Talk:Heliocentrism

Alleged Vedic heliocentrism
This nonsense was to the article with citations to one secondary and one tertiary source. Both citations are bogus, however, since there is nothing whatever on the cited pages of the sources given (nor anywhere else in them, as far as I can see) to support anything in the preceding paragraphs. In any case, the second citation is to Dick Teresi's Lost Discoveries, a far from reliable source. I will therefore be reverting this addition. David Wilson (talk · cont) 21:22, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In view of apparent disagreement about whether anything in this passage is supported by the cited sources, I should perhaps clarify these terse comments.
 * The source cited for the first paragraph was an article, Astronomy of the Śatapatha Brāmahṇa, by Subhash Kak in the Indian Journal of History of Science. I could find nothing in that article which in any way supports any part of the disputed material. Nothing relating to heliocentrism, nor any of the quotations given in that material, appear anywhere in Kak's article. The only mentions of Yājñavalkya in the article are on pages 27, 29 and 30 as the individual to whom "tradition assigns the authorship of the Śatapatha Brạmahṇa", and in connection with a 95-year luni-solar cycle (comprising 5 Metonic cycles) which Kak names after him.
 * The source cited for the second paragraph is p.130 of Dick Teresi's Lost Discoveries. But again, there's nothing whatever on that page of Teresi's book which supports anything in that second paragraph. It is true that Teresi does write:
 * "The Vedas recognized the sun as the source of light and warmth, the source of life, the center of creation, and the center of the spheres. This perception may have planted a seed, leading Indians thinkers to entertain the idea of heliocentricity long before some Greeks thought of it.",
 * on that page, which might be taken—mistakenly, in my view—as supporting the opening sentence of the disputed material, in its first paragraph. The big problem with Teresi's statement is that his only source for it is this web page, the relevant part of which in turn seems to have been lifted entirely, without attribution, from Chapter 5 of a book, India's Contribution to World Culture, self-published on the web by one Subheer Birodkar.  Since neither Teresi nor Birodkar are recognised authorities on any aspect of the history of science, I fail to see how anything they write on that subject can be taken as being from a reliable source.
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 05:42, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "Since the determination of the units of time is contingent upon the accuracy with which the celestial phenomenon can be observed, the needs to study problems of mathematics and astronomy arose simultaneously ... The sen was considered the central point, the director of the Earth, around which all the planets revolved. "May the resplendent sun that comes from the center of the expanse of water of the vast ocean, purify me...", and "The sun generates all the earthly directions one by one and controls the seasons. Only the sun is the Lord of our universe."
 * Quoted from Indian astronomy in the era of Copernicus. Nature, volume 251, 283-285, https://doi.org/10.1038/251283a0.
 * It may be that Mathur's statements have been disproved since publication in 1974, but it was good enough for Nature. We should consider seriously the idea that Heliocentrism was an element of Vedic astrology. See also the Vedange Jyotisa of Lagadha, found here:
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20110501084408/http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdataupload/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005abd_s1.pdf Xiang Yu 99 (talk) 04:39, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Plutarch's passage on Aristarchus's heliocentrism
A passage in the article dealing with Plutarch's supposed assertion that the stoic philosopher Cleanthes thought Aristarchus should have been charged with impiety with an alternative, stating categorically that this is a "common misconception" and that Plutarch's assertion was instead that Aristarchus had (jokingly) suggested that Cleanthes should have been charged with impiety. The two sources cited for this assertion are Lucio Russo's book The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn, and a scholarly paper, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, by Russo and a scholar of classics, Silvio Medaglia.

There are all sorts of problems with this:
 * That heliocentrism was held to be "sacrilegious" by any contemporaries of Aristarchus other than Cleanthes is not a view that either of the cited sources—nor any other reliable source that I know of—asserts as being held by anyone, let alone that it is "common", as asserted in the amendment to the article under discussion. Athough Russo does write (on p.82 of The Forgotten Revolution) "The common idea is that Aristarchus was too far ahead of his time to have had a lasting influence on the course of science, and support is generally found for it in the accusation of impiety supposedly leveled at him because of his heliocentrism", this is very far from being the same thing as, or even implying that, there exists a common misconception that any more than a single contemporary of Aristarchus objected to heliocentrism on religious grounds.
 * In adopting the views of a single scholar, Russo, against the almost universal consensus of other scholars, this change quite obviously violates Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. I say "single scholar" here because I see no evidence in the Russo-Medaglia article that Medaglia shares Russo's apparent view that the matter has been conclusively settled in his favour.  Medaglia's role was confined to suggesting how the two primary manuscripts of Plutarch's text could be emended to produce a reading compatible with Russo's views.   Unlike Russo, however, he does not imply that this must be the correct reading of the text, merely that it is a plausible alternative to the traditional one.
 * In fact, a literal reading of the unemended primary manuscripts turns out to be obviously untenable, because it would seem to be attributing the proposal of heliocentrism to "Cleanthes the Samian" in contradiction to the well attested facts that Cleanthes was not Samian, but from Assos, and it was Aristarchus the Samian, not Cleanthes, who was responsible for proposing the idea of heliocentrism. To obtain a reading of the manuscripts consistent with Russo's thesis, Medaglia had to replace the two traditional emendations which are the targets of Russo's criticisms with three others, every one of which is more substantial than the two discarded single-letter emendations of the traditional interpretation. Supporters of the traditional interpretation would therefore appear to have very good grounds for regarding Russo's proposed interpretation as being somewhat less plausible than their own.  For anyone interested in the details, I have included them in the collapsed box below.

