Talk:Heliocentrism

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Former good articleHeliocentrism was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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Current status: Delisted good article

Alleged Vedic heliocentrism[edit]

This nonsense was recently readded to the article with citations to one secondary and one tertiary source. Both citations are bogus, however, since there is nothing whatever on the cited pages of the sources given (nor anywhere else in them, as far as I can see) to support anything in the preceding paragraphs. In any case, the second citation is to Dick Teresi's Lost Discoveries, a far from reliable source. I will therefore be reverting this addition.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 21:22, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In view of apparent disagreement about whether anything in this passage is supported by the cited sources, I should perhaps clarify these terse comments.
The source cited for the first paragraph was an article, Astronomy of the Śatapatha Brāmahṇa, by Subhash Kak in the Indian Journal of History of Science. I could find nothing in that article which in any way supports any part of the disputed material. Nothing relating to heliocentrism, nor any of the quotations given in that material, appear anywhere in Kak's article. The only mentions of Yājñavalkya in the article are on pages 27, 29 and 30 as the individual to whom "tradition assigns the authorship of the Śatapatha Brạmahṇa", and in connection with a 95-year luni-solar cycle (comprising 5 Metonic cycles) which Kak names after him.
The source cited for the second paragraph is p.130 of Dick Teresi's Lost Discoveries. But again, there's nothing whatever on that page of Teresi's book which supports anything in that second paragraph. It is true that Teresi does write:
"The Vedas recognized the sun as the source of light and warmth, the source of life, the center of creation, and the center of the spheres. This perception may have planted a seed, leading Indians thinkers to entertain the idea of heliocentricity long before some Greeks thought of it.",
on that page, which might be taken—mistakenly, in my view—as supporting the opening sentence of the disputed material, in its first paragraph. The big problem with Teresi's statement is that his only source for it is this web page, the relevant part of which in turn seems to have been lifted entirely, without attribution, from Chapter 5 of a book, India's Contribution to World Culture, self-published on the web by one Subheer Birodkar. Since neither Teresi nor Birodkar are recognised authorities on any aspect of the history of science, I fail to see how anything they write on that subject can be taken as being from a reliable source.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 05:42, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"Since the determination of the units of time is contingent upon the accuracy with which the celestial phenomenon can be observed, the needs to study problems of mathematics and astronomy arose simultaneously ... The sen was considered the central point, the director of the Earth, around which all the planets revolved. "May the resplendent sun that comes from the center of the expanse of water of the vast ocean, purify me...", and "The sun generates all the earthly directions one by one and controls the seasons. Only the sun is the Lord of our universe."
Quoted from Indian astronomy in the era of Copernicus. Nature, volume 251, 283-285, https://doi.org/10.1038/251283a0.
It may be that Mathur's statements have been disproved since publication in 1974, but it was good enough for Nature. We should consider seriously the idea that Heliocentrism was an element of Vedic astrology. See also the Vedange Jyotisa of Lagadha, found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110501084408/http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005abd_s1.pdf Xiang Yu 99 (talk) 04:39, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Plutarch's passage on Aristarchus's heliocentrism[edit]

A passage in the article dealing with Plutarch's supposed assertion that the stoic philosopher Cleanthes thought Aristarchus should have been charged with impiety was recently replaced with an alternative, stating categorically that this is a "common misconception" and that Plutarch's assertion was instead that Aristarchus had (jokingly) suggested that Cleanthes should have been charged with impiety. The two sources cited for this assertion are Lucio Russo's book The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn, and a scholarly paper, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, by Russo and a scholar of classics, Silvio Medaglia.

