Pseudoscience/Heliocentricism: Difference between revisions
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Heracleides sought to resolve difficulties involved in the observations of Venus and Mercury by '''proposing''' that these two planets revolved around the Sun, while the Sun in turn revolved around Earth. Heracleides also '''suggested''' that Earth rotates.
(Greek) The first non-geocentric model of the universe was '''proposed''' by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus, who '''taught''' that at the center of the universe was a "central fire", around which the Earth, Sun, Moon 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.
According to Aristotle (a critic of the Pythagoreans), the function of the Counter-Earth was to explain "eclipses of the moon and their frequency", and/or "to raise the number of heavenly bodies around the Central Fire from nine to ten, which the Pythagoreans regarded as the perfect number"
The Pythagorean concept of uniform circular motion remained unchallenged for approximately the next 2000 years, and it was to the Pythagoreans that Copernicus (a [[Agencies/Jesuits|'''Jesuit''']]) referred to show that the notion of a moving Earth was neither new nor revolutionary.
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