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Heliocentrism (also known as the heliocentric model) is a superseded astronomical model in which the Earth and Solar System orbit around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to Geocentric model, which placed the Earth at the center. The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos,; . The work of Aristarchus in which he proposed his heliocentric system has not survived. We only know of it now from a brief passage in Archimedes' The Sand Reckoner. who had been influenced by a concept presented by Philolaus of Croton (c. 470 – 385 BC). In the 5th century BC the Greece Philosophy Philolaus and Hicetas had the thought on different occasions that the Earth was spherical and revolving around a "mystical" central fire, and that this fire regulated the universe. In medieval Europe, however, Aristarchus' heliocentrism attracted little attention—possibly because of the loss of scientific works of the Hellenistic period.
It was not until the 16th century that a mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic Church cleric, Nicolaus Copernicus, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In 1576, Thomas Digges published a modified Copernican system. His modifications are close to modern observations. In the following century, Johannes Kepler introduced Elliptic orbit, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope.
With the observations of William Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, and other astronomers, it was realized that the Sun, while near the barycenter of the Solar System, was not central in the universe. Modern astronomy does not distinguish any center.
While a moving Earth was proposed at least from the 4th century BC in Pythagoreanism, and a fully developed heliocentric model was developed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC, these ideas were not successful in replacing the view of a static spherical Earth, and from the 2nd century AD the predominant model, which would be inherited by medieval astronomy, was the Ptolemaic system described in Ptolemy's Almagest.
The Ptolemaic system was a sophisticated astronomical system that managed to calculate the positions for the planets to a fair degree of accuracy. Ptolemy himself, in his Almagest, says that any model for describing the motions of the planets is merely a Mathematics device, and since there is no actual way to know which is true, the simplest model that gets the right numbers should be used.In Book 1 section 7 he admits that a model in which the Earth revolves with respect to the stars would be simpler but doesn't go as far as considering a heliocentric system. However, he rejected the idea of a Earth rotation as absurd as he believed it would create huge winds. Within his model the distances of the Moon, Sun, and could be determined by treating orbits' celestial spheres as contiguous realities, which gave the stars' distance as less than 20 Astronomical Units,Dennis Duke, Ptolemy's Universe a regression, since Aristarchus of Samos's heliocentric scheme had centuries earlier necessarily placed the stars at least two orders of magnitude more distant.
Problems with Ptolemy's system were well recognized in medieval astronomy, and an increasing effort to criticize and improve it in the late medieval period eventually led to the Copernican heliocentrism developed in Renaissance astronomy.
Heraclides of Pontus (4th century BC) said that the rotation of the Earth explained the apparent daily motion of the celestial sphere. It used to be thought that he believed Mercury and Venus to revolve around the Sun, which in turn (along with the other planets) revolves around the Earth. Macrobius (AD 395423) later described this as the "Egyptian System," stating that "it did not escape the skill of the Egyptians," though there is no other evidence it was known in ancient Egypt.
His writings on the heliocentric system are lost, but some information about them is known from a brief description by his contemporary, Archimedes, and from scattered references by later writers. Archimedes' description of Aristarchus' theory is given in the former's book, The Sand Reckoner. The entire description comprises just three sentences, which Thomas Heath translates as follows:. The italics and parenthetical comments are as they appear in Heath's original.
Aristarchus presumably took the stars to be very far away because he was aware that their parallaxThat is, an apparent movement of the stars relative to the and equator, and to each other, caused by the Earth's revolution around the Sun. would otherwise be observed over the course of a year. The stars are in fact so far away that stellar parallax only became detectable when sufficiently powerful had been developed in the 1830s.
No references to Aristarchus' heliocentrism are known in any other writings from before the common era. The earliest of the handful of other ancient references occur in two passages from the writings of Plutarch. These mention one detail not stated explicitly in Archimedes' accountAlthough it could obviously be reasonably inferred therefrom.—namely, that Aristarchus' theory had the Earth rotating on an axis. The first of these reference occurs in Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon:. Most modern scholars share Heath's opinion that it is Cleanthes in this passage who is being held as having accused Aristarchus of impiety (see ; ; ; Cherniss 1957, p. 55; for example). The manuscripts of Plutarch's Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon that have come down to us are corrupted, however, and the traditional interpretation of the passage has been challenged by Lucio Russo, who insists that it should be interpreted as having Aristarchus rhetorically suggest that Cleanthes was being impious for wanting to shift the Sun from its proper place at the center of the universe (; ).