There are all sorts of problems with this:

  • That heliocentrism was held to be "sacrilegious" by any contemporaries of Aristarchus other than Cleanthes is not a view that either of the cited sources—nor any other reliable source that I know of—asserts as being held by anyone, let alone that it is "common", as asserted in the amendment to the article under discussion. Athough Russo does write (on p.82 of The Forgotten Revolution) "The common idea is that Aristarchus was too far ahead of his time to have had a lasting influence on the course of science, and support is generally found for it in the accusation of impiety supposedly leveled at him because of his heliocentrism", this is very far from being the same thing as, or even implying that, there exists a common misconception that any more than a single contemporary of Aristarchus objected to heliocentrism on religious grounds.
  • In adopting the views of a single scholar, Russo, against the almost universal consensus of other scholars, this change quite obviously violates Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. I say "single scholar" here because I see no evidence in the Russo-Medaglia article that Medaglia shares Russo's apparent view that the matter has been conclusively settled in his favour. Medaglia's role was confined to suggesting how the two primary manuscripts of Plutarch's text could be emended to produce a reading compatible with Russo's views. Unlike Russo, however, he does not imply that this must be the correct reading of the text, merely that it is a plausible alternative to the traditional one.
In fact, a literal reading of the unemended primary manuscripts turns out to be obviously untenable, because it would seem to be attributing the proposal of heliocentrism to "Cleanthes the Samian" in contradiction to the well attested facts that Cleanthes was not Samian, but from Assos, and it was Aristarchus the Samian, not Cleanthes, who was responsible for proposing the idea of heliocentrism. To obtain a reading of the manuscripts consistent with Russo's thesis, Medaglia had to replace the two traditional emendations which are the targets of Russo's criticisms with three others, every one of which is more substantial than the two discarded single-letter emendations of the traditional interpretation. Supporters of the traditional interpretation would therefore appear to have very good grounds for regarding Russo's proposed interpretation as being somewhat less plausible than their own. For anyone interested in the details, I have included them in the collapsed box below.

I shall therefore be replacing the text of this edit with something more consistent with Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. I do agree, however, that the passage of the article which was replaced by this edit is unsatisfactory, and I have no intention of simply reverting back to it.

Lucio Russo vs scholarly consensus

WARNING: May contain traces of (gasp!) original research. Susceptible editors should exercise appropriate caution before consuming.

The passage of Plutarch's under discussion occurs in his On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon. The earliest records of this work which are known to have survived are two corrupt manuscripts dating to the 14th and 15th centuries. All modern versions of the work are thus, at best, proposed reconstructions from these and later printed editions of the Greek text. This makes Russo's assertion (on p.82 of The Forgotten Revolution) that "Gilles Ménage ... changed a passage in Plutarch" both misleading and, in my opinion, somewhat disingenuous. What Ménage did was propose emendations to the clearly erroneous surviving manuscripts of Plutarch's work. He no more "changed a passage in Plutarch" than Silvio Medaglia did when he proposed alternative emendations with the specific aim of producing a reading of the manuscripts that would be compatible with Russo's views.

The Greek text of the passage under discussion, from the Loeb Classical Library edition of On the apparent face in the orb of the moon, edited and translated by Harold Cherniss, reads as follows:

καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος γελάσας “μόνον” εἶπεν“ ὦ τάν, μὴ κρίσιν ἡμῖν ἀσεβείας ἐπαγγείλῃς, ὥσπερ Ἀρίσταρχον ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθης τὸν Σάμιον ἀσεβείας προσκαλεῖσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι τὰ φαινόμενα σῴζειν νὴρ ἐπειρᾶτο μένειν τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑποτιθέμενος ἐξελίττεσθαι δὲ κατὰ λοξοῦ κύκλου τὴν γῆν ἅμα καὶ περὶ τὸν αὑτῆς ἄξονα δινουμένην.

The highlighted text here indicates emendations of the primary manuscripts, those highlighted in pink being insertions, and those highlighted in pale blue being substitutions. Cherniss gives the following translation into English:

Thereupon Lucius laughed and said : "Oh, sir, just don't bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save (the) phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis."

Without the emendations accepted by Cherniss, the English translation would be something like the following:

Thereupon Lucius laughed and said : "Oh, sir, just don't bring suit against us for impiety in the way that Aristarchus thought that the Greeks ought to challenge Cleanthes the Samian for impiety on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because, as a mere man [rather than a god] he sought to save phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis.

