Many people are astonished to learn that the concept of heliocentrism did not originate with Nicolaus Copernicus, but rather with the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchos of Samos (lived c. 310 – c. 230 BC), who published a book in around the early third century BC in which he argued that the Earth orbits around the Sun. This book has not survived, but we know about its existence because it is referenced by later authors.
What shocks many people even more than the fact that Aristarchos came up with the idea of heliocentrism in the third century BC is the fact that Aristarchos’s heliocentric model of the universe was almost totally rejected by ancient Greek and Roman scholars and never caught on in antiquity. Many people wonder why it was that the ancient Greeks never took Aristarchos seriously. In order to find out why Aristarchos’s heliocentric model of the universe was rejected, we are going to need to dive deep into the ancient sources.
Continue reading “Why Was Aristarchos’s Heliocentric Model Dismissed and Ignored?”