Only scattered fragments of Cleanthes writings have survived in quotations by other writers, but in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius lists A reply to Aristarchus (Πρὸς Ἀρίσταρχον) as one of Cleanthes' works,Diogenes Laërtius (1972, Bk 7, ch 5, p. 281) and some scholars have suggested that this might have been where Cleanthes had accused Aristarchus of impiety.
The second of the references by Plutarch is in his Platonic Questions:
The remaining references to Aristarchus' heliocentrism are extremely brief, and provide no more information beyond what can be gleaned from those already cited. Ones which mention Aristarchus explicitly by name occur in Aëtius' Opinions of the Philosophers, Sextus Empiricus' Against the Mathematicians, and an anonymous scholiast to Aristotle. Another passage in Aëtius' Opinions of the Philosophers reports that Seleucus the astronomer had affirmed the Earth's motion, but does not mention Aristarchus.
Alternatively, his explanation may have involved the phenomenon of ,Lucio Russo, Flussi e riflussi, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2003, . which he supposedly theorized to be caused by the attraction to the Moon and by the revolution of the Earth around the Earth and Moon's Barycenter.
Al-Biruni discussed the possibility of whether the Earth rotated about its own axis and orbited the Sun, but in his Masudic Canon (1031), he expressed his faith in a geocentric and stationary Earth.E. S. Kennedy, "Al-Bīrūnī's Masudic Canon", Al-Abhath, 24 (1971): 59–81; reprinted in David A. King and Mary Helen Kennedy, ed., Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, Beirut, 1983, pp. 573–595. He was aware that if the Earth rotated on its axis, it would be consistent with his astronomical observations,G. Wiet, V. Elisseeff, P. Wolff, J. Naudu (1975). History of Mankind, Vol 3: The Great medieval Civilisations, p. 649. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, UNESCO. but considered it a problem of natural philosophy rather than one of mathematics.
In the 12th century, non-heliocentric alternatives to the Ptolemaic system were developed by some Islamic astronomers, such as Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji, who considered the Ptolemaic model mathematical, and not physical. ( PDF version) His system spread throughout most of Europe in the 13th century, with debates and refutations of his ideas continued to the 16th century.
The Maragha school of astronomy in Ilkhanid-era Persia further developed "non-Ptolemaic" planetary models involving Earth's rotation. Notable astronomers of this school are Al-Urdi (d. 1266) Al-Katibi (d. 1277), Hikmat al-'Ain, p. 78 and Al-Tusi (d. 1274).
The arguments and evidence used resemble those used by Copernicus to support the Earth's motion. The criticism of Ptolemy as developed by Averroes and by the Maragha school explicitly address the Earth's rotation but it did not arrive at explicit heliocentrism. The observations of the Maragha school were further improved at the Timurid-era Samarkand observatory under Ali Qushji (1403–1474).
In the 14th century, bishop Nicole Oresme discussed the possibility that the Earth rotated on its axis, while Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in his Learned Ignorance asked whether there was any reason to assert that the Sun (or any other point) was the center of the universe. In parallel to a mystical definition of God, Cusa wrote that "Thus the fabric of the world ( machina mundi) will quasi have its center everywhere and circumference nowhere,"Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, 2.12, p. 103, cited in Koyré (1957), p. 17. recalling Hermes Trismegistus.
