Magnes contained the first response by a Jesuit to the arguments of some heliocentrists who held that magnetism proved the Copernican model of the universe. Kircher was aware that he was the first scholar to mount a critical assault on the heliocentric theory that the Church had condemned as heretical. He did not agree with Galileo and some other scientists of the time that the Earth rotated, so William Gilbert 's view that the Earth's magnetic poles had something to do with that rotation was one he did not support. In Kircher's view, the Earth's poles were not the axis of planetary rotation, but the axis around which the stars rotated in the heavenly spheres. Indeed, he argued in Magnes that the Earth stands still because its two magnetic poles are attracted by two celestial reverse poles. Kircher also rejected Kepler 's view that the Sun created a magnetic force that caused the planets to rotate around it. He argued that the experimental proofs of magnetism were not sufficient to resolve the question of whether the Earth or the Sun was at the centre of the universe, and did not believe that the behaviour of magnets at a small scale on Earth was a useful guide to how the cosmos worked.