Scientific AH: WI Earlier Heliocentrism?

I believe it's fairly common knowledge that the Heliocentric and Geocentric views of the solar system co-existed during the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC in Classical Greece. Yet it would be the geocentric view of the universe as expressed by Ptolemy that would gain widespread acceptance and remain dominant until the Copernican Revolution.

But what if...instead of the ideas of Aristotle and Copernicus, the heliocentric ideas of Aristarchus and his contemporaries became dominant?

Assuming a limited butterfly effect (only science for the sake of discussion), how would an earlier adoption of the Heliocentric model affect the development of science?
 
Seeing how little was understood about the world around them, an earlier accurate model of the system wouldn't change a whole lot. The Ancient Greeks and Romans knew a lot more than we might think.

Oh, and Aristole was an idiot. He claimed that heavier objects fall in proportion to their weight. Hmmm... I wonder if he actually TESTED that claim (and I'm not talking feather and bricks here).
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Seeing how little was understood about the world around them, an earlier accurate model of the system wouldn't change a whole lot. The Ancient Greeks and Romans knew a lot more than we might think.

Oh, and Aristole was an idiot. He claimed that heavier objects fall in proportion to their weight. Hmmm... I wonder if he actually TESTED that claim (and I'm not talking feather and bricks here).

It was against Greek "scientific" method to test a theory, if you had come to a result through logic that was correct, and any tests which showed otherwise were false.
 

Skokie

Banned
It was against Plato's "scientific" method to test a theory, if you had come to a result through logic that was correct, and any tests which showed otherwise were false. But of course Aristotle thought otherwise and is considered the progenitor of empiricism and the scientific method in the West.

Fixed that for ya.
 
I'll be the first to admit that I'm far from an expert on the physical sciences. But perhaps could an earlier development of heliocentrism lead to an earlier development of modern* physics, through the observation of the stars, comets, etc. ? If so, what practical applications could be derived from this?
 

mowque

Banned
Have to get rid of the whole "Greece was right" concept of the Middle Ages, or at least have the heliocentric guys be the ones followed by that mentality. (Heliocentric thought was a debate in Greece, wasn't it? With most thinking the Earth was just one of many?)
 
Have to get rid of the whole "Greece was right" concept of the Middle Ages, or at least have the heliocentric guys be the ones followed by that mentality. (Heliocentric thought was a debate in Greece, wasn't it? With most thinking the Earth was just one of many?)


Well, there was one Greek (can't remember his name) who speculated that Luna was a chunk of rock thrown off of Earth, while his comtempts thought it was a ball of fire or a god.
 
huh. Who thought it was a god?

The whole idea opf what exactly constitutes a God in ancient thopught is pretty convoluted and tends to give modern theologians raised on very different assumptions headaches.

But that said - Hellenistic science was pretty advanced, and both experimentation and speculation were encouraged. The latter was more respectable to many philosophers, but there were many people who would have readily agreed with the Galilean idea that 'God speaks maths'. Their maths were a bit more cumbersome than Galileo's, which is part of the problem.

The heliocentric view was advocated variously and accepted widely, but no proof of it could be provided as far as we know (if it was, it saw no wide currency, curse of a non-printing society). Thus, the opposed idea was eventually to enter European tradition through Ptolemy, who, whatever his faults were, constructed a pretty bloody impressive and coherent mathematical system around it. If anything like it existed for heliocentrism, we don't have it, and we oughtn't forget that after Copernicus it took the best astronomers of Europe several generations to come up with a heliocentric model that worked as well as Ptolemy's.

So, let's assume Ptolemy assume heliocentrism. There is the off chance that his model will not be accepted because it is considered 'pagan' (putting Sol Invictus in the centre?), but it may equally well be embraced. No big difference, I would say. Except that it would breakl the pattern - European tradition has a record of picking the poorest models from Antiquity, right down to Cosmas Indicopleustes (they had Strabo, the Periplous and uncounted lost records, but they made the effing Christian Topography the standard work...)

Now, a survival of the scientific method as practised in Hellenistic times would be a completely different thing, but that would need bigger changes upstream. A heliocentric model alone is still likely to be challenged once systematic observations and advanced mathematics make it clear that epicycles don't work.
 

Skokie

Banned
The whole idea opf what exactly constitutes a God in ancient thopught is pretty convoluted and tends to give modern theologians raised on very different assumptions headaches.

True, they had a lot of ideas about god and gods, but I don't think they thought the moon was a god. Or at least I haven't heard that.
 
True, they had a lot of ideas about god and gods, but I don't think they thought the moon was a god. Or at least I haven't heard that.

Well, it's not that the moon *was* a God as that the moon *had* a God. Or maybe, rather, that the physical reality of the moon and the spiritual reality of Luna were coterminous. Luna was not the moon, but the numen of moon, the personification of moon-ness that through the act of worship as much as through the mere physical existence of the thing took on divine characteristics. Cicero isn't terribly clear, but he's as good as we are going to get on this issue.
 
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