Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelvis
Yes I really wish Christian values would keep us in check. Like the crusades, killing scientists for discovering the earth isn't the center of the universe or killing women on a massive scale for being witches.
Just to be sure, the heliocentric conception predated Roman times and morphed into the Ptolemaic approach to the meandering of the planets/sun which did center the earth ordinate of these movements.
For some, who mouth the present logic the sun as the center has become a shibboleth but in no way is it the only approach to the calculations of planetary movements. At the time of Copernicus it was presented that the sun sits still in outer space and the planets perform some type of elliptical movement around the sun.
Even today it is known that the sun moves which makes the idea of "elliptical" movements somewhat suspect. All one has to do, without having a telescope, is to try and trace the movements of a planet (for instance earth) and force the geometric ellipse on the earth's path with respect to the movements of the sun. It is a compelling and humbling experience which one can perform within the environs of home.
Back to Ptolemy, calculations can be and are performed with the earth as the center , only they are more complex for when tracing the movements of Venus with respect to earth,, for example, the movement becomes more of a spiral movement , open ended, without closure. The calculations are different, but accomplished, never the less.
I'll go out on a limb here for I've reached the end point of any knowledge of this, but I understand that the astrophysicists, when calculating the position of the sun, actually use three methods to perform this calculation with the Ptolemaic being one of them. The may not call it that but it is fascinating that his calculable perfection is not present, nor should it be , in planetary calculations.
If the cosmic movements were ever to be perfectly calculable, as in the mechanistic sense, then the cosmos would come to a screeching halt, dead on arrival.
Galileo and his descendants initiated the separation of religion and knowledge and this was the heresy he promoted , the denial of higher powers through implication which leads to our present time , or the materialist ethos. The men who judged him had an insight of what was happening but were not able to stem the tide for many of the early scientists were members of the clergy, especially the Jesuits.
This separation resulted in everything relative to the earth, from the matter of far distant stars to the heat of Mt. Vesuvius . This is the Ptolemaic inversion of another type where little thought is given to the possibility that the nature of the sun or stars themselves would be different than earthly matter (table of the elements). yada,yada,yada,,.....