Talk:Heliocentrism

message: A passage in the article dealing with Plutarch's supposed assertion that the stoic philosopher Cleanthes thought Aristarchus should have been charged with impiety  with an alternative, stating categorically that this is a "common misconception" and that Plutarch's assertion was instead that Aristarchus had (jokingly) suggested that Cleanthes should have been charged with impiety.  The two sources  cited for this assertion are Lucio Russo's book The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn, and a scholarly paper, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, by Russo and a scholar of classics, Silvio Medaglia.
There are all sorts of problems with this:
* That heliocentrism was held to be "sacrilegious" by any contemporaries of Aristarchus other than Cleanthes is not a view that either of the cited sources—nor any other reliable source that I know of—asserts as being held by anyone, let alone that it is "common", as asserted in the amendment to the article under discussion.  Athough Russo does write (on p.82 of The Forgotten Revolution) "The common idea is that Aristarchus was too far ahead of his time to have had a lasting influence on the course of science, and support is generally found for it in the accusation of impiety supposedly leveled at him because of his heliocentrism", this is very far from being the same thing as, or even implying that, there exists a common misconception that any more than a single contemporary of Aristarchus objected to heliocentrism on religious grounds.
* In adopting the views of a single scholar, Russo, against the almost universal consensus of other scholars, this change quite obviously violates Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view.  I say "single scholar" here because I see no evidence in the Russo-Medaglia article that Medaglia shares Russo's apparent view that the matter has been conclusively settled in his favour.  Medaglia's role was confined to suggesting how the two primary manuscripts of Plutarch's text could be emended to produce a reading compatible with Russo's views.   Unlike Russo, however, he does not imply that this must be the correct reading of the text, merely that it is a plausible alternative to the traditional one.
:In fact, a literal reading of the unemended primary manuscripts turns out to be obviously untenable, because it would seem to be attributing the proposal of heliocentrism to "Cleanthes the Samian" in contradiction to the well attested facts that Cleanthes was not Samian, but from Assos, and it was Aristarchus the Samian, not Cleanthes, who was responsible for proposing the idea of heliocentrism.  To obtain a reading of the manuscripts consistent with Russo's thesis, Medaglia had to replace the two traditional emendations which are the targets of Russo's criticisms with three others, every one of which is more substantial than the two discarded single-letter emendations of the traditional interpretation. Supporters of the traditional interpretation would therefore appear to have very good grounds for regarding Russo's proposed interpretation as being somewhat less plausible than their own.  For anyone interested in the details, I have included them in the collapsed box below.
I shall therefore be replacing the text of this edit with something more consistent with Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view.  I do agree, however, that the passage of the article which was replaced by this edit is unsatisfactory, and I have no intention of simply reverting back to it.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: A little Known fact of Heliocentrism is that the Sun is both Heaven and Hell; the center to your Being. 74.82.228.84 (talk) 00:29, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plutarch's passage on Aristarchus's heliocentrism 

message: This part of the introduction "It was not until the 16th century that a mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In the following century, Johannes Kepler introduced elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope" requires improvement. Copernicus did not introduce a "heliocentric" theory. It was Johannes Kepler who did it in 1609 (Astronomia Nova). Just look at the recent talk to the article "Nicolaus Copernicus". Ed Dellian, Berlin, Germany2003:D2:9724:2832:41CA:CAB5:87F9:858F (talk) 14:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that Kepler put the Sun at a focus point of those elliptical orbits, not at the center. Likewise with Newton. Roger (talk) 15:17, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is true. But, Kepler thought (falsely) that the sun would be at rest, and therefore it would be the "central" reference system of the revolutions, which revolutions, due to his presupposition (hypotheseis), turned out elliptical (as it must be, according to geometric considerations concerning the relations between circle and ellipse, shown by Newton: Principia, Book I, Sect. II and III). Ed Dellian2003:D2:9724:2892:E5CD:6765:8FD3:31FB (talk) 06:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heliocentrism is the theory of Kepler, not of Copernicus 

message: See https://biologos.org/articles/john-calvin-on-nicolaus-copernicus-and-heliocentrism/   .  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.193.36 (talk) 14:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: If you wish to add a section on Calvin, add a section, with links, and sources. one inlinked sentence gives no contect for reader, so is of no help. Such as which Calvin do you mean? as John Calvin was born in 1509, and would have only been 6 years old in 1515, his thoughts clearly have no relevance in a "before 1515" section IdreamofJeanie (talk) 15:03, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calvin's opinion 

message: This article says that Aristarchus was the first to propose heliocentrism. But at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclides_Ponticus#Work it says "Simplicius says that Heraclides proposed that the irregular movements of the planets can be explained if the Earth moves while the Sun stays still". Why isn't Heraclides considered to have proposed heliocentrism (he was in the same time and it's hard to know who was first)? George Albert Lee (talk) 17:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Didn't Heraclides say that earth orbits the sun?