Heliocentrism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism, is the astronomical

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

model in which the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

and planets revolve around a stationary Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

at the center of the universe

Universe

The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

. The word comes from the Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

( helios
Helios
Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...

"sun" and kentron "center"). Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos

Aristarchus of Samos

Aristarchus, or more correctly Aristarchos , was a Greek astronomer and mathematician, born on the island of Samos, in Greece. He presented the first known heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe...

, but had received no support from most other ancient astronomers.

It was not until the 16th century that a fully predictive mathematical model

Mathematical model

A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used not only in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines A mathematical model is a...

of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

, leading to the Copernican Revolution

Copernican Revolution

The Copernican Revolution refers to the paradigm shift away from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which postulated the Earth at the center of the galaxy, towards the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of our Solar System...

. In the following century, this model was elaborated and expanded by Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...

and supporting observations made using a telescope

Telescope

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...

were presented by Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...

.

With the observations of William Herschel

William Herschel

Sir Frederick William Herschel, KH, FRS, German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer. Born in Hanover, Wilhelm first followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, but emigrated to Britain at age 19...

, astronomers realized that the sun was not the center of the universe and by the 1920s Edwin Hubble

Edwin Hubble

Edwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer who profoundly changed the understanding of the universe by confirming the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way - our own galaxy...

had shown that it was part of a galaxy

Galaxy

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...

that was only one of many billions.

Early developments

To anyone who stands and looks at the sky, it seems that the Earth stays in one place while everything in the sky rises in the east and sets in the west once a day. With more scrutiny, however, one will observe more complicated movements. The Sun makes a slower circle eastward over the course of a year; the planet

Planet

A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

s have similar motions, but they sometimes move in the reverse direction for a while (retrograde motion).

As these motions became better understood, more elaborate descriptions were required, the most famous of which was the geocentric Ptolemaic system, which achieved its full expression in the 2nd century. The Ptolemaic system was a sophisticated astronomical system that managed to calculate the positions for the planets to a fair degree of accuracy. Ptolemy himself, in his Almagest
Almagest
The Almagest is a 2nd-century mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths. Written in Greek by Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman era scholar of Egypt,...

, points out that any model for describing the motions of the planets is merely a mathematical device, and since there is no actual way to know which is true, the simplest model that gets the right numbers should be used.
However, he rejected the idea of a spinning earth

Earth rotation

Earth's rotation is the rotation of the solid Earth around its own axis. The Earth rotates towards the east. As viewed from the North Star Polaris, the Earth turns counter-clockwise.- Rotation period :...

as absurd since it would create huge winds. His planetary hypotheses were sufficiently real that the distances of moon, sun, planets and stars could be determined by treating orbits' celestial spheres as contiguous realities. This made the stars' distance less than 20 Astronomical Units, a regression, since Aristarchus of Samos

Aristarchus of Samos

's heliocentric scheme had centuries earlier necessarily placed the stars at least two orders of magnitude more distant.

Greek and Hellenistic world

Pythagoreans
The non-geocentric model of the Universe

Universe

was proposed by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus

Philolaus

Philolaus was a Greek Pythagorean and Presocratic philosopher. He argued that all matter is composed of limiting and limitless things, and that the universe is determined by numbers. He is credited with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe.-Life:Philolaus is...

(d. 390 BC). According to Philolaus, there was at the center of the Universe a "central fire" around which the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

, Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

, Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

and Planets revolved in uniform circular motion. This system postulated the existence of a counter-earth collinear with the Earth and central fire, with the same period of revolution around the central fire as the Earth. The Sun revolved around the central fire once a year, and the stars were stationary. The Earth maintained the same hidden face towards the central fire, rendering both it and the "counter-earth" invisible from Earth. The Pythagorean concept of uniform circular motion remained unchallenged for approximately the next 2000 years, and it was to the Pythagoreans that Copernicus referred to show that the notion of a moving Earth was neither new nor revolutionary.

Kepler gave an alternative explanation of the Pythagoreans' "central fire" as the sun, "as most sects purposely hid[e] their teachings".

Heraclides of Pontus

Heraclides Ponticus

Heraclides Ponticus , also known as Herakleides and Heraklides of Pontus, was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who lived and died at Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey. He is best remembered for proposing that the earth rotates on its axis, from west to east, once every 24 hours...

(4th century BC) explained the apparent daily motion of the celestial sphere through the rotation of the Earth. It used to be thought that he believed Mercury

Mercury (planet)

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...

and Venus

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

to revolve around the Sun, which in turn (along with the other planets) revolves around the Earth. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (AD 395–423) later described this as the "Egyptian System," stating that "it did not escape the skill of the Egyptians

Egyptians

Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...

," though there is no other evidence it was known in ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

.

Aristarchus of Samos

The first person known to have proposed a heliocentric system, however, was Aristarchus of Samos

Aristarchus of Samos

(c. 270 BC). Like Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist.He was the first person to use the word "geography" and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it...

