Copernican theory....PLEASE HELP!!!!

how was the copernican theory influenced by the social, political, and cultural climate of the time period?
what were the events or influences that came before the copernican theory? also, what were the causes?
im not asking anyone to answer these, but could you please give some useful links that will help me answer them??? im having a really hard time with these questions
thank youu

http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/copern…

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/NS…

http://www.netplaces.com/philosophy/the-…

http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/theories/cop…

http://www.drury.edu/ess/philsci/PineCh4… - I love the way this site begins. I would not be surprised if this site is one of Carl Sagan's wife's web-sites

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/NS…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Co…

Copernicus lived in the early renaissance, there were ships going to different countries for trade, and yet other explores were finding the world to be a much bigger place than the provincial Europeans thought. The church at that time had absolute authority over the Silentic explanations--mostly deduced by Aristotle. Indeed, Galileo later took two objects of different weights and supposedly dropped than off of the The Tower of Pisa, Aristotle's idea (which obviously was never tested) was that a heavier object Old fall faster than a lighter on. The two objects landed at the same time, thus putting doubt on Aristotle's and there fore the church;s non-scientific dogma. This was right for prosing the heliocentric theory, as evidence falsifying many of the Church's scientific ideas. The world was not Europe, there were other hemispheres. A legitimate question then would be why are we the center, when the world is expanding about us. Why should the Earth be the center of the universe, as Ptolemy first thought, when experience and scientific evidence supported heliocentrism.
Expansion of travel thought and the questioning of the church's absolute set in concrete ideas were wrong. 2+2 = 4, not if an old monk written book solved this as 5.

Here is a link to a book website that will shed light on the political and social background.