Heliocentrism was speculation in Copernicus’s writings, but Galileo had evidence in the form of a Jovian central system. He provided proof that was confirmed by Jesuit astronomers. And yet his speculations were suppressed.
Replies
Yes. Irrelevant however to the original claim that science didn't exist in the Dark Ages. If anything its counter evidence to that claim, since Galileo was drawing on the theories of others who actually were working in the (long) Dark Age.
aug 24, 2025, 9:51 am • 0 0 • view
I never claimed science didn’t exist in the Dark Ages, so your beef is with someone else.
aug 24, 2025, 10:07 am • 0 0 • view
Yes. The person I replied to.
aug 24, 2025, 10:22 am • 0 0 • view
The moons of Jupiter weren't evidence of heliocentrism in any way, since they were equally compatible to any other model of the time, and certainly to the Tychonic, the consensus model of the time. bsky.app/profile/mich...
aug 24, 2025, 11:50 am • 2 0 • view
I’m reluctant to disagree with a historian, but were not the discovery of bodies orbiting Jupiter a repudiation of the theory that all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth, as the Church was insisting upon the Ptolemaic model during the 16th century?
aug 24, 2025, 11:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Even in the Ptolemaic model, all the planets didn't *just* revolve around the Earth, they revolved on an epicycle on a deferent, or on a system of a few epicycles. As mentioned in the linked thread, some Astronomers saw Jupiter's moons as the first empirical evidence of epicycles. ...
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view
Thanks for your detailed response. It’s hard to imagine why the Church took such a hard line against heliocentrism if it didn’t contradict their interpretation of the Bible. If they “had no dog in the hunt”, why convict Galileo of heresy and ban his book?Something is definitely wrong with all this
aug 26, 2025, 3:17 am • 0 0 • view
... The Church didn't insist on the Ptolemaic model, in fact they didn't proscribe any model at all. The only rule was to hold Heliocentrism as a hypothesis. There were a variety of Geocentric models in 1616, but the most popular was the Tychonic model, followed by the semi-Tychonic, IE one with a..
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view
... spinning Earth, then the Capellan model, and only after this were there then the Keplerian elliptic model, the pure circular Copernican model (which Galileo defended), and the Ptolemaic model was frankly mostly abandoned. ....
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view
... Galileo stated in his letter to Ingoli that consulted astronomers had persuaded the Inquisition against the heliocentric position, and we know from Ingoli's report that they were siding with the Tychonic model, although this wasn't formalised. At the time, the compatibility with Aristotelian..
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view
... physics, the lack of any feeling of empirical experience of movement, and the fact that stellar parallax had not been foind with vast attempts to measure it, seemed to imply that the Earth didn't move. The 1st empirical evidence of Earth's motion was Bradley aberration, 1728.
aug 25, 2025, 8:53 pm • 0 0 • view