HPS211H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Deferent And Epicycle, Inverse-Square Law, Natural Philosophy
9 Mar 2016
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Events of 16th and 17th c. were looked back on as a reflowering of the human intellect . Astronomy was a popular topic, but it was only held to deal woth accident and appearances, not to be taken for something that was physically accurate, their models were not supposed to be, or expected to be realistic. Aristotle, earth lay at the exact centre, and the planets were spheres, the moon was the end of the changeable, corruptible part, and the rest was the unchanging heavens above. Ptolemy, refined aristotle, adding in epicycles (planets orbited a fixed point that orbited the earth) and equants. Copernicus, argued that things could be simpler by saying the sun was at the center. Kepler, student. /partner of brahe"s distance in which the planets travelled around the sun was determined by platonic solids and the path they travelled was an ellipses. The heliocentric position was becoming more widely accepted.
