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Well, from memory the church believed everything revolved around the earth. Galileo found the moons of jupiter clearly did not. This falsified the church's belief, or would have though they reportedly refused to look through the telescope.

Unfalsifiability of heliocentrism... I'll take your word for it, point accepted.




As it turns out, the story about refusing to look through the telescope is a myth. Galileo came under fire from lower officials who may have used that rhetoric. The church hierarchy was coming under political pressure for being "soft on heresy" if you will, in the wake of the Reformation. But the astronomers at the Vatican actually bought a telescope from Galileo, and confirmed his observations. And the Church Fathers at least claimed that they were willing to change their beliefs in the face of evidence.

Apparently, Tycho Brahe had proposed a model where the planets go around the sun, and the sun around a stationary earth. This satisfied the telescopic evidence without introducing new problems such as why everything doesn't just get flung off the earth.

I figure Galileo took his theory as far as it could be taken in his time, and it became more than just an interesting philosophical debate because of what we might now call the "geo-political" climate of the day. An amusing factoid is that Galileo had terrible eyesight, and his telescopes actually worked quite badly, so the observational work he did was difficult.


Thanks for a comprehensive answer, clearing up some misconceptions etc. Much appreciated.




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