Abstract. It is argued that the origin and development of the Copernican revolution, which resulted in the establishment of modern European science, can only be explained by analysing the interference of the so-called external and internal factors. The author applies the auctorial model of the knowledge growth in the course of scientific revolutions, according to which the knowledge increases as a result of the interaction, mutual penetration, and synthesis of various research programs. Accordingly, the Copernican revolution is interpreted as a comprehension of the gap between the Ptolemaic mathematical astronomy and Aristotelian qualitative physics and its elimination. This was possible, because at the early stage, the European science was a product of the Christian Weltanschaugung evolution, which tendered to eliminate pagan components in the worldview. Among the outer factors that influenced scientific development, the sociocultural ones dominated, and the religious ones were the most important among the latter.