...

[Snake Plissken]

round hole by creating elaborate differential equations to calculate the location of the planets with the Earth at the center of our Solar System, then Nicolaus Copernicus came around and placed the Sun at the center of our Solar System ... and all the pieces to the puzzle fall neatly into place.

Once you come to terms with the indisputable fact that Trump is an incompetent pathological lying con man, all the pieces to the puzzle fall neatly into place.

[unblock]

1. all it takes is someone to say the emperor has no clothes. or maybe, person, woman, man, camera, tv.

[Sherman A1]

2. Yup

Where’s Copernicus when you need him.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

3. Not that smart by any means...

But I came to understand that the day after the last presidential election.

[Beakybird]

4. The obvious expansion of your metaphor is the idiots who believe the universe revolves around Trump.

[localroger]

5. I came to terms with that in the 1980's

...when he ran a previously thriving casino empire into bankruptcy by making it all about his ego. Dude hasn't changed a bit, although his vocabulary has shrunk a lot since then.

[hvn_nbr_2]

6. Minor nitpick

I don't think they were using differential equations pre-Copernicus. "Elaborate tedious calculations" would probably be more accurate. Differential equations require calculus, which had not yet been invented/discovered while Copernicus was alive. The tedious calculations were essentially successively closer approximations, using techniques from ancient Greece. Calculus made all those tedious approximations unneeded because it finds the limit of the calculations taken to increasingly infinitesimal detail.

Agree with the main point that Copernicus's new idea makes everything fall into place--it's a little like those weird 3-D images that you have to get your eyes focussed (or de-focussed) just right and then suddenly the 3-D image pops right out.

[triron]

7. I believe Newton and Leibnitz (independently) invented calculus. Way after Copernicus.