I feel like you may have gone too far in the other direction then, since what I got out of this was definitely “there wasn’t any evidence for heliocentrism and people just liked it better for philosophical reasons”. As far as I know, the standard science education explanation for heliocentrism involves newtonian physics, observations that people weren’t able to at this time (like you said, Tycho tried), and hindsight.
Can you expand on what the evidence that should have convinced people was? I feel like this article is a puzzle that’s missing key information.
They had arguments about physics that the OP weirdly downplays. Like I said below: Copernicus disliked the equant because it contradicted the most straightforward reading of Ptolemy’s own physics; Kepler unambiguously disproved scholastic physics. Also, Galileo discovered Galilean relativity. He definitely made enough observations to show this last idea had something to it, unlike the scholastic explanation of heavenly bodies.
Galileo’s observations indicating that the earth might not uniquely different from other planets, and the mathematical aesthetic of heliocentrism that Benquo points to above.
But as mentioned in the post, I’m mostly trying to point to a confusion and ask questions, not provide answers. There have been many great comments, and I think the fact that you perceived the post that way is improtant. I might rewrite it to reflect those things.
I feel like you may have gone too far in the other direction then, since what I got out of this was definitely “there wasn’t any evidence for heliocentrism and people just liked it better for philosophical reasons”. As far as I know, the standard science education explanation for heliocentrism involves newtonian physics, observations that people weren’t able to at this time (like you said, Tycho tried), and hindsight.
Can you expand on what the evidence that should have convinced people was? I feel like this article is a puzzle that’s missing key information.
+1
They had arguments about physics that the OP weirdly downplays. Like I said below: Copernicus disliked the equant because it contradicted the most straightforward reading of Ptolemy’s own physics; Kepler unambiguously disproved scholastic physics. Also, Galileo discovered Galilean relativity. He definitely made enough observations to show this last idea had something to it, unlike the scholastic explanation of heavenly bodies.
Galileo’s observations indicating that the earth might not uniquely different from other planets, and the mathematical aesthetic of heliocentrism that Benquo points to above.
But as mentioned in the post, I’m mostly trying to point to a confusion and ask questions, not provide answers. There have been many great comments, and I think the fact that you perceived the post that way is improtant. I might rewrite it to reflect those things.