: What problem in Geocentrism does Heliocentrism solve ?

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Hello, was Heliocentrism adopted because it’s more “logical” or because it solves a problem?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The problem it solves is making the mathematics simpler.

Let’s say you’re a medieval astrologer. Or a mathematician employed by one. If you want to track the position of Jupiter, say, so you can predict whether a war will be successful, then:

* under the heliocentric model, the path follows (roughly) a circle. So does earth’s. And the earth spins, so there’s another circle. It’s easy enough to calculate with circles.
* under the geocentric model, these three circles get combined into one very complicated path. Kind of a circle, but modified by another circle, and then modified by yet another circle. If you had modern algebraic notation, the formula for the path would be very messy, but you don’t have modern algebraic notation; the path is described as a bunch of words, and the geometry is absolutely horribly messy and complicated.

A few centuries later, the maths is simpler still. Just one extremely simple formula, Newton’s gravitational formula, plus some fancy techniques from advanced (for the time) calculus, and every planet’s path can be tracked. But you’re no longer using a heliocentric model – the “centre” is a point *very close* to the centre of the sun, but slightly shifted towards Jupiter.

It would be *possible* to do the calculations from a geocentric perspective, [or any other perspective](https://xkcd.com/123/), but again, the maths is simplest if we use a not-quite-but-almost heliocentric model

When we arrive in the 20th and 21st centuries, we’ve learned that in a very real sense, every physical frame (geocentric, heliocentric, galacto-centric, the-bus–I-ju8st-missed-centric) is equally valid. However, some perspectives make the maths easier than others, and there are perspectives that make the maths ridiculously complicated. Also our gut feeling is still that simpler maths = *really* real.

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