, Aristarchus calculated the size of the Earth, and measured the size and distance of the Moon and Sun

Aristarchus On the Sizes and Distances

On the Sizes and Distances is widely accepted as the only extant work written by Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who flourished circa 280–240 BC...

, in a treatise which has survived. From his estimates, he concluded that the Sun was six to seven times wider than the Earth and thus hundreds of times more voluminous. His writings on the heliocentric system are lost, but some information is known from surviving descriptions and critical commentary by his contemporaries, such as Archimedes

Archimedes

Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an...

. Some have suggested that his calculation of the relative size of the Earth and Sun led Aristarchus to conclude that it made more sense for the Earth to be moving than for the huge Sun to be moving around it. Though the original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes

Archimedes

' book The Sand Reckoner
The Sand Reckoner
The Sand Reckoner is a work by Archimedes in which he set out to determine an upper bound for the number of grains of sand that fit into the universe. In order to do this, he had to estimate the size of the universe according to the then-current model, and invent a way to talk about extremely...

describes another work by Aristarchus in which he advanced an alternative hypothesis

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...

of the heliocentric model. Archimedes wrote:
Aristarchus thus believed the stars to be very far away, and saw this as the reason why there was no visible parallax

Parallax

Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines. The term is derived from the Greek παράλλαξις , meaning "alteration"...

, that is, an observed movement of the stars relative to each other as the Earth moved around the Sun. The stars are in fact much farther away than the distance that was generally assumed in ancient times, which is why stellar parallax is only detectable with telescope

Telescope

s.

Archimedes

Archimedes

says that Aristarchus made the stars' distance larger, suggesting that he was answering the natural objection that heliocentrism requires stellar parallactic oscillations. He apparently agreed to the point but placed the stars so distant as to make the parallactic motion invisibly minuscule. Thus heliocentrism opened the way for realization that the universe was larger than the geocentrists taught.

Seleucus of Seleucia

Since Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

mentions the 'followers of Aristarchus' in passing, there were likely other astronomers in the Classical period who also espoused heliocentrism, but whose work is now lost to us. The only other astronomer from antiquity known by name who is known to have supported Aristarchus' heliocentric model was Seleucus of Seleucia

Seleucus of Seleucia

Seleucus of Seleucia was a Hellenistic astronomer and philosopher. Coming from Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the Seleucid empire, or, alternatively, Seleukia on the Red Sea, he is best known as a proponent of heliocentrism and for his theory of the origin of tides.- Heliocentric theory...

(b. 190 BC), a Hellenistic

Hellenistic civilization

Hellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE...

astronomer who flourished a century after Aristarchus in the Seleucid empire

Seleucid Empire

The Seleucid Empire was a Greek-Macedonian state that was created out of the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and parts of Pakistan.The Seleucid Empire was a major centre...

. Seleucus adopted the heliocentric system of Aristarchus and is said to have proved the heliocentric theory. According to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was a Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics....

, Seleucus may have proved the heliocentric theory by determining the constants of a geometric

Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

model for the heliocentric theory and by developing methods to compute planetary positions using this model. He may have used early trigonometric

Trigonometry

Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies triangles and the relationships between their sides and the angles between these sides. Trigonometry defines the trigonometric functions, which describe those relationships and have applicability to cyclical phenomena, such as waves...

methods that were available in his time, as he was a contemporary of Hipparchus

Hipparchus

Hipparchus, the common Latinization of the Greek Hipparkhos, can mean:* Hipparchus, the ancient Greek astronomer** Hipparchic cycle, an astronomical cycle he created** Hipparchus , a lunar crater named in his honour...

. A fragment of a work by Seleucus of Seleucia

Seleucus of Seleucia

, who supported Aristarchus' heliocentric model in the 2nd century BC, has survived in Arabic translation, which was referred to by Rhazes (b. 865).

Alternatively, his explanation may have involved the phenomenon of tide

Tide

Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth....

s, which he supposedly theorized to be caused by the attraction to the Moon

Moon

and by the revolution of the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

around the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

-Moon

Moon

'center of mass'.

Western Christendom

There were occasional speculations about heliocentrism in Europe before Copernicus. In Roman Carthage, the pagan Martianus Capella

Martianus Capella

Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a pagan writer of Late Antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education...

(5th century A.D.) expressed the opinion that the planets Venus and Mercury did not go about the Earth but instead circled the Sun. Capella's model was discussed in the Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages...

by various anonymous 9th-century commentators and Copernicus mentions him as an influence on his own work.

During the Late Middle Ages

Late Middle Ages

The Late Middle Ages was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th to the 16th century . The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern era ....

