Heliocentrism

Heliocentrism, the idea that all planets orbit the sun, has long been a model of
the solar system, with the earliest recorded proposal being in the 3 rd century
BCE, by Aristarchus. His proposal was not mocked by his contemporaries,
although his model never caught on. Instead, geocentrism remained, by far, the
most accepted model until the 17th century CE, the reason being that, as humans
are earth-dwelling, it ostensibly appears that the universe is clearly geocentric.
Moreover, the powerful religious organisations of the time, including the church
(which did not permit heliocentrism until 1822), placed harsh punishments on
those who suggested a model which opposed geocentrism as such a theory
would discredit, or provide evidence against religious texts which often place a
large importance on humans, hence leading to the belief that the universe must
be geocentric. However, under further scrutiny, geocentrism loses much
credibility, due to phenomena such as apparent retrograde motion, objects
orbiting other objects (which can be seen with Jupiters moons and via the
phases of Venus), as well as much later the stellar parallax of stars. This
evidence, much of which was provided by Galileo Galilei, provided strong
evidence for the possibility of a heliocentric solar system, which began to be
accepted during the 17th century. Much mathematical evidence was also provided
by Copernicus and Kepler, who gave models of elliptical orbits using the
mathematical field of conics. All this evidence accumulated to the point that
soon, most astronomers accepted heliocentrism as the true model of the solar
system. Newton tied many theories together using his theory of gravity.