I shall therefore be replacing the text of this edit with something more consistent with Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. I do agree, however, that the passage of the article which was replaced by this edit is unsatisfactory, and I have no intention of simply reverting back to it. David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


 * A little Known fact of Heliocentrism is that the Sun is both Heaven and Hell; the center to your Being. 74.82.228.84 (talk) 00:29, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Heliocentrism is the theory of Kepler, not of Copernicus
This part of the introduction "It was not until the 16th century that a mathematical model of a heliocentric system was presented, by the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, leading to the Copernican Revolution. In the following century, Johannes Kepler introduced elliptical orbits, and Galileo Galilei presented supporting observations made using a telescope" requires improvement. Copernicus did not introduce a "heliocentric" theory. It was Johannes Kepler who did it in 1609 (Astronomia Nova). Just look at the recent talk to the article "Nicolaus Copernicus". Ed Dellian, Berlin, Germany2003:D2:9724:2832:41CA:CAB5:87F9:858F (talk) 14:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I thought that Kepler put the Sun at a focus point of those elliptical orbits, not at the center. Likewise with Newton. Roger (talk) 15:17, 25 July 2018 (UTC)


 * This is true. But, Kepler thought (falsely) that the sun would be at rest, and therefore it would be the "central" reference system of the revolutions, which revolutions, due to his presupposition (hypotheseis), turned out elliptical (as it must be, according to geometric considerations concerning the relations between circle and ellipse, shown by Newton: Principia, Book I, Sect. II and III). Ed Dellian2003:D2:9724:2892:E5CD:6765:8FD3:31FB (talk) 06:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Calvin's opinion
See https://biologos.org/articles/john-calvin-on-nicolaus-copernicus-and-heliocentrism/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.193.36 (talk) 14:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * If you wish to add a section on Calvin, add a section, with links, and sources. one inlinked sentence gives no contect for reader, so is of no help. Such as which Calvin do you mean? as John Calvin was born in 1509, and would have only been 6 years old in 1515, his thoughts clearly have no relevance in a "before 1515" section IdreamofJeanie (talk) 15:03, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Heliocentrism was a model of the Universe, not of the "Solar System"
In the first phrase, I reverted, for the second time, "Solar System" to "Universe". I detail here, open for the discussion, what I hinted in the two previous changes' comments.

What contemplated Heliocentrism is immediately evident to anyone who looks at the initial image on the page. It contains the Sun, the planets, the zodiac, and the stars' sphere ("sphera stellarum"). The model contains everything, all the known Universe.

The Solar System is a recent concept. The Sun and the planets (what we know today as the “Solar System”) were not a separated entity in the heliocentric models. In Heliocentrism, the Sun was the center of everything (as implied by the name), similarly to Geocentrism, which put the Earth at the center.

The introductory section is a short overview of Heliocentrism's history. Talking about "Universe" and not "Solar System" in the first phrase makes the section consistent. The summary starts with the Heliocentrism's origin as a model of the Universe in ancient astronomy, while the final sentence ("With the observations of William Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, and other astronomers, it was realized that the Sun, while near the barycenter of the Solar System, was not at any center of the Universe") marks the end of Heliocentrism as a model of the Universe. At the same time, the final sentence introduces the Solar System as a new entity with its own identity, separated from the rest of the Universe.