, Bishop Nicole Oresme discussed the possibility that the Earth rotated on its axis, while Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas of Cusa

Nicholas of Kues , also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany , a philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the great geniuses and polymaths of the 15th century...

in his Learned Ignorance
De Docta Ignorantia
De docta ignorantia is a book on philosophy and theology by Nicholas of Cusa , who finished writing it on 12 February 1440 in his mother-town of Kues, Germany.Earlier scholars had discussed the matter, e.g....

asked whether there was any reason to assert that the Sun (or any other point) was the center of the universe. In parallel to a mystical definition of God, Cusa wrote that "Thus the fabric of the world (machina mundi) will quasi have its center everywhere and circumference nowhere."

India

Aryabhata

Aryabhata was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy...

(476–550), in his magnum opus Aryabhatiya
Aryabhatiya
Āryabhaṭīya or Āryabhaṭīyaṃ, a Sanskrit astronomical treatise, is the magnum opus and only extant work of the 5th century Indian mathematician, Āryabhaṭa.- Structure and style:...

(499), propounded a planetary model in which the Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the Sun. He accurately calculated many astronomical constants, such as the periods of the planets, times of the solar

Solar eclipse

As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...

and lunar

Lunar eclipse

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes behind the Earth so that the Earth blocks the Sun's rays from striking the Moon. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle. Hence, a lunar eclipse can only occur the night of a...

eclipse

Eclipse

An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object is temporarily obscured, either by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer...

s, and the instantaneous motion of the Moon. Early followers of Aryabhata's model included Varahamihira

Varahamihira

Varāhamihira , also called Varaha or Mihira, was an Indian astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer who lived in Ujjain...

, Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta was an Indian mathematician and astronomer who wrote many important works on mathematics and astronomy. His best known work is the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta , written in 628 in Bhinmal...

, and Bhaskara II.

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha Somayaji

Kelallur Nilakantha Somayaji was a major mathematician and astronomer of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. One of his most influential works was the comprehensive astronomical treatise Tantrasamgraha completed in 1501...

(1444–1544), in his Aryabhatiyabhasya, a commentary on Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya, developed a computational system for a partially heliocentric planetary model, in which the planets orbit the Sun, which in turn orbits the Earth, similar to the Tychonic system

Tychonic system

The Tychonic system was a model of the solar system published by Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century which combined what he saw as the mathematical benefits of the Copernican system with the philosophical and "physical" benefits of the Ptolemaic system...

later proposed by Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe , born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations...

in the late 16th century. In the Tantrasangraha (1500), he further revised his planetary system, which was mathematically more accurate at predicting the heliocentric orbits of the interior planets than both the Tychonic and Copernican models

Copernican heliocentrism

Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. It positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform...

, but like Indian astronomy in general fell short of proposing models of the universe. Nilakantha's planetary system also incorporated the Earth's rotation on its axis. Most astronomers of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics seem to have accepted his planetary model.

Medieval Iranian and Islamic world

Due to the scientific dominance of the Ptolemaic system in Islamic astronomy, the Muslim astronomers accepted unanimously the geocentric model. However, several Muslim scholars questioned the Earth's apparent immobility and centrality within the universe. Alhazen wrote a scathing critique of Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

's model in his Doubts on Ptolemy (c. 1028), which some have interpreted to imply he was criticizing Ptolemy's geocentrism, but most agree that he was actually criticizing the details of Ptolemy's model rather than his geocentrism. Alhazen did, however, later propose the Earth's rotation on its axis in The Model of the Motions (c. 1038).

Abu Rayhan Biruni (b. 973) discussed the possibility of whether the Earth rotated about its own axis and around the Sun, but in his Masudic Canon, he set forth the principles that the Earth is at the center of the universe and that it has no motion of its own. He was aware that if the Earth rotated on its axis and around the Sun, this would be consistent with his astronomical parameters, but he considered this a philosophical problem rather than a mathematical one. At the Maragha observatory

Maragheh observatory

Maragheh observatory is an astronomical observatory which was established in 1259 CE by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, an Iranian scientist and astronomer...

, Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī

Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī

Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī was a Persian Islamic philosopher and logician of the Shafi`i school. A student of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, he is the author of two major works, one on logic, Al-Risala al-Shamsiyya, and one on metaphysics and the natural sciences, Hikmat al-'Ain.-Logic:His work on...

(d. 1277), in his Hikmat al-'Ain, wrote an argument for a heliocentric model, but later abandoned the model. Qutb al-Din Shirazi (b. 1236) also discussed the possibility of heliocentrism, but rejected it. Ibn al-Shatir

Ibn al-Shatir

Ala Al-Din Abu'l-Hasan Ali Ibn Ibrahim Ibn al-Shatir was an Arab Muslim astronomer, mathematician, engineer and inventor who worked as muwaqqit at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria.-Astronomy:...

(b. 1304) developed a geocentric system that employed mathematical techniques, such as the Tusi-couple

Tusi-couple

The Tusi-couple is a mathematical device in which a small circle rotates inside a larger circle twice the diameter of the smaller circle. Rotations of the circles cause a point on the circumference of the smaller circle to oscillate back and forth in linear motion along a diameter of the larger...

and Urdi lemma

Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi

Mu’ayyad al-Din al-’Urdi was an Kurdish Muslim astronomer, mathematician, architect and engineer working at the Maragheh observatory...

