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Abstract
It is well known that heliocentrism was proposed in ancient times, at least by Aristarchus of Samos. Given that ancient astronomers were perfectly capable of understanding the great advantages of heliocentrism over geocentrism—i.e., to offer a non-ad hoc explanation of the retrograde motion of the planets and to order unequivocally all the planets while even allowing one to know their relative distances—it seems difficult to explain why heliocentrism did not triumph over geocentrism or even compete significantly with it before Copernicus. Usually, scholars refer to explanations of sociological character. In this paper, I offer a different explanation: that the pre-Copernican heliocentrism was essentially different from the Copernican heliocentrism, in such a way that the adduced advantages of heliocentrism can only be attributed to Copernican heliocentrism, but not to pre-Copernican heliocentrism proposals.
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This is true for Aristarchus even if he lived before the development of the epicycle and deferent model, for these advantages arise even if we compare heliocentrism with Eudoxus’s system.
There are, nevertheless, some scholars who appeal to other internal reasons. Stahl (Stahl1945: 328), for example, says that in ancient times Aristarchus’s heliocentrism was not accepted precisely for the same reason that made Tycho Brahe to offer his geo-heliocentrism: there was no observation of the annual parallax. Dreyer (1953: 148) adds that “the principal reason why the heliocentric idea fell perfectly flat, was the rapid rise of practical astronomy.” Heliocentrism would be unable to account for the inequalities without complicating the original simplicity of the model. Of course, one must say against Dreyer that exactly the same situation happened with the geocentric model: it had to be complicated with eccentrics and equant points in order to be able to account for the anomalies.
This does not imply that a particular lunar theory proposed in the context of a heliocentric model could not play an important role. Actually, Copernicus’s most important astronomical contribution was his lunar model, which superseded that of Ptolemy’s. Cfr. Swerdlow and Neugebauer (1984, I: 193–283).
“Usually” because it is possible to assume at the same time the rotation of the Earth and the sphere of fixed stars. Ptolemy considered this possibility inAlmagest, I,7 (Toomer1998: 44–45). Technically, hypothesis 1 implies that the sphere of the fixed stars remain at rest, but it doesn’t imply that its center is the Sun. Probably, one should refer also to hypothesis 2 in order to imply that the Sun is the center of the sphere.
The situation is actually somewhat more complex. See Carman (2010).
To express the exact sense in which heliocentrism explained the retrograde motion of the planets better than geocentrism is not an easy task. It is not as simple as to assert, like Lakatos (1978: 185), that “the assumption that inferior planets have a shorter period while superior planets have a longer period than that of the Earth” is enough to arrive at the inference that “[p]lanets have stations and retrogressions.” See Swerdlow (1984).
Simplicius, onDe Caelo, ii.7 (289b 1); Heiberg, 1984, pp. 441.31–445.5; ii. 14 (297 a 2), Heiberg (1894), pp. 541.27–542.2; c.13, 293b, Heiberg (1894), pp. 519.9–519-11;Schol. In Arist. (Brandis1836: 505 b, 46–47); Proclus,In Tim. 281 E (Festugière1968). All the testimonies are translated by Heath (1913: 254–255).
The interpretation of a Simplicius’s text from theCommentary on Aristotle’s Physics (Evans and Berggren2006: 250–252; Todd and Bowen2009: 158–164) produced a significant discussion in the second half of nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth (Böckh1852: 135–141; Bergk1883: 148–152; Martin1883; Tannery1899; Heath1913: 249–256; Schiaparelli1926: 176–195). Nevertheless, following Tannery (1899, pp. 305–311), almost all scholars today agree that a later copyist interpolated the name of Heraclides in the text and, therefore, it has no value as a testimony (Evans and Berggren2006, note 18: 254). Some other scholars, such as Duhem (1915, iii, 44–162), Dicks (1970, 136–137, 218–219) and Gottschalk (1980, 69–82), based mainly on Calcidius’s commentary to Plato’sTimaeus 38D (translated in Eastwood1992: 239–240), considered whether one could attribute to Heraclides some sort of semi-Tychonic hypothesis according to which Venus and Mercury revolved around the Sun, while the Sun, the Moon and the outer planets orbited the Earth (hypothesis 3a, without hypothesis 2). The semi-Tychonic hypothesis, i.e., hypothesis 3a, was certainly known in ancient times, but as Neugebauer (1975, p. 694), Eastwood (1992) and Keyser (2009) show, the attribution to Heraclides was based on a misinterpretation of Calcidius’s text.
It is impossible to enumerate and discuss all the pre-Copernican authors who mentioned hypothesis 1. Most of them are presented in McColley (1937). None of these authors ever held hypothesis 2 or 3.
The text has been discussed because of a supposed problem in one of its clauses, namely that the clause “lying in the middle of the orbit” should be grammatically attributed to the circle and not to the Sun, as Erhardt and Erhardt (1942: 579) propose because it is closer tocircle than tosun. Neugebauer (1942, 6) proposes to add\({\uptau }\tilde{\upomega }{\upnu }\; {\uppi }{\uplambda }{\upalpha }{\upnu }\hbox {o}{\upmu }{\acute{\upvarepsilon }}{\upnu }{\upomega }{\upnu }\) (“of the planets”) to reconcile syntax and meaning: “the earth moves around the sun through the circumference of a circle which lies in the midst of the course [of the planets].” Neugebauer’s addition, of course, assumes rather than proves that Aristarchus affirmed hypothesis 3. I do not see any problem with the attribution of the clause to the Sun. I follow, therefore, Heath’s translation. For another problem with the text, see Boter (2007).
Even if some of his followers, like Somesv́ara, tried to reinterpret the text to make it geostatic, cfr. Shukla (1976: 120).
I am not assuming Duhem’s instrumentalist reading of Greek astronomy (see Duhem1908) which was definitively discredited by Lloyd (1978). Duhem’s mistake was to assume that all Greek astronomy is reduced to the mathematical tradition. It is undeniable, however, that alongside the physical tradition, the mathematical tradition also existed.
Censorinus (de Die natali, XVIII. 11; Hultsch1867) attributed a length of the Great Year to Aristarchus. Great Years usually were cycles at which all the celestial bodies, Sun, Moon and the five planets, return to the same position. So, this attribution could imply that Aristarchus developed some planetary theory or, at least, a theory of the cycles of the planets. Tannery (1888, 93–94), however, shows that the value Aristarchus proposed only implies a return of the Sun and Moon, but not of the planets (see also Heath1913: 314–316 and Huxley1964). So, again, this would be an argument for holding that Aristarchus did not make any contribution to planetary theory.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alexander Jones, Dennis Duke, Daniel Blanco, Ignacio Silva, Anibal Szapiro, Diego Pelegrin, Gustavo Zelioli and Gonzalo Recio for discussing previous versions of this paper.
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Centro de Estudios de Filosofía e Historia de la Ciencia (CEFHIC), Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (UNQ), Roque Sáenz Peña 352, B1876BXD, Bernal, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Christián C. Carman
CONICET, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Godoy Cruz, 2290, 1425FQB CABA, Argentina
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Carman, C.C. The first Copernican was Copernicus: the difference between Pre-Copernican and Copernican heliocentrism.Arch. Hist. Exact Sci.72, 1–20 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-017-0198-3
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