Here are two contrasting responses to my idea on thought and the sun. Hornblower is correct that this idea in itself has nothing ATM, and obviously I have not explained myself clearly enough to Noclevername. Saying that human thought is a product of the sun is a bit like saying flotsam on the beach is a product of the ocean. The earth is really just a complex piece of flotsam of the sun, with thought the earth’s most complex feature. The claim that thought is done by people and not the earth is the logical equivalent of saying that an arrow is shot by a bow and not by an archer. The analogy between thought and the leaves of a tree recognizes that the sun is the source of life. Everything has a causal link back to its source, directly in the case of leaves and a tree, indirectly in the case of thoughts and the sun. The link to geocentrism is that this ‘thinking sun’ we inhabit is the only such ‘measuring centre’ yet discovered. Measurement is a physical product of the universe, so in this sense the geosolar reference frame is privileged as a locus of measurement.

The ATM component comes in when we start to analyse real geocentric observations such as the day and the great year. The point I am trying to make here is that a geocentric frame of reference is actually very useful for the study of biological cycles. Astronomy has been superficial in its interpretation of the implications of the Copernican revolution, invalidly discarding ideas from the Greeks which don’t easily fit within the mechanical agenda of modern cosmology. For example, Plato’s metaphor of ascent is empirically false, but as an image of the process of illumination it is helpful.

Thanks, it is good to recognize how religious passions undermine science. However, I don’t agree with your apparent assumption that we can have an epistemology based on ‘science/math’ = correct vs ‘philosophical/theological nonsense’ = false. Science is not sufficient in itself as a basis for thought, as it needs to engage with non-science to ensure ideas are compatible with empirical findings. An irony in this example is that the theologians claimed to be pursuing truth, but their assumption about circular motion was false, leaving them politically embarrassed by Kepler’s and Bruno’s findings. You might regard some of Kepler’s ideas on the harmony of the spheres as nonsense, (let alone Bruno’s thoughts on Egypt), but this is an illustration of how the scientific community has developed its own orthodoxy of method which like the theologians of old finds it hard to place its assumptions within a broader philosophical reference frame.
The ellipse model is the epitome of elegance and parsimony. It cannot be combined with geocentrism for celestial mechanics. Its comprehensive overthrow of Ptolemy shifted the purpose of astronomy to pure mathematical observation, whereas the former geocentric motivation aimed to explain ‘as above, so below’. This aim remains logically valid – as for example Stephen Jay Gould commented that macrocosms are fractals of microcosms. However, the mathematics of such celestial harmony remains elusive. We still need to stand on the shoulders of the Greeks to develop these themes.
On a point of detail, ignorance of elliptical motion and ideas about perfect circles were not the main cause for Ptolemy’s use of epicycles. Ptolemy’s use of epicycles was a sound observational assumption at the time, which happened to accord with religious dogma about circles. Ellipses are a product of the heliocentric model, and epicycles were retained by Copernicus who shared the assumption of circular motion. The massive intellectual upheaval of de-centring the earth was needed before anyone could even imagine that circular motion was wrong. The fact is that epicycles provide a roughly accurate prediction of the positions of the planets, corrected every few years by observation. The long term cycles are very regular, but when the earth passes between the outer planets and the sun their position looks to go retrograde in a completely regular way. If you haven’t even begun to imagine the earth could move then epicycles are a logical answer. From our position of hindsight they look ridiculous, but the ancients did not know what the planets were.
The paradigm shift of the seventeenth century was from a geocentric/spiritual to a heliocentric/mechanical astronomy. Your ‘honest thinker’ could only note that the perfection model was wrong if he/she already understood the sun was at an elliptical focus. Your comment illustrates the heroic capacity of science to make deductive leaps of logic regarding its philosophical foundations (ie it is slightly ad hominim about the Greeks to say that because they were wrong about one thing, therefore they were wrong about everything)

This illustrates how deeply intuitive is the geocentric model. I think Ptolemy would have welcomed Tycho, as epicycles were inelegant and inaccurate. Your imputation of magical motives to Ptolemy looks unfair as he was simply doing his best to predict planetary positions with the assumptions and data to hand.