, that were almost identical to those Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

later employed in his heliocentric system

Copernican heliocentrism

, implying that its mathematical model was influenced by the Maragha school. At the Maragha and Samarkand observatories

Ulugh Beg Observatory

The Ulugh Beg Observatory is an observatory in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Built in the 1420s by the Timurid astronomer Ulugh Beg, it is considered by scholars to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia before it was destroyed in 1449...

, the Earth's rotation was discussed by Tusi

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

Khawaja Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan Ṭūsī , better known as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī , was a Persian polymath and prolific writer: an astronomer, biologist, chemist, mathematician, philosopher, physician, physicist, scientist, theologian and Marja Taqleed...

(b. 1201) and Qushji (b. 1403); the arguments and evidence they used resemble those used by Copernicus to support the Earth's motion.

However, it remains a fact that the Maragha school never made the big leap to heliocentrism. In addition, the influence of the Maragha school on Copernicus remains speculative, since there is no documentary evidence to prove it. The possibility that Copernicus independently developed the Tusi couple remains open, since no researcher has yet proven that he knew about Tusi's work or the Maragha school.
It has been argued that, given some differences between the two models, it is more likely that Copernicus could have taken the ideas found in the Tusi couple from Proclus's

Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers . He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism...

Commentary on the First Book of Euclid
Euclid's Elements
Euclid's Elements is a mathematical and geometric treatise consisting of 13 books written by the Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria c. 300 BC. It is a collection of definitions, postulates , propositions , and mathematical proofs of the propositions...

. Another possible source for Copernicus's knowledge is the Questiones de Spera of Nicole Oresme, who described how a reciprocating linear motion of a celestial body could be produced by a combination of circular motions similar to those proposed by al-Tusi.

Astronomical model

In the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

's De revolutionibus presented a full discussion of a heliocentric model of the universe in much the same way as Ptolemy

Ptolemy

's Almagest
Almagest
The Almagest is a 2nd-century mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths. Written in Greek by Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman era scholar of Egypt,...

had presented his geocentric model in the 2nd century. Copernicus discussed the philosophical implications of his proposed system, elaborated it in full geometrical detail, used selected astronomical observations to derive the parameters of his model, and wrote astronomical tables which enabled one to compute the past and future positions of the stars and planets. In doing so, Copernicus moved heliocentrism from philosophical speculation to predictive geometrical astronomy—in reality it did not predict the planets' positions any better than the Ptolemaic system. This theory resolved the issue of planetary retrograde motion by arguing that such motion was only perceived and apparent, rather than real

Reality

In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...

: it was a parallax

Parallax

effect, as a car that one is passing seems to move backwards against the horizon. This issue was also resolved in the geocentric Tychonic system

Tychonic system

; the latter, however, while eliminating the major epicycles, retained as a physical reality the irregular back-and-forth motion of the planets, which Kepler characterized as a "pretzel

Pretzel

A pretzel is a type of baked food made from dough in soft and hard varieties and savory or sweet flavors in a unique knot-like shape, originating in Europe...

".

Copernicus cited Aristarchus in an early (unpublished) manuscript of De Revolutionibus (which still survives) so he was clearly aware of at least one previous proponent of the heliocentric thesis. However, in the published version he restricts himself to noting that in works by Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

he had found an account of the theories of Hicetas

Hicetas

Hicetas was a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean School. He was born in Syracuse. Like his fellow Pythagorean Ecphantus and the Academic Heraclides Ponticus, he believed that the daily movement of permanent stars was caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis....

and that Plutarch

Plutarch

had provided him with an account of the Pythagoreans Heraclides Ponticus

Heraclides Ponticus

, Philolaus

Philolaus

, and Ecphantus. These authors had proposed a moving earth, which did not, however, revolve around a central sun.

Religious attitudes to heliocentrism

Heliocentrism had been in conflict with religion before Copernicus. One of the few pieces of information we have about the reception of Aristarchus's heliocentric system comes from a passage in Plutarch

Plutarch

's dialogue, Concerning the Face which Appears in the Orb of the Moon. According to one of Plutarch's characters in the dialogue, the philosopher Cleanthes

Cleanthes

Cleanthes , of Assos, was a Greek Stoic philosopher and the successor to Zeno as the second head of the Stoic school in Athens. Originally a boxer, he came to Athens where he took up philosophy, listening to Zeno's lectures. He supported himself by working as water-carrier at night. After the...

had held that Aristarchus should be charged with impiety for "moving the hearth of the world". In fact, however, Aristarchus's heliocentrism appears to have attracted little attention, religious or otherwise, until Copernicus revived and elaborated it.

