Re: [asa] geocentricity

Commenting on Loren's post, summarized in his words as follows:

  In Galileo's time, I believe the most important two pieces of evidence
were: the phases of Venus and parallax.

Ted expands on Loren's post as follows:

In Tycho Brahe's geokinetic model, which was already out there in Galileo's
day, the phases of Venus are a natural prediction. Many astronomers who
confirmed Galileo's observations of the phases did not agree with Galileo's
conclusion that they "proved" Copernicanism. Rather, they agreed with
Galileo that the phases counted against Ptolemy, but also agreed with Tycho
that they supported Venus' motion around the sun--while the sun was in turn
carried around the earth. This was true, e.g., for many of the Jesuit
astronomers (important people at the time) and also for people like Ole
Romer, the Danish astronomer from the late 17th century who calculated the
speed of light from the delay times in the eclipses of Jovian moons.

Ted

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Received on Thu Jul 5 11:07:39 2007