for over a thousand years (Chaisson 33-34).One must remember that during this time all observations and subsequent conclusions were based upon what the naked eye could see; these ancient astronomers and philosophers did not have telescopes. The geocentric concept based upon visual data, paired with Ptolemy’s model was accurate enough to fulfill the needs of the times. One might wonder how this basic mistake could be passed along for centuries. The answer lies in the fact that after the fall of the Roman and Greek civilizations, the Western world reverted to small feudal states, where technology and the quest for scientific knowledge were not of importance. In this period of Western civilization, the Church was the main reservoir of knowledge (Adler 207-220). Since the geocentric view concurred with the language in the Bible, there was no reason to doubt the validity of Ptolemy’s model. In the sixteenth-century, a Polish cleric, astronomer, and mathematician, Nicholas Copernicus, seeking to further understand the Universe, came upon Aristarchus’s heliocentric views, which the planets all revolved around the Sun, and reasserted them to explain the motions of the celestial bodies. Copernicus disagreed with the physics of Ptolemy’s model, believing that the underlying principles were incorrect, not the math or observations. The bold change that Copernicus suggested was that the Sun was the center of the Universe, with the planets revolving around the Sun in perfect circular orbits. He felt that this heliocentric model would better express harmony in the Universe. Copernicus’s model although based upon the correct view of the Sun being the center of the known Universe, was still flawed with the idea that the planets had perfectly circular orbits. Because of this flaw, he had to retain the concept of epicycles and the accompanying complicated mathematical concepts to explain it all. Although his model...