Circulation of Commentariolus (before 1533)

The first information about the heliocentric views of Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

were circulated in manuscript. Although only in manuscript, Copernicus' ideas were well known among astronomers and others. His ideas contradicted the then-prevailing understanding of the Bible. In the King James Bible Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved." Psalm 104:5 says, "[the Lord] Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."

Nonetheless, in 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter

Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter

Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter , was a German humanist, orientalist, philologist, and theologian.-Life:...

delivered in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

a series of lectures outlining Copernicus' theory. The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII

Pope Clement VII

Clement VII , born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534.-Early life:...

and several Catholic cardinals

Cardinal (Catholicism)

A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...

. On 1 November 1536, Archbishop of Capua Nikolaus von Schönberg wrote a letter to Copernicus from Rome encouraging him to publish a full version of his theory.

However, in 1539, Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

said:
This was reported in the context of a conversation at the dinner table and not a formal statement of faith. Melanchthon, however, opposed the doctrine over a period of years.

Publication of de Revolutionibus (1543)

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

published the definitive statement of his system in De Revolutionibus

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus...

in 1543. Copernicus began to write it in 1506 and finished it in 1530, but did not publish it until the year of his death. Although he was in good standing with the Church and had dedicated the book to Pope Paul III

Pope Paul III

Pope Paul III , born Alessandro Farnese, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation...

, the published form contained an unsigned preface by Osiander

Andreas Osiander

Andreas Osiander was a German Lutheran theologian.- Career :Born at Gunzenhausen in Franconia, Osiander studied at the University of Ingolstadt before being ordained as a priest in 1520. In the same year he began work at an Augustinian convent in Nuremberg as a Hebrew tutor. In 1522, he was...

defending the system and arguing that it was useful for computation even if its hypotheses were not necessarily true. Possibly because of that preface, the work of Copernicus inspired very little debate on whether it might be heretical

Heresy

Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...

during the next 60 years. There was an early suggestion among Dominican

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

s that the teaching of heliocentrism should be banned, but nothing came of it at the time.

Some years after the publication of De Revolutionibus John Calvin

John Calvin

John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...

preached a sermon in which he denounced those who "pervert the course of nature" by saying that "the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns". On the other hand, Calvin is not responsible for another famous quotation which has often been misattributed to him: It has long been established that this line cannot be found in any of Calvin's works. It has been suggested that the quotation was originally sourced from the works of Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius

Abraham Calovius

Abraham Calovius was a Lutheran theologian, and was one of the champions of Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century.-Biography:...

Tycho Brahe's geo-heliocentric system c. 1587

Prior to the publication of De Revolutionibus, the widely accepted system had been that which was proposed by Ptolemy

Ptolemy

, in which the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

was the center of the universe and all celestial bodies orbited it. Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe , born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations...

, arguably the most accomplished astronomer of his time, advocated against Copernicus's heliocentric system and for an alternative to the Ptolemaic geocentric system: a geo-heliocentric system now known as the Tychonic system

Tychonic system

in which the five then known planets orbit the sun, while the sun and the moon orbit the earth.

Tycho appreciated the Copernican system, but objected to the idea of a moving Earth on the basis of physics, astronomy, and religion. The Aristotelian physics

Aristotelian physics

Aristotelian Physics the natural sciences, are described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle . In the Physics, Aristotle established general principles of change that govern all natural bodies; both living and inanimate, celestial and terrestrial—including all motion, change in respect...

of the time (modern Newtonian physics was still a century away) offered no physical explanation for the motion of a massive body like Earth, whereas it could easily explain the motion of heavenly bodies by postulating that they were made of a different sort substance called aether

Aether (classical element)

According to ancient and medieval science aether , also spelled æther or ether, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere.-Mythological origins:...

that moved naturally. So Tycho said that the Copernican system “... expertly and completely circumvents all that is superfluous or discordant in the system of Ptolemy. On no point does it offend the principle of mathematics. Yet it ascribes to the Earth, that hulking, lazy body, unfit for motion, a motion as quick as that of the aethereal torches, and a triple motion at that.” Likewise, Tycho took issue with the vast distances to the stars that Aristarchus and Copernicus had assumed in order to explain the lack of any visible parallax. Tycho had measured the apparent sizes of stars (now known to be illusory – see stellar magnitude

Magnitude (astronomy)

Magnitude is the logarithmic measure of the brightness of an object, in astronomy, measured in a specific wavelength or passband, usually in optical or near-infrared wavelengths.-Background:...

), and used geometry to calculate that in order to both have those apparent sizes and be as far away as heliocentrism required, stars would have to be huge (much larger than the sun; the size of Earth's orbit or larger). Regarding this Tycho wrote, “Deduce these things geometrically if you like, and you will see how many absurdities (not to mention others) accompany this assumption [of the motion of the earth] by inference.” He also cited the Copernican system's "opposition to the authority of Sacred Scripture in more than one place" as a reason why one might wish to reject it, and observed that his own geoheliocentric alternative “offended neither the principles of physics nor Holy Scripture”.

