The English word comes from the Latin word revolvere, meaning “to roll back.” That spawned not only “revolve” but also “revolt,” which grows out of the idea of “rolling back” one’s allegiance to a king or institution. Perhaps there is some strange affinity between these two meanings. We see that dualism right from the start, in the most famous initial use of the word in science, by the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. In 1543, Copernicus published his treatise On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, which used the word in its first, scientific meaning. But while Copernicus was using “revolution” in its regular sense, he was proposing a thesis that radically reordered our understanding of the cosmos, moving the Earth from the center of the universe to the periphery. For the way it overturned both astronomy and theology, the shift he set in motion came to be known as the Copernican Revolution. His was a “revolutionary” theory in both senses of the word.
Fareed Zakaria in Age of Revolutions