My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the
Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.
Even in natural science he was not altogether abreast of his time--he refused to accept Harvey's discovery of the manner of the circulation of the blood and the
Copernican system of astronomy.
The Doomsday Calculation by William Poundstone uses the
Copernican formula developed by Princeton University astrophysicist John Richard Gott III to predict the end of the human race.
1342 Fictional character of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, returns home to Bag End, Shire Reckoning 1535 Cardinal John Fisher is beheaded on Tower Hill, London, for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of Church of England 1611 Henry Hudson set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers on ship Discovery and never seen again 1633 Galileo Galilei forced to recant his
Copernican views that the Earth orbits the Sun by the Pope (Vatican only admits it was wrong on October 31, 1992) 1679 Battle at Bothwell Bridge.
The second, through a close reading of his oeuvre in its multiple contexts of production and reception, he develops a transhistorical theoretical account of cinema's
Copernican vocation, or the twinned capacities for potentially revolutionary scientific discovery and anthropocentric displacement.
Which Italian astronomer is said to have muttered "Eppur si muove" after recanting his belief in the
Copernican system?
But then there was Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who, nineteen years after the appearance of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, published his massive New Almagest [1651 ], in which he weighed both scientific ("philosophical") and religious arguments for and against
Copernican heliocentrism.
Riccioli is often portrayed as just this side of foolish: swayed by religion, he denied the rationality of
Copernican heliocentrism and promoted instead Tycho's hybrid geocentrism (not Ptolemy's strict geocentrism, but a system in which the Sun and Moon orbit the Earth while the planets circle the Sun).
Synopsis: "Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo" is an important account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the
Copernican system.
Many learned astronomers at that time, who refused the
Copernican solution because of the lack of consequences of the terrestrial movement on physical phenomena, adopted geo-heliocentricism as a suitable system.
But between 1609 and 1613 Galileo's telescopic discoveries convinced him of the merit of the
Copernican view.