Some historians maintain that the thought of the Maragheh observatory, in particular the mathematical devices known as the Urdi lemma and the Tusi couple, influenced Renaissance-era European astronomy, and thus was indirectly received by Renaissance-era European astronomy and thus by Copernicus. Copernicus used such devices in the same planetary models as found in Arabic sources. The exact replacement of the equant by two epicycles used by Copernicus in the Commentariolus was found in an earlier work by Ibn al-Shatir (d. c. 1375) of Damascus. Copernicus' lunar and Mercury models are also identical to Ibn al-Shatir's. ( PDF version)
While the influence of the criticism of Ptolemy by Averroes on Renaissance thought is clear and explicit, the claim of direct influence of the Maragha school, postulated by Otto E. Neugebauer in 1957, remains an open question.N.K. Singh, M. Zaki Kirmani, Encyclopaedia of Islamic science and scientists[8]Viktor Blåsjö, "A Critique of the Arguments for Maragha Influence on Copernicus", Journal for the History of Astronomy, 45 (2014), 183–195 ADS Since the Tusi couple was used by Copernicus in his reformulation of mathematical astronomy, there is a growing consensus that he became aware of this idea in some way. One possible route of transmission may have been through Byzantine science, which translated some of al-Tusi's works from Arabic into Medieval Greek. Several Byzantine Greek manuscripts containing the Tusi couple are still extant in Italy. The Mathematics Genealogy Project suggests that there is a "genealogy" of Nasir al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī → Shams al‐Dīn al‐Bukhārī → Gregory Chioniades → Manuel Bryennios → Theodore Metochites → Gregory Palamas → Nilos Kabasilas → Demetrios Kydones → Gemistos Plethon → Basilios Bessarion → Johannes Regiomontanus → Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara → Nicolaus (Mikołaj Kopernik) Copernicus. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) wrote " Il sole non si move." ("The Sun does not move.") and he was a student of a student of Bessarion according to the Mathematics Genealogy Project. It has been suggested that the idea of the Tusi couple may have arrived in Europe leaving few manuscript traces, since it could have occurred without the translation of any Arabic text into Latin.Claudia Kren, "The Rolling Device," p. 497.
Other scholars have argued that Copernicus could well have developed these ideas independently of the late Islamic tradition. Copernicus explicitly references several astronomers of the "Islamic Golden Age" (10th to 12th centuries) in De Revolutionibus: Al-Battani, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), Thebit (Thabit Ibn Qurra), Al-Zarqali, and Al-Bitruji, but he does not show awareness of the existence of any of the later astronomers of the Maragha school.
It has been argued that Copernicus could have independently discovered the Tusi couple or took the idea from Proclus's Commentary on the First Book of Euclid, which Copernicus cited. Another possible source for Copernicus' knowledge of this mathematical device is the Questiones de Spera of Nicole Oresme, who described how a reciprocating linear motion of a celestial body could be produced by a combination of circular motions similar to those proposed by al-Tusi.
The state of knowledge on planetary theory received by Copernicus is summarized in Georg von Peuerbach's Theoricae Novae Planetarum (printed in 1472 by Regiomontanus). By 1470, the accuracy of observations by the Vienna school of astronomy, of which Peuerbach and Regiomontanus were members, was high enough to make the eventual development of heliocentrism inevitable, and indeed it is possible that Regiomontanus did arrive at an explicit theory of heliocentrism before his death in 1476, some 30 years before Copernicus.
Copernicus cited Aristarchus in an early (unpublished) manuscript of De Revolutionibus (which still survives), stating: " Philolaus believed in the mobility of the earth, and some even say that Aristarchus of Samos was of that opinion."Gingerich, O. "Did Copernicus Owe a Debt to Aristarchus?" Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol.16, No.1/Feb, P. 37, 1985. Philolaus had the Earth moving around a Central Fire which was not the Sun, so Copernicus's reference to Aristarchus's model as possibly geodynamic does not necessarily imply that he thought it was heliocentric. However, in the published version he restricts himself to noting that in works by Cicero he had found an account of the theories of Hicetas and that Plutarch had provided him with an account of the Pythagoreans, Heraclides Ponticus, Philolaus, and Ecphantus. These authors had proposed a moving Earth, which did not, however, revolve around the central Sun.
In 1539, Martin Luther purportedly said:
This was reported in the context of a conversation at the dinner table and not a formal statement of faith. Melanchthon, however, opposed the doctrine over a period of years.
Some years after the publication of De Revolutionibus John Calvin preached a sermon in which he denounced those who "pervert the order of nature" by saying that "the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns".
