In the 17th-century , Galileo Galilei , Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton began helping people understand physics more clearly . This made people slowly accept the idea that Earth moves around the Sun and that the planets have the same physical laws that control Earth . His 17th-century successors , Galileo Galilei , Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton , developed an understanding of physics that led to the gradual acceptance of the idea that the Earth moves around the Sun and that the planets are governed by the same physical laws that governed the Earth .