By completely ignoring physics until Galileo, you paint a deceptive picture.
In Aristotle’s physics, each god inspired a different but equally regular and circular motion in the heavens.
Copernicus objected to the equant because it was not a regular circular motion. It just modified another circle, which seems like an obvious contradiction. If we treat it as a motion added to the system, it would be something like motion along a (rotating) radius. The planet would go back and forth in a straight line that happens to produce a modified circle. Now, we could imagine that all of these circles are conceptual rather than being actual motions added together. We could say that the deities involved compel the actual motion of the planet in its (single) crystal sphere to act as if influenced by other, imaginary circles. But that would seem to require a more active role for the deities, leading to awkward questions. That seems like the major reason why people called Copernicus more coherent and elegant.
Kepler—as you point out and then ignore—showed that all previous sytems gave false predictions, and you could get true ones (according to the observations of the time) by using ellipses. That was the end of the Church’s Artistotelian physics. At that point, their model of the heavens and physics in general was provably wrong.
Notice what Tycho Brahe’s system doesn’t have? Guess what was also missing from the chief attempt to defend Brahe against Galileo. Abandoning Aristotle’s physics of perfect circles would have removed most of the actual reason for thinking the heavens and the Earth followed different rules to begin with.
By completely ignoring physics until Galileo, you paint a deceptive picture.
In Aristotle’s physics, each god inspired a different but equally regular and circular motion in the heavens.
Copernicus objected to the equant because it was not a regular circular motion. It just modified another circle, which seems like an obvious contradiction. If we treat it as a motion added to the system, it would be something like motion along a (rotating) radius. The planet would go back and forth in a straight line that happens to produce a modified circle. Now, we could imagine that all of these circles are conceptual rather than being actual motions added together. We could say that the deities involved compel the actual motion of the planet in its (single) crystal sphere to act as if influenced by other, imaginary circles. But that would seem to require a more active role for the deities, leading to awkward questions. That seems like the major reason why people called Copernicus more coherent and elegant.
Kepler—as you point out and then ignore—showed that all previous sytems gave false predictions, and you could get true ones (according to the observations of the time) by using ellipses. That was the end of the Church’s Artistotelian physics. At that point, their model of the heavens and physics in general was provably wrong.
Notice what Tycho Brahe’s system doesn’t have? Guess what was also missing from the chief attempt to defend Brahe against Galileo. Abandoning Aristotle’s physics of perfect circles would have removed most of the actual reason for thinking the heavens and the Earth followed different rules to begin with.