--Bg69 (talk) 20:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think that's right. It would be interesting if anyone found where Copernicus or another early advocate of heliocentrism, said that the Sun was orbiting around the Milky Way, or that other stars has planetary systems, or anything like that. I think they just said the Sun was the center, or near the center, of everything. Maybe it should say that heliocentrism sometimes means near the center of the universe. Roger (talk) 17:29, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Per Archimedes as quoted in the article, Aristarchus explicitly put the Sun at the center of the Universe. "His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun..." --Noren (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I put a note to clarify between Universe and Solar system heliocentrism.207.96.32.81 (talk) 00:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The note adds only confusion. The “Solar system heliocentrism” is an obviousness, a Lapalissade, and elaborating on the center of mass or anything else about the Solar System in the context of Heliocentrism is a misleading sophistication.
 * In other words, talking of a “heliocentric solar system” is tautological, as talking about a “geocentric solar system” is contradictory. Nobody, in fact, has ever proposed this last model.
 * In the history of astronomy, the Solar System was intrinsically conceived as “heliocentric.” Its name attests to that, and, again, there is no need to attribute to the Solar System the adjective “heliocentric” since its name implies it. Heliocentrism died at the very moment when the Solar System was understood to be a separate entity of the Universe. In the last proposition at the beginning of this article, the Solar System is introduced according to that historical fact:
 * “With the observations of William Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, and other astronomers, it was realized that the Sun, while near the barycenter of the Solar System, was not at any center of the Universe.”
 * For these reasons, the note should be deleted. Bg69 (talk) 09:57, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I deleted the note mentioned above.
 * Continuing on the same topic, I made some further adjustments, changed the caption of the first image, and moved it to a better context. The caption before presented the image as: "A hypothetical geocentric model of the Solar System (upper panel) in comparison to the heliocentric model (lower panel)."
 * As I tried to explain before, a "geocentric model of the Solar System" is an absurdity that no one has ever proposed.
 * Another point here is to show the nonsense better: If one puts the Earth at the center, and the Sun, like the Moon and the other planets, orbits around the Earth, then the Sun occupies no particular position. So, why should one call all those celestial bodies "Solar System"? Shouldn't "Earth's System" be more appropriate as their name? Bg69 (talk) 09:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Didn't Heraclides say that earth orbits the sun?
This article says that Aristarchus was the first to propose heliocentrism. But at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclides_Ponticus#Work it says "Simplicius says that Heraclides proposed that the irregular movements of the planets can be explained if the Earth moves while the Sun stays still". Why isn't Heraclides considered to have proposed heliocentrism (he was in the same time and it's hard to know who was first)? George Albert Lee (talk) 17:58, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Vedic heliocentrism again?
can anyone explain about the alleged Vedic heliocentrism which was readded in the subsection of ancient India and the reference provided isn't reliable as the reference is based on the work Discovery that changed the world by a person named Rodney castleden who isn't even a historian nor a physicist nor his work isn't even an scientific journal. It was already removed back in 2018 but was been added again??.If the Vedas did talk about heliocentrism then we need to change the entire astronomy article to add this information. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 11:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am about to remove these lines and it's citations from the article as they directly falls under WP:NOR category
 * See, the provided citations are links to English translations of respective scriptures.
 * Removing the below line also as it lacks any reliable sources as citation
 * The reliability of sources provided for lines regarding Yajnavalkya is questionable. I am going to start a separate section here to discuss on the same.
 * അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * the source titled Antiquities of India: An Account of the History and Culture of Ancient Hindustan is a book regarding the culture of Hindustan not a reliable book on scientific matters like heliocentrism. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 15:02, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The idea of these alleged Vedic heliocentrism come from this article Yajnavalkya's theory of heliocentrism which was created on november 2023 which already consist of questionable and unreliable sources. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 15:52, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I have nominated that page for deletion. You can follow the deletion discussion by clicking on the same from the said page. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 18:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * the source titled Antiquities of India: An Account of the History and Culture of Ancient Hindustan is a book regarding the culture of Hindustan not a reliable book on scientific matters like heliocentrism. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 15:02, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The idea of these alleged Vedic heliocentrism come from this article Yajnavalkya's theory of heliocentrism which was created on november 2023 which already consist of questionable and unreliable sources. Myuoh kaka roi (talk) 15:52, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I have nominated that page for deletion. You can follow the deletion discussion by clicking on the same from the said page. അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 18:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Reliability of sources cited for Yajnavalkya
Information available from Google Books on Rodney Casdeden: a geographer and geomorphologist by training and has been actively involved in research on landscape processes and prehistory for the last twenty years. He has written books such as Inventions that changed the World, discoveries that changed the World, People that changed the World etc. Should scientific matters such as Heliocentrism be used from author of such books as he isn't clearly a subject expert on the matter, also Vedic-heliocetrism relation is a disputed issue and not widely published in any reliable scientific materials(Indians sources regarding the matter is subject to further reliability check as plethora of works produced from India are heavy embellishments of the actual fact). The second source clearly states it is a paper done for the completion of MSc degree by an individual sans peer review. So it is explicit that citation is unreliable അദ്വൈതൻ (talk) 15:30, 20 July 2024 (UTC)