Ptolemy's Almagest: The Geocentric View Of Science

Throughout history, many people question the norm in favor of their own thinkings and beliefs. Such notable figures include Galileo and Copernicus, two scientists who hypothesized and proven that the Earth is not in the center of the universe. In this instance, Galileo and Copernicus change society’s mind about things it has long thought to be true, by acquiring new scientific knowledge, using logic, and following their intuition. Thus, this shows how science is never absolute, and is always acceptable to changes, as people review their thinkings.

Thousands of years ago, people thought that the Earth was located in the center of the Universe. As Carl Sagan, the coauthor of The Geocentric View stated, “For them, the Earth did not move in the sky and it did not rotate on its axis. Rather, all the planets and stars rotated around the Earth.”(Text 1 by BHP and Sagan). The Greek astronomer Ptolemy is one of these individuals. Ptolemy described about the geocentric view (“geo” referring to Earth and “centric” meaning center”) in his book Almagest. In this piece of work, Ptolemy presented many convincing evidence, including the reason behind retrograde motion, or the backward motion of a planet as observed from a particular vantage point. (Text 2 by BHP). He proposed that epicycles, or planetary orbits, was the reason for

However, many people were doubtful of his observations . It did not matter that he found mathematical errors in Ptolemy’s geocentric view. And it certainly did not matter that he made observations which disprove the wide-accepted proposition. Why? In this case, people believe that was morally wrong to unestablished religious beliefs, even if they are incorrect. Years later, the same goes for Galileo. In his time, he was able to use the telescope to prove that the heavens are not centered around the Earth. After expressing his heliocentric views, the Roman Catholic Church tried and eventually deem Galileo as a traitor the