The Real History Of Gravity
Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 01:35
in Mathematics & Economics
Ironically, it was Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BC) who lived after Aristotle, who was the first person in recorded history to come up with the idea of a heliocentric system, centuries before the Polish canon, physician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) wrote and posthumously published his seminal treatise, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). The reason why the Ptolemaic (geocentric) view of the cosmos, with its epicycles, lasted so long is because it did work! Today, an armillary sphere or an astrolabe (a two-dimensional version of an armillary sphere) both based on the Ptolemaic system, work just as well now as they did then. read more