The emendations rejected by Russo are the first two: the replacement of the manuscripts' nominative form, "Ἀρίσταρχος", of Aristarchus's name with its accusative, "Ἀρίσταρχον", and the replacement of the accusative form, "Κλεάνθη", of Cleanthes's name witn its nominative, "Κλεάνθης". However, these emendations are merely the simplest and most obvious way of modifying the text of the manuscripts to make it no longer falsely label Cleanthes as "Samian", nor appear to misattribute the theory of heliocentrism to him. Also, contrary to Russo's assertion (again on p.82 of The Forgotten Revolution) that this reading of Plutarch's text "originated" with Gilles Ménage, it had in fact already been adopted by Johannes Kepler in his Latin translation, made some time before 1629—around 35 years before the publication of the 1664 edition of Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in which Ménage reportedly proposed his emendations to the Greek.

The Greek text proposed by Medaglia as being consistent with Russo's theory is the following (with the same highlighting conventions as above used to indicate emendations of the primary manuscripts):

καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος γελάσας “μόνον” εἶπεν“ ὦ τάν, μὴ κρίσιν ἡμῖν ἀσεβείας ἐπαγγείλῃς, ὥσπερ Ἀρίσταρχος ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθη τοὺς Σάμιους ἀσεβείας προσκαλεῖσθαι εις τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι τὰ φαινόμενα σῴζειν νὴρ ἐπειρᾶτο μένειν τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑποτιθέμενος ἐξελίττεσθαι δὲ κατὰ λοξοῦ κύκλου τὴν γῆν ἅμα καὶ περὶ τὸν αὑτῆς ἄξονα δινουμένην.

The first, second and fourth of Medaglia's proposed emendations are those which have replaced the two traditional ones. Medaglia's translation into Italian is the following:

Lucio scoppiò a ridere e disse: 'Amico, evita soltanto di intimarci un accusa di empietà, nel modo in cui Aristarco credeva necessario che gli abitanti di Samo accusassero davanti ai Greci Cleante in quanto questo faceva muovere il focolare dell'universo [il sole]; il fatto è che quell'uomo [Aristarco] si sforzava di salvaguardare mere apparenze: supponeva che il cielo fosse immobile e che la terra si muovesse lungo un'orbita obliqua, ruotando anche contemporaneamente intorno al suo asse.'

My English translation of Medaglia's Italian is:

Lucius burst out laughing and said 'My friend, simply avoid imposing an accusation of impiety on us, in the way that Aristarchus believed necessary for the Samians to accuse Cleanthes in front of all the Greeks, inasmuch as the latter had the hearth of the universe [the Sun] moved; the fact is that that man [Aristarchus] made an effort to save mere appearances: he supposed that the heavens were motionless and that the Earth moved along an oblique orbit, and also simultaneously rotated on its axis.'
Medaglia gets around the problem that the most natural thing to take as the antecedent of "that man" ("ἁνὴρ") in his Greek text would be "the latter" who "had the hearth of the universe moved" (i.e. Cleanthes) by simply declaring that it must instead be taken to be Aristarchus.


David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A little Known fact of Heliocentrism is that the Sun is both Heaven and Hell; the center to your Being. 74.82.228.84 (talk) 00:29, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Heliocentrism is the theory of Kepler, not of Copernicus[edit]

