For a long time western philosophy literally believed the stars to be encased in a single rigid sphere surrounding the Earth. In fact it was a really big deal in Aristotelic cosmology that the heavy, corruptible, changing things are low (and thus fall to the Earth) while the substance of the skies is higher and incorruptible, thus unchangeable. It’s why Copernican and Newtonian celestial mechanics were such a big deal. The mind-blowing part was that they suggested that everything everywhere followed the same laws, and the sky wasn’t special in any way.
That said, this is just the view that had become mainstream in medieval Europe. If you had asked Democritus back in ancient Greece, he’d likely have told you that the stars were just other suns like ours, with other planets like ours, moving through the void, because that was the atomist view.
For a long time western philosophy literally believed the stars to be encased in a single rigid sphere surrounding the Earth. In fact it was a really big deal in Aristotelic cosmology that the heavy, corruptible, changing things are low (and thus fall to the Earth) while the substance of the skies is higher and incorruptible, thus unchangeable. It’s why Copernican and Newtonian celestial mechanics were such a big deal. The mind-blowing part was that they suggested that everything everywhere followed the same laws, and the sky wasn’t special in any way.
That said, this is just the view that had become mainstream in medieval Europe. If you had asked Democritus back in ancient Greece, he’d likely have told you that the stars were just other suns like ours, with other planets like ours, moving through the void, because that was the atomist view.