Quote:
Originally Posted by Celestial Mechanic
I generally agree with what you say, but I would like to point out that the Greeks did study conic sections, Appolonius has a work on conics attributed to him (I don't know if any of it still survives, however), and I think that if their observations and data analysis techniques had been good enough to show elliptic motion they would have been delighted to throw out the circles even if they still kept the Earth at the center.
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This is a good point. What I think is:
(a) a few "radical" mathematical thinkers like Appolonius and Aristarchus would have been happy to adopt the correct orbit of ellipse like Kepler did. The correct science/math was key to them, not all the philosophical/theological nonsense that pervaded society.
(b) the bulk of the scholarly elite and general public from Greek days to Kepler's time would have found ellipses repulsive from a philosophical/theological viewpoint. They probably would have burned Appolonius at the stake like they did Giordano Bruno for spouting "heretical" views. As long as Appolonius fiddled around with his conic sections on earth, and didn't dare cross the line into applying them to celestial motion orthodoxy, he was safe.