The Jesuit astronomers in Rome were at first unreceptive to Tycho's system; the most prominent, Clavius

Christopher Clavius

Christopher Clavius was a German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer who was the main architect of the modern Gregorian calendar...

, commented that Tycho was "confusing all of astronomy, because he wants to have Mars lower than the Sun." However, after the advent of the telescope showed problems with some geocentric models (by demonstrating that Venus circles the sun, for example), the Tychonic system and variations on that system became very popular among geocentrists, and the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli would continue Tycho's use of physics, stellar astronomy (now with a telescope), and religion to argue against heliocentrism and for Tycho's system well into the seventeenth century (see Riccioli

Giovanni Battista Riccioli

Giovanni Battista Riccioli was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order...

Publication of Starry messenger (1610)

Galileo was able to look at the night sky with the newly invented telescope. Then he published his discoveries in Sidereus Nuncius

Sidereus Nuncius

Sidereus Nuncius is a short treatise published in New Latin by Galileo Galilei in March 1610. It was the first scientific treatise based on observations made through a telescope...

including (among other things) the moons of Jupiter and that Venus exhibited a full range of phases. These discoveries were not consistent with the Ptolemeic model of the solar system. As the Jesuit astronomers confirmed Galileo's observations, the Jesuits moved toward Tycho's teachings.

Publication of Letter to the Grand Duchess (1615)

In a Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to Scriptures (see Galileo affair

Galileo affair

The Galileo affair was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610, during which Galileo Galilei came into conflict with the Aristotelian scientific view of the universe , over his support of Copernican astronomy....

). He took Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the Earth's rotation which gives the impression of the sun in motion across the sky.

The decree of 1616

The Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina prompted the papal authorities to decide whether heliocentrism was acceptable. Galileo was summoned to Rome to defend his position. The Church accepted the use of heliocentrism as a calculating device, but opposed it as a literal description of the solar system. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine

Robert Bellarmine

Robert Bellarmine was an Italian Jesuit and a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was one of the most important figures in the Counter-Reformation...

himself considered that Galileo's model made "excellent good sense" on the ground of mathematical simplicity; that is, as a hypothesis (see above). And he said:
Bellarmine supported a ban on the teaching of the idea as anything but hypothesis. In 1616 he delivered to Galileo the papal command not to "hold or defend" the heliocentric idea. The Vatican files suggest that Galileo was forbidden to teach heliocentrism in any way whatsoever, but whether this ban was known to Galileo is a matter of dispute.

Publication of Epitome astronomia Copernicanae (1617-1621)

In Astronomia nova

Astronomia nova

The Astronomia nova is a book, published in 1609, that contains the results of the astronomer Johannes Kepler's ten-year long investigation of the motion of Mars...

(1609), Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler

had used an elliptical orbit to explain the motion of Mars. In Epitome astronomia Copernicanae he developed a heliocentric model of the solar system in which all the planets have elliptical orbits. This provided significantly increased accuracy in predicting the position of the planets. Kepler's ideas were not immediately accepted. Galileo for example completely ignored Kepler's work. Kepler proposed heliocentrism as a physical description of the solar system and Epitome astronomia Copernicanae was placed on the index of prohibited books despite Kepler being a Protestant.

Publication of Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems

Pope Urban VIII

Pope Urban VIII , born Maffeo Barberini, was pope from 1623 to 1644. He was the last pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms, and was a prominent patron of the arts and reformer of Church missions...

encouraged Galileo to publish the pros and cons of Heliocentrism. In the event, Galileo's Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was a 1632 Italian language book by Galileo Galilei comparing the Copernican system with the traditional Ptolemaic system. It was translated to Latin as Systema cosmicum in 1635 by Matthias Bernegger...

clearly advocated heliocentrism and appeared to make fun of the Pope. Urban VIII became hostile to Galileo and he was again summoned to Rome. Galileo's trial in 1633 involved making fine distinctions between "teaching" and "holding and defending as true". For advancing heliocentric theory Galileo was forced to recant Copernicanism and was put under house arrest for the last few years of his life.

According to J. L. Heilbron, informed contemporaries of Galileo's:

Subsequent developments

Rene Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

postponed, and ultimately never finished, his treatise The World
The World (Descartes)
The World, originally titled Le Monde and also called Treatise on the Light, is a book by René Descartes . Written between 1629 and 1633, it contains a relatively complete version of his philosophy, from method, to metaphysics, to physics and biology.Descartes was a follower of the mechanical...

, which included a heliocentric model. But ultimately the Galileo affair did little to slow the spread of heliocentrism across Europe, as Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy became increasingly influential in the coming decades. By 1686 the model was well enough established that the general public was reading about it in Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds is a popular science book by French author Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, published in 1686. It offered an explanation of the heliocentric model of the Universe, suggested by Nicolaus Copernicus in his 1543 work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium...

