a cosmological model in which the Sun is assumed to lie at or near a central point (e.g., of the solar system or of the universe) while the Earth and other bodies revolve around it. In the 5th century bc the Greek philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas speculated separately that the Earth was a sphere revolving daily around some mystical “central fire” that regulated the universe. Two centuries later, Aristarchus of Samos extended this idea by proposing that the Earth and other planets moved around a definite central object, which he believed to be the Sun.
The heliocentric, or Sun-centred, model of the solar system never gained wide support because its proponents could not explain why the relative positions of the stars seemed to remain the same despite the Earth’s changing viewpoints as it moved around the Sun. In the 2nd century ad, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria suggested that this discrepancy could be resolved if it were assumed that the Earth was fixed in position, with the Sun and other bodies revolving around it. As a result, Ptolemy’s geocentric (Earth-centred) system dominated scientific thought for some 1,400 years.
In 1444 Nicholas of Cusa again argued for the rotation of the Earth and of other heavenly bodies, but it was not until the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”) in 1543 that the heliocentric system began to be reestablished. Galileo Galilei’s support of this model resulted in his famous trial before the Inquisition in 1633. See also geocentric system; Ptolemaic system; Tychonic system.
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "heliocentric system" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.