It mattered little whether the universe was the best that could be constructed; what mattered was the relation of man's own little world to his will and capacities.
Physical science was important only in so far as it could help social science and minister to the needs of man.

The closest analogy to this development of thought is not offered by the Renaissance, to which the description HUMANISTIC has been conventionally appropriated, but rather by the age of illumination in Greece in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., represented by Protagoras, Socrates, and others who turned from the ultimate problems of the cosmos, hitherto the main study of philosophers, to man, his nature and his works.
In this revised form of "anthropo-centrism" we see how the general movement of thought has instinctively adapted itself to the astronomical revolution.

On the Ptolemaic system it was not incongruous or absurd that man, lord of the central domain in the universe, should regard himself as the most important cosmic creature.

This is the view, implicit in the Christian scheme, which had been constructed on the old erroneous cosmology.

When the true place of the earth was shown and man found himself in a tiny planet attached to one of innumerable solar worlds, his cosmic importance could no longer be maintained.