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224 bytes removed ,  01:43, April 1, 2007
→‎Copernican Revolution: rm off-topic reference to Kepler; Kepler was not a "previous astronomer anyway"
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Copernicus's book title used the word "revolution" in the sense of planets revolving around the Sun, not in the sense of an intellectual revolt. In the late 20th century, the term Copernican Revolution has come to mean the prototypical [[paradigm shift]], where scientists suddenly became enlightened by rejecting the prejudices of their predecessors.
 
Copernicus's book title used the word "revolution" in the sense of planets revolving around the Sun, not in the sense of an intellectual revolt. In the late 20th century, the term Copernican Revolution has come to mean the prototypical [[paradigm shift]], where scientists suddenly became enlightened by rejecting the prejudices of their predecessors.
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In fact the Copernican theory was no more accurate than the Ptolemaic model. It had no compelling physical arguments for its superiority, and it proposed no experiments for testing its novel features. Some people claim that it was aesthetically superior because it eliminated epicycles, but it actually had about the same number of epicycles as the Ptolemaic model.  Some of the ancient Greek arguments for and against [[heliocentrism]] remained unresolved for some time, but have been solved by modern science, and by the efforts of previous astronomers such as [[Johannes Kepler]] (he showed that planetary orbits were elliptical and not circular, as presented in Copernicus's original model). <ref>Ancient greeks objected to Aristarchus's heliocentrim because
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In fact the Copernican theory was no more accurate than the Ptolemaic model. It had no compelling physical arguments for its superiority, and it proposed no experiments for testing its novel features. Some people claim that it was aesthetically superior because it eliminated epicycles, but it actually had about the same number of epicycles as the Ptolemaic model.  Many of the ancient Greek arguments for and against [[heliocentrism]] remained unresolved for some time. <ref>Ancient greeks objected to Aristarchus's heliocentrim because (1) we don't feel the Earth's motion, (2) unattached objects don't fly off, and (3) no annual stellar parallax. [http://physics.gmu.edu/~jevans/astr103/CourseNotes/history_greekGeocentricHeliocentric.html] Stellar parallax was not measured until 1838.</ref>
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(1) we don't feel the Earth's motion, (2) unattached objects don't fly off, and (3) no annual stellar parallax. [http://physics.gmu.edu/~jevans/astr103/CourseNotes/history_greekGeocentricHeliocentric.html] Stellar parallax was not measured until 1838.</ref>
      
== Copernican Principle ==  
 
== Copernican Principle ==