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During the first decade of the 16th century when Copernicus was still forming his astronomical hypotheses, he read the works of many Greek authors and found that heliocentric ideas had already been propounded. He mentions in his work some of those Greek mathematician-astronomers who held distinctly different views of the celestial system from that of Aristotle and Ptolemy, although not necessarily heliocentric, such as Philolaus, Hicetus, Ecphantus, and Heraclides ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres", Book One). Indeed, the geocentric theories were not the only systems known to the Greeks, nor even at times the most accepted.
Between the sixth and fourth century B.C., there was a philosophical society known as the Pythagorean society in Greece. Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582-500 B.C.), founder of the society, traveled extensively in his youth by way of the sea to the East as well as to Egypt, and not only accumulated a wealth of knowledge from different corners of the Earth but also obtained a unique perspective that was possible only for the celestial navigator-businessmen of the time, i.e., the sphericity of the Earth.
Astronomy and mathematics, particularly trigonometry, originated to a great measure among those celestial navigator-businessmen of antiquity whose survival almost entirely depended upon knowing the relative positions and movements of the celestial bodies. Furthermore, while traveling across the sea by observing the movements of the celestial spheres, it became revealingly clear to them that the Earth was a spherical entity. (Around 200 B.C., three hundred years after Pythagoras, Phoenician navigator-businessmen circumnavigated the Earth for the first time in recorded history and proved that the Earth was indeed spherical, preceding Magellan by more than 1700 years.)
Pythagoras returned to Greece with the perspective and the knowledge of the navigator-businessmen, along with other knowledge which he acquired in the far corners of the world and founded at Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, an academy that was devoted to a life of mathematical speculation and philosophical contemplation. It is clearly evidenced that the Pythagorean scientists were the first recorded humans in history to conceive of the Earth, the celestial bodies, and even the universe as a whole, as spherical entities.
Around 410 B.C., the Pythagorean mathematician Philolaus of Tarentum (c. 480-400 B.C.) conceived of the Earth as a spherical body in motion around a central cosmic fire. He also postulated that the stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the five known planets -- Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- were spherical bodies. His Sun was not at the center; as the Earth revolved around the central fire once a day and the Moon once a month, the Sun moved around the same cosmic fire once a year. The other planets took even longer periods to orbit around the fire, while the sphere of the fixed stars was stationary.
Around 350 B.C., a latter-day Pythagorean, Heraclides of Pontus (c. 373 B.C.), conceived of the Earth sphere as spinning west to east, adopting the earlier view of two Pythagoreans, Hicetus and Ecphantus, in order to explain the apparent diurnal rotation of the celestial system. He also suggested that Mercury and Venus moved in circular orbits around the Sun, accounting for the changes in their apparent brightness. He further speculated that the universe was infinite, each star being a world in itself, composed of an earth and other planets. However, Heraclides' universe, like that of Hicetus and Ecphantus, was as yet geocentric and his Earth spun at the center of the fixed stars.
Around 250 B.C., the greatest astronomer of the Alexandrian period, Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-230 B.C.), postulated that the Earth rotated on its axis daily, and revolved around the Sun in a circular orbit once a year, the Sun and the fixed stars being stationary, the planets moving in circular orbits with the Sun at the center, and the Moon revolving around the Earth. Thus, in Aristarchus the heliocentric conception of the universe had reached its near-complete formulation. No one until Copernicus more than 1750 years later described the celestial system as well and accurately as Aristarchus had done in his now lost treatise. (According to Plutarch, the head of the Stoic school of philosophy, Cleanthes, demanded that Aristarchus ought to have been indicted for impiety. Aristarchus was indeed almost killed for his revolutionary thoughts.)
Based upon these historical accounts, it is clear that a special chain of the Greek mathematician-astronomer-cosmologist-philosophers consisting primarily of Philolaus, Heraclides, and Aristarchus had successively evolved a concept of the universe which was in fair agreement with that of Copernicus over 1750 years later. Why is it then that the heliocentric concept of the universe with its spinning Earth did not evolve further after Aristarchus? Why is it that genuine knowledge of the celestial world had to be buried in the obscurity of the terrestrial realm? Why is it that a theory so luminous had to remain in darkness and wait for centuries to be rediscovered?
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