Tycho appreciated the Copernican system, but objected to the idea of a moving Earth on the basis of physics, astronomy, and religion. The Aristotelian physics of the time (modern Newtonian physics was still a century away) offered no physical explanation for the motion of a massive body like Earth, whereas it could easily explain the motion of heavenly bodies by postulating that they were made of a different sort substance called aether that moved naturally. So Tycho said that the Copernican system " ...expertly and completely circumvents all that is superfluous or discordant in the system of Ptolemy. On no point does it offend the principle of mathematics. Yet it ascribes to the Earth, that hulking, lazy body, unfit for motion, a motion as quick as that of the aethereal torches, and a triple motion at that." Likewise, Tycho took issue with the vast distances to the stars that Aristarchus and Copernicus had assumed in order to explain the lack of any visible parallax. Tycho had measured the apparent sizes of stars (now known to be illusory), and used geometry to calculate that in order to both have those apparent sizes and be as far away as heliocentrism required, stars would have to be huge (much larger than the sun; the size of Earth's orbit or larger). Regarding this Tycho wrote, " Deduce these things geometrically if you like, and you will see how many absurdities (not to mention others) accompany this assumption of by inference."Blair, Ann, "Tycho Brahe's critique of Copernicus and the Copernican system", Journal of the History of Ideas, 51, 1990, 364. He also cited the Copernican system's " opposition to the authority of Sacred Scripture in more than one place" as a reason why one might wish to reject it, and observed that his own geo-heliocentric alternative " offended neither the principles of physics nor Holy Scripture."Gingerich, O. & Voelkel, J. R., J. Hist. Astron., Vol. 29, 1998, pp. 1, 24
The Jesuits astronomers in Rome were at first unreceptive to Tycho's system; the most prominent, Clavius, commented that Tycho was " confusing all of astronomy, because he wants to have Mars lower than the Sun." However, after the advent of the telescope showed problems with some geocentric models (by demonstrating that Venus circles the Sun, for example), the Tychonic system and variations on that system became popular among geocentrists, and the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli would continue Tycho's use of physics, stellar astronomy (now with a telescope), and religion to argue against heliocentrism and for Tycho's system well into the seventeenth century.
In particular, to support the Copernican view and oppose the objection according to which the motion of the Earth would be perceived by means of the motion of winds, clouds etc., in La Cena de le Ceneri Bruno anticipates some of the arguments of Galilei on the relativity principle. Note that he also uses the example now known as Galileo's ship.Giordano Bruno, Teofilo, in La Cena de le Ceneri, "Third Dialogue", (1584), ed. and trans. by S.L. Jaki (1975).
Between 1617 and 1621, Kepler developed a heliocentric model of the Solar System in Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae, in which all the planets have elliptical orbits. This provided significantly increased accuracy in predicting the position of the planets. Kepler's ideas were not immediately accepted, and Galileo for example ignored them. In 1621, Epitome astronomia Copernicanae was placed on the Catholic Church's index of prohibited books despite Kepler being a Protestant.
In his 1615 "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina", Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to Holy Scripture. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage literally when the scripture in question is in a Bible book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the Sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the Earth's rotation which gives the impression of the Sun in motion across the sky. In February 1615, prominent Dominicans including Thomaso Caccini and Niccolò Lorini brought Galileo's writings on heliocentrism to the attention of the Inquisition, because they appeared to violate Holy Scripture and the decrees of the Council of Trent. Cardinal and Inquisitor Robert Bellarmine was called upon to adjudicate, and wrote in April that treating heliocentrism as a real phenomenon would be "a very dangerous thing," irritating philosophers and theologians, and harming "the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture as false."
In January 1616, Msgr. Francesco Ingoli addressed an essay to Galileo disputing the Copernican system. Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the ban against Copernicanism that followed in February. Ingoli's essay was published in English translation for the first time in 2015. According to Maurice Finocchiaro, Ingoli had probably been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy, and the essay provided the "chief direct basis" for the ban. The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism. It borrowed primarily from the arguments of Tycho Brahe, and it notedly mentioned the problem that heliocentrism requires the stars to be much larger than the Sun. Ingoli wrote that the great distance to the stars in the heliocentric theory " clearly proves ... the fixed stars to be of such size, as they may surpass or equal the size of the orbit circle of the Earth itself." Ingoli included four theological arguments in the essay, but suggested to Galileo that he focus on the physical and mathematical arguments. Galileo did not write a response to Ingoli until 1624.
In February 1616, the Inquisition assembled a committee of theologians, known as qualifiers, who delivered their unanimous report condemning heliocentrism as "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture." The Inquisition also determined that the Earth's motion "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith." Domínguez (2014) ; arXiv:1402.6168 Original text of the decision Bellarmine personally ordered Galileo
In March 1616, after the Inquisition's injunction against Galileo, the papal Master of the Sacred Palace, Congregation of the Index, and the Pope banned all books and letters advocating the Copernican system, which they called "the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture." In 1618, the Holy Office recommended that a modified version of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus be allowed for use in calendric calculations, though the original publication remained forbidden until 1758.
