Kasz216 I got a question for you regarding Galileo!

[TheLivingShadow]

Kasz216 said:

Well it largely has to do with knowing the different kinds of geocentrism.

The Copernican system was superior to the Ptolmec system.

However the Tychonic system was superior to the Copernican.

The phases of Venus didn't contradict it, and it didn't have the same "problems" that existed back then.

Those problems being lack of stellar parallax (because they were too far away to measure) and Galileo's wrongheaded focus on the tides.

Essentially every proof of the Copernican system also fit with the Tychonic and it didn't have any of the issues listed above.

It's only downside compared to the Copernican was it was much more complicated.  Essentially, how the Tychonian system worked was that the Sun and Moon orbited the Earth, and everything else orbited the Sun.

The Tychonic system was a tidy situation which seemed to solve everything... based on how it was observed at that time and seemed to have the most accurate planetary predictions.

Which is why it's a good lesson to know that no matter how tidy and perfect a system seems, and how much it seems to explain everything... you never know what it is we can't yet perceive.

Thanks for answering! I thought about this for a while and then answered myself basically the same thing; the argument of Venus phases holds against the Copernican system but not the Tychonic considering that Venus would still distance itself from Earth sometimes and then come closer as well!