We have all heard the story of how
Copernicus changed the world with his Heliocentric model of the solar
system. It's an especially memorable story because of all the drama
that went along with the change. Copernicus himself was so afraid of
what other people would do in response to his ideas that he didn't
allow them to be published until after his death. Everyone knows the
story of how Galileo, a brilliant advocate of the Copernican model,
was persecuted by the Catholic Church for his beliefs, and was
eventually forced to recant.
This is a great story because it
presents us with a bunch of underdogs, the Copernicans, and a big
bully of a bad guy, the Church. It's a tragic tale too, because so
many great men didn't get the honors they deserved in their lifetime.
The story serves a valuable purpose, in reminding us that we should
listen to science, that science is the great creator of knowledge in
a modern world, and that we shouldn't let the establishment crush
good ideas simply because it disagrees with them.
One thing that often happens in these
stories is that the Church's geocentric model is mocked as dumb, or
unnecessarily complex, or as being an article of faith that has
nothing to do with reality. This is an idea that I think we should
revise. The first thing to realize is that an analysis of the solar
system based on a geocentric model was a well-established science at
the time of Copernicus, and had been fairly successful. The success
of the geocentric model came from a Greek guy who died around 168 AD,
known to us as Ptolemy.