Pope Urban VIII encouraged Galileo to publish the pros and cons of heliocentrism. Galileo's response, Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems (1632), clearly advocated heliocentrism, despite his declaration in the preface that,
I will endeavour to show that all experiments that can be made upon the Earth are insufficient means to conclude for its mobility but are indifferently applicable to the Earth, movable or immovable... (1661) Thomas Salusbury translation of Dialogo sopra i Due Massi Sistemi del Mondo (1632)
and his straightforward statement,
I might very rationally put it in dispute, whether there be any such centre in nature, or no; being that neither you nor any one else hath ever proved, whether the World be finite and figurate, or else infinite and interminate; yet nevertheless granting you, for the present, that it is finite, and of a terminate Spherical Figure, and that thereupon it hath its centre...
Some ecclesiastics also interpreted the book as characterizing the Pope as a simpleton, since his viewpoint in the dialogue was advocated by the character Simplicio. Urban VIII became hostile to Galileo and he was again summoned to Rome. Galileo's trial in 1633 involved making fine distinctions between "teaching" and "holding and defending as true". For advancing heliocentric theory Galileo was forced to recant Copernicanism and was put under house arrest for the last few years of his life. According to J. L. Heilbron, informed contemporaries of Galileo's " appreciated that the reference to heresy in connection with Galileo or Copernicus had no general or theological significance."
In 1664, Pope Alexander VII published his Index Librorum Prohibitorum Alexandri VII Pontificis Maximi jussu editus (Index of Prohibited Books, published by order of Alexander VII, Pontifex Maximus) which included all previous condemnations of heliocentric books."The Pontifical Decrees Against the Doctrine of the Earth's Movement, and the Ultramontane Defence of Them", Rev. William Roberts, 1885, London
In 1687, Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which provided an explanation for Kepler's laws in terms of universal gravitation and what came to be known as Newton's laws of motion. This placed heliocentrism on a firm theoretical foundation, although Newton's heliocentrism was of a somewhat modern kind. Already in the mid-1680s he recognized the "deviation of the Sun" from the center of gravity of the Solar System.Curtis Wilson, "The Newtonian achievement in astronomy", pp. 233–274 in R Taton & C Wilson (eds) (1989), The General History of Astronomy, Volume 2A, at p. 233 For Newton it was not precisely the center of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this center of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line". Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the center, wherever it was, was at rest.(text quotations from 1729 translation of Newton Principia, Book 3 (1729 vol.2) at pp. 232–233).
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church remained opposed to heliocentrism as a literal description, but this did not by any means imply opposition to all astronomy; indeed, it needed observational data to maintain its calendar. In support of this effort it allowed the cathedrals themselves to be used as solar observatories called meridiane; i.e., they were turned into "reverse ", or gigantic , where the Sun's image was projected from a hole in a window in the cathedral's lantern onto a meridian line.
In the mid-18th century the Church's opposition began to fade. An annotated copy of Newton's Principia was published in 1742 by Fathers le Seur and Jacquier of the Franciscan Minims, two Catholic mathematicians, with a preface stating that the author's work assumed heliocentrism and could not be explained without the theory. In 1758 the Catholic Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books.John L.Heilbron, Censorship of Astronomy in Italy after Galileo (in McMullin, Ernan ed., The Church and Galileo, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 2005, p. 307, IN. ) The Observatory of the Roman College was established by Pope Clement XIV in 1774 (nationalized in 1878, but re-founded by Pope Leo XIII as the Vatican Observatory in 1891). In spite of dropping its active resistance to heliocentrism, the Catholic Church did not lift the prohibition of uncensored versions of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus or Galileo's Dialogue. The affair was revived in 1820, when the Master of the Sacred Palace (the Catholic Church's chief censor), Filippo Anfossi, refused to license a book by a Catholic canon, Giuseppe Settele, because it openly treated heliocentrism as a physical fact. Settele appealed to pope Pius VII. After the matter had been reconsidered by the Congregation of the Index and the Holy Office, Anfossi's decision was overturned. Pius VII approved a decree in 1822 by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition to allow the printing of heliocentric books in Rome. Copernicus' De Revolutionibus and Galileo's Dialogue were then subsequently omitted from the next edition of the Index when it appeared in 1835.
