I’am replying to your post, mainly to the part where I bolded.
Galileo? The Church tried to ban all of Galileo’s scientific work about the Earth’s movement (which later, was proved to be right) because the Church thought the Earth was the centre of the universe and obviously, later was proved wrong. Galileo was then under house arrest and could not produce any of his works (is it because the Church felt threatened that Galieo’s works might influence some members of the Church on how they think? or did the Church threatened Galileo, which the Church did). All of this was because Galileo depicted the idea that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still at the centre (and he was right at the end).
Galileo was also thinking that the sun was the center of the universe too. He was wrong about
that part though. And that’s a
BIG mistake in case anyone’s paying attention.
Actually, I think there’s a few more dynamics going on here than you are aware.
When Galileo presented his heliocentric theory, he brought forth a great insight into the nature of our solar system. He presented a clear theory that could be easilly tested against the pattern of the planet’s motions. When it was first presented, many within the church initally rejected it in favor of their understanding of the Scriptures.
Having said this, however, although Galileo was initially correct in determining that the sun was indeed the center of the solar system, he was ultimately incorrect in asserting that the sun was the center of all the stars and indeed the entire universe – and it took some time to test his theory to the point that this distinction could be clearly discerned.
As Thomas Knierim recalled, in 1514 Copernicus put forward his alternative model, referred to as the heliocentric system – in which the sun was believed to be at the center of the universe (and that all planets, including earth, revolved around it). One of Copernicus’ great insights was his observation that the further apart a planet is from the sun, the longer it takes to complete a revolution. He also had the great insight that the phenomenological movement of the sun was most likely caused by the earth rotating around its north-to-south axis.
Copernicus carefully noted that these supposed complex and convoluted planetary motions still had one main weakness: they did not account for the observed backward motion of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – nor did they account for the the fact that Mercury and Venus never moved more than a certain distance from the sun. With these great insights, Copernicus effectively eliminated the necessity of Ptolemy’s obscure epicycles – something in whch Ptolemy actually beleived reflected the
real motion of the planets. In other words, Ptolemy really believed that these planets travelled in
wild and twisted almost pretzel-like revolutions around the earth.
Having said this, as noted above, even with this great insight there were still some psuedo-scientific astrological inspirations clinging to Copernicus’ theory. For one, as noted above, he believed the sun was the center of the entire universe – the concept of a solar system has not been fully developed yet.
Likewise, as David Plant notes, Copernicus was not particularly interested in observing the sky but he was devoted to Pythagorean mathematics. This is to say, Copernicus believed that the harmony of the universe revealed itself through the perfect geometry of planetary orbits.
And history is quite certain that Galileo followed in the footsteps of Copernicus too.