This part of the introduction "It was not until the 16th century that a mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In the following century, Johannes Kepler introduced elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope" requires improvement. Copernicus did not introduce a "heliocentric" theory. It was Johannes Kepler who did it in 1609 (Astronomia Nova). Just look at the recent talk to the article "Nicolaus Copernicus". Ed Dellian, Berlin, Germany2003:D2:9724:2832:41CA:CAB5:87F9:858F (talk) 14:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that Kepler put the Sun at a focus point of those elliptical orbits, not at the center. Likewise with Newton. Roger (talk) 15:17, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is true. But, Kepler thought (falsely) that the sun would be at rest, and therefore it would be the "central" reference system of the revolutions, which revolutions, due to his presupposition (hypotheseis), turned out elliptical (as it must be, according to geometric considerations concerning the relations between circle and ellipse, shown by Newton: Principia, Book I, Sect. II and III). Ed Dellian2003:D2:9724:2892:E5CD:6765:8FD3:31FB (talk) 06:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Calvin's opinion[edit]

See https://biologos.org/articles/john-calvin-on-nicolaus-copernicus-and-heliocentrism/ . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.193.36 (talk) 14:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to add a section on Calvin, add a section, with links, and sources. one inlinked sentence gives no contect for reader, so is of no help. Such as which Calvin do you mean? as John Calvin was born in 1509, and would have only been 6 years old in 1515, his thoughts clearly have no relevance in a "before 1515" section IdreamofJeanie (talk) 15:03, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Heliocentrism was a model of the Universe, not of the "Solar System"[edit]

In the first phrase, I reverted, for the second time, "Solar System" to "Universe". I detail here, open for the discussion, what I hinted in the two previous changes' comments.

What contemplated Heliocentrism is immediately evident to anyone who looks at the initial image on the page. It contains the Sun, the planets, the zodiac, and the stars' sphere ("sphera stellarum"). The model contains everything, all the known Universe.

The Solar System is a recent concept. The Sun and the planets (what we know today as the “Solar System”) were not a separated entity in the heliocentric models. In Heliocentrism, the Sun was the center of everything (as implied by the name), similarly to Geocentrism, which put the Earth at the center.

The introductory section is a short overview of Heliocentrism's history. Talking about "Universe" and not "Solar System" in the first phrase makes the section consistent. The summary starts with the Heliocentrism's origin as a model of the Universe in ancient astronomy, while the final sentence ("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 at any center of the Universe") marks the end of Heliocentrism as a model of the Universe. At the same time, the final sentence introduces the Solar System as a new entity with its own identity, separated from the rest of the Universe.

--Bg69 (talk) 20:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that's right. It would be interesting if anyone found where Copernicus or another early advocate of heliocentrism, said that the Sun was orbiting around the Milky Way, or that other stars has planetary systems, or anything like that. I think they just said the Sun was the center, or near the center, of everything. Maybe it should say that heliocentrism sometimes means near the center of the universe. Roger (talk) 17:29, 6 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Per Archimedes as quoted in the article, Aristarchus explicitly put the Sun at the center of the Universe. "His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun..." --Noren (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I put a note to clarify between Universe and Solar system heliocentrism.207.96.32.81 (talk) 00:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The note adds only confusion. The “Solar system heliocentrism” is an obviousness, a Lapalissade, and elaborating on the center of mass or anything else about the Solar System in the context of Heliocentrism is a misleading sophistication.
In other words, talking of a “heliocentric solar system” is tautological, as talking about a “geocentric solar system” is contradictory. Nobody, in fact, has ever proposed this last model.
In the history of astronomy, the Solar System was intrinsically conceived as “heliocentric.” Its name attests to that, and, again, there is no need to attribute to the Solar System the adjective “heliocentric” since its name implies it. Heliocentrism died at the very moment when the Solar System was understood to be a separate entity of the Universe. In the last proposition at the beginning of this article, the Solar System is introduced according to that historical fact:
“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 at any center of the Universe.”
For these reasons, the note should be deleted. Bg69 (talk) 09:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't Heraclides say that earth orbits the sun?[edit]

This article says that Aristarchus was the first to propose heliocentrism. But at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclides_Ponticus#Work it says "Simplicius says that Heraclides proposed that the irregular movements of the planets can be explained if the Earth moves while the Sun stays still". Why isn't Heraclides considered to have proposed heliocentrism (he was in the same time and it's hard to know who was first)? George Albert Lee (talk) 17:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]