Babylonian Cosmology

• Early astronomers: careful observations of Moon and planets

• Invented sexagesimal system: leads to modern degrees, hours,
minutes, and seconds.
• Geocentric universe: Earth bound by water below; surrounded by
planets and Sun above.
• Enuma Elish: creation myth, c. 1450 BCE.
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 The Ancient Greeks
• Thales (634–546 BCE): Earth a flat disk surrounded
by water.

• Anaxagoras (c. 500–c. 428 BCE): cylindrically

shaped world; accurate explanation for moonshine
and lunar eclipses.

• Eudoxus (c. 400–c. 347 BCE): geocentric model

with concentric spheres for planets, Sun, Moon.

• Aristotle (384–322 BCE): refined Eudoxus’ model by

adding more spheres; “nature abhors a vacuum;” uni-
verse was eternal and unchanging.

• Aristarchus (c. 310–c. 230 BCE): determined Sun

and Moon relative distances; argued for heliocentric
universe.

• Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170 AD): wrote the

Almagest; took Eudoxus’ and Aristotle’s cosmology
and added epicycles.
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 The Copernican Revolution

• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)

proposed a heliocentric universe
• De Revolutionibus (1543)
• Managed to anger religious leaders;
but luckier than Galileo Galilei (1564–
1642) or Giordano Bruno (1548–
1600)
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 The Copernican Principle

• There are no “special” observers.

• Not just the Earth was displaced from the center.
• Not a principle that can be “proven,” but a useful
guideline for scientific thinking.
• His “revolution” continues today . . . in other scientific
fields (?), but also on present astronomers’ minds.
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The Cosmological Principle