, published in France by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle , also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille...

and translated into English and other languages in the coming years. It has been called "one of the first great popularizations of science."

In 1687, Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which provided an explanation for Kepler's laws in terms of universal gravitation and what came to be known as Newton's laws of motion

Newton's laws of motion

Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that form the basis for classical mechanics. They describe the relationship between the forces acting on a body and its motion due to those forces...

. This placed heliocentrism on a firm theoretical foundation, although Newton's heliocentrism was of a somewhat modern kind. Already in the mid-1680s he recognized the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the solar system. For Newton it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line" (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest)

Meanwhile the Church remained opposed to heliocentrism as a literal description, but this did not by any means imply opposition to all astronomy; indeed, it needed observational data to maintain its calendar. In support of this effort it allowed the cathedrals themselves to be used as solar observatories called meridiane; i.e., they were turned into "reverse sundial

Sundial

A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a...

s", or gigantic pinhole camera

Pinhole camera

A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture – effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box...

s, where the Sun's image was projected from a hole in a window in the cathedral's lantern onto a meridian line.

In 1664, Pope Alexander VII

Pope Alexander VII

Pope Alexander VII , born Fabio Chigi, was Pope from 7 April 1655, until his death.- Early life :Born in Siena, a member of the illustrious banking family of Chigi and a great-nephew of Pope Paul V , he was privately tutored and eventually received doctorates of philosophy, law, and theology from...

published his Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of publications prohibited by the Catholic Church. A first version was promulgated by Pope Paul IV in 1559, and a revised and somewhat relaxed form was authorized at the Council of Trent...

Alexandri VII Pontificis Maximi jussu editus (Index of Prohibited Books, published by order of Alexander VII, P.M.

Pontifex Maximus

The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post...

) which included all previous condemnations of heliocentric books.

In the mid-eighteenth century the Church's opposition began to fade. An annotated copy of Newton's Principia was published in 1742 by Fathers le Seur and Jacquier of the Franciscan Minims, two Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

mathematicians, with a preface stating that the author's work assumed heliocentrism and could not be explained without the theory. In 1758 the Catholic Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books. Pope Pius VII

Pope Pius VII

Pope Pius VII , born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, was a monk, theologian and bishop, who reigned as Pope from 14 March 1800 to 20 August 1823.-Early life:...

approved a decree in 1822 by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition to allow the printing of heliocentric books in Rome

Rome

Heliocentrism and Judaism

Already in the Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

, Greek philosophy and science under general name "Greek wisdom" were considered dangerous. They were put under ban then and later for some periods (for example, Shlomo ben Aderet

Shlomo ben Aderet

Shlomo ben Aderet was a Medieval rabbi, halakhist, and Talmudist. He is widely known as the Rashba , the Hebrew acronym of his title and name: Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet.The Rashba was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1235...

prohibited study of philosophy in 1305). Possibly due to this the system of Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

did not cause furious resistance, although it was found to be contradicting verses of Tanakh

Tanakh

The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...

(Jewish Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

).

The first to mention the new system was Maharal of Prague

Judah Loew ben Bezalel

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, alt. Loewe, Löwe, or Levai, widely known to scholars of Judaism as the Maharal of Prague, or simply The MaHaRaL, the Hebrew acronym of "Moreinu ha-Rav Loew," was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, and philosopher who served as a leading rabbi in the city of...

, although he did not mention Copernicus, the author of the system. In his book "Be'er ha-Golah", in 1593 Maharal used the appearance of the new system to show that scientific theories are not reliable enough - even astronomy was turned upside-down.

Copernicus is mentioned for the first time in Hebrew in the books of David Gans

David Gans

----David ben Solomon ben Seligman Gans was a Jewish mathematician, historian, astronomer, astrologer, and is best known for the works Tzemach David and Nechmad ve'naim.- Early life :...

(1541–1613), who worked with Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe , born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations...

and Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler

. Gans wrote two books on astronomy: a short one "Magen David" (1612) and a full one "Nehmad veNaim" (published only in 1743). He described objectively three systems: Ptolemy

Ptolemy

, Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

and of Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe

Tycho Brahe , born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations...

without taking sides.

In 1629 a new Hebrew book "Elim" by Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

Joseph Solomon Qandia Delmedigo was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist....

(1591–1655) appeared. The author says that the arguments of Copernicus are so strong, that only an imbecile will not accept them. Delmedigo studied at Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

and was acquainted with Galileo

Galileo Galilei

.

The following wave of Hebrew literature on the subject is from the 18th century. Most of its authors were for Copernicus, although David Nieto

David Nieto

David Nieto was the Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in London, later succeeded in this capacity by his son, Isaac Nieto....

and Tobias Cohn

Tobias Cohn

Tobias Cohn or Tobias Kohn was a Polish-Jewish physician of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...

were exceptions. These two authors gave the same reason for opposing heliocentrism—namely, contradiction of the Bible—although Nieto merely rejected the new system on those grounds without much passion, whereas Hacohen went so far as to call Copernicus «a first-born of Satan». Hacohen also mentions the fact that the Sages of Talmud derived the Hebrew name of Earth from the verb "run".