Three apparent proofs of the heliocentric hypothesis were provided in 1727 by James Bradley, in 1838 by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, and in 1851 by Léon Foucault. Bradley discovered the stellar aberration, proving the relative motion of the Earth. Bessel proved that the Stellar parallax of a star was greater than zero by measuring the parallax of 0.314 arcseconds of a star named 61 Cygni. In the same year Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve and Thomas Henderson measured the parallaxes of other stars, Vega and Alpha Centauri. Experiments like those of Foucault were performed by V. Viviani in 1661 in Florence and by Bartolini in 1833 in Rimini.
Copernicus is mentioned in the books of David Gans (1541–1613), who worked with Brahe and Kepler. Gans wrote two books on astronomy in Hebrew: a short one, "Magen David" (1612), and a full one, "Nehmad veNaim" (published only in 1743). He described objectively three systems: those of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Brahe, without taking sides. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591–1655) in his "Elim" (1629) says that the arguments of Copernicus are so strong, that only an imbecile will not accept them.Sefer Elim, Amsterdam, 1629, стр. 304 Delmedigo studied at Padua and was acquainted with Galileo.
An actual controversy on the Copernican model within Judaism arises only in the early 18th century. Most authors in this period had accepted Copernican heliocentrism, with opposition from David Nieto and Tobias Cohn, who argued against heliocentrism on the grounds it contradicted scripture. Nieto merely rejected the new system on those grounds without much passion, whereas Cohn went so far as to call Copernicus "a first-born of Satan", though he also acknowledged that he would have found it difficult to proffer one particular objection based on a passage from the Talmud.In a marginal note in his Massé Touvia (part 2, p. 52b): "Remark of the author: I fear that the incredulous may draw an objection from a text of Midrash Bereshit Rabba (V,8) in which our Teachers, the Rabbis, of blessed memory, explain that if the Earth is called in Hebrew " eretz" it is because it hastens (" ratseta") before the Creator in order to accomplish His will. I acknowledge that the answer to this objection seems difficult for me to find", as translated by .
In the 19th century, two students of the Moses Sofer wrote books that were given approbations by him even though one supported heliocentrism and the other geocentrism. One, a commentary on Genesis titled Yafe’ah le-Ketz written by R. Israel David Schlesinger resisted a heliocentric model and supported geocentrism. The other, Mei Menuchot written by R. Eliezer Lipmann Neusatz encouraged acceptance of the heliocentric model and other modern scientific thinking.
Since the 20th century most Jews have not questioned the science of heliocentrism. Exceptions include Shlomo Benizri and R. M.M. Schneerson of Chabad who argued that the question of heliocentrism vs. geocentrism is obsolete because of the relativity of motion."on the basis of the presently accepted scientific view (in accordance with the theory of Relativity) that where two bodies in space are in motion relative to one another, it is impossible scientifically to ascertain which revolves around which, or which is stationary and the other in motion. Therefore, to say that there is, or can be, 'scientific proof' that the earth revolves around the sun is quite an unscientific and uncritical statement." Schneerson's followers in Chabad continue to deny the heliocentric model.
Seeing that the stars belonging to the Milky Way appeared to encircle the Earth, Herschel carefully counted stars of given apparent magnitudes, and after finding the numbers were the same in all directions, concluded Earth must be close to the center of the Milky Way. However, there were two flaws in Herschel's methodology: magnitude is not a reliable index to the distance of stars, and some of the areas that he mistook for empty space were actually dark, obscuring nebulae that blocked his view toward the center of the Milky Way.
The Herschel model remained relatively unchallenged for the next hundred years, with minor refinements. Jacobus Kapteyn introduced motion, density, and luminosity to Herschel's star counts, which still implied a near-central location of the Sun.
However, "scientific arguments were marshalled against such a possibility," and this view was rejected by almost all scientists until the early 20th century, with Harlow Shapley's work on and Edwin Hubble's measurements in 1924. After Shapley and Hubble showed that the Sun is not the center of the universe, cosmology moved on from heliocentrism to galactocentrism, which states that the Milky Way is the center of the universe.
Hubble's observations of redshift in light from distant galaxies indicated that the universe was expanding and acentric. As a result, soon after galactocentrism was formulated, it was abandoned in favor of the Big Bang model of the acentric expanding universe. Further assumptions, such as the Copernican principle, the cosmological principle, dark energy, and dark matter, eventually lead to the current model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM.
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