A "Genesis of the Copernican World" cannot be an isolated piece of the history of science. It perceives a scientific event as an anthropological one. It must discuss how a peripheral consciousness comes to realize itself as such. This is the ambiguity of the heavens: they annihilate our significance through their vastness, but they also compel us, through their emptiness, to regard nothing as more important than ourselves. The paradox of that annihilation, which Kant spoke of, and this self-awareness, which he also mentioned, stretches the Copernican world to the breaking point. Can a new clarity emerge at the convergence of their processes?.