In later periods there were no explicit attacks on heliocentrism, although some Rabbis were not sure of it.

In the 20th century R. M.M. Schneerson

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Menachem Mendel Schneerson , known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or just the Rebbe among his followers, was a prominent Hasidic rabbi who was the seventh and last Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was fifth in a direct paternal line to the third Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel...

suggested that the theory of relativity

Theory of relativity

The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....

makes the question obsolete, as he writes, "based on the understanding of science at this point".

The view of modern science

Kepler's laws of planetary motion

In astronomy, Kepler's laws give a description of the motion of planets around the Sun.Kepler's laws are:#The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci....

were used as arguments in favor of the heliocentric hypothesis. An apparent proof of the heliocentric hypothesis was provided only in 1838 by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. Bessel proved that parallax

Stellar parallax

Stellar parallax is the effect of parallax on distant stars in astronomy. It is parallax on an interstellar scale, and it can be used to determine the distance of Earth to another star directly with accurate astrometry...

of a star was greater than zero. He measured the parallax of 0.314 arcseconds of a star named 61 Cygni

61 Cygni

61 Cygni,Not to be confused with 16 Cygni, a more distant system containing two G-type stars harboring the gas giant planet 16 Cygni Bb. sometimes called Bessel's Star or Piazzi's Flying Star, is a binary star system in the constellation Cygnus...

. In the same year Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve and Thomas Henderson

Thomas James Henderson

Thomas James Alan Henderson was a Scottish astronomer noted for being the first person to measure the distance to Alpha Centauri, the major component of the nearest stellar system to Earth, and for being the first Astronomer Royal for Scotland.-Early life:Born in Dundee, Scotland, he was educated...

measured the parallaxes of other stars, Vega

Vega

Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus...

and Alpha Centauri

Alpha Centauri

Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus...

.

The thinking that the heliocentric view was also not true in a strict sense was achieved in steps. That the Sun was not the center of the universe, but one of innumerable stars, was strongly advocated by the mystic Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...

, who had little regard for observation or experiment. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the status of the Sun as merely one star among many became increasingly obvious. By the 20th century, even before the discovery that there are many galaxies, it was no longer an issue.

The concept of an absolute velocity, including being "at rest" as a particular case, is ruled out by the principle of relativity

Principle of relativity

In physics, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations describing the laws of physics have the same form in all admissible frames of reference....

, eliminating any obvious "center" of the universe as a natural origin of coordinates. Some forms of Mach's principle

Mach's principle

In theoretical physics, particularly in discussions of gravitation theories, Mach's principle is the name given by Einstein to an imprecise hypothesis often credited to the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach....

consider the frame at rest with respect to the distant masses in the universe to have special properties.

Even if the discussion is limited to the solar system

Solar System

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...

, the Sun is not at the geometric center of any planet's orbit, but rather approximately at one focus

Focus (geometry)

In geometry, the foci are a pair of special points with reference to which any of a variety of curves is constructed. For example, foci can be used in defining conic sections, the four types of which are the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola...

of the elliptical

Ellipse

In geometry, an ellipse is a plane curve that results from the intersection of a cone by a plane in a way that produces a closed curve. Circles are special cases of ellipses, obtained when the cutting plane is orthogonal to the cone's axis...

orbit. Furthermore, to the extent that a planet's mass cannot be neglected in comparison to the Sun's mass, the center of gravity of the solar system is displaced slightly away from the center of the Sun. (The masses of the planets, mostly Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

, amount to 0.14% of that of the Sun.) Therefore a hypothetical astronomer on an extrasolar planet

Extrasolar planet

An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. A total of such planets have been identified as of . It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planets, including perhaps half of all Sun-like stars...

would observe a small "wobble" in the Sun's motion.

Modern use of geocentric and heliocentric

In modern calculations the terms "geocentric" and "heliocentric" are often used to refer to coordinate systems that are chosen for practical reasons. In such systems the origin in the center of mass of the Earth, of the Earth-Moon system, of the Sun, of the Sun plus the major planets, or of the entire solar system can be selected. However, such selection of "geocentric" or "heliocentric" coordinates has only practical implications and not philosophical or physical ones.

The view of the public

A proportion of the public still believes in the geocentric model

Geocentric model

In astronomy, the geocentric model , is the superseded theory that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that all other objects orbit around it. This geocentric model served as the predominant cosmological system in many ancient civilizations such as ancient Greece...

. Approximately one in five Americans and Britons believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, according to surveys in 1999, 2006. Approximately one third of Russians believe in the geocentric model, according to a survey in 2011.

External links

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