Heliocentricity

"The Ptolemaic models developed in the Middle Ages, first by Islamic astronomers and then, most recently before Copernicus, by Peuerbach actually became simpler not more complex. The Peuerbachian geocentric model in use as Copernicus published his De revolutionibus was actually simpler than Copernicus’ heliocentric model. The contemporary astronomers hoped that Copernicus’ model would at least deliver more accurate data on the positions of the heavenly bodies, the, at the time, principle function of mathematical astronomy but the Copernican system based on the same data as the Ptolemaic systems was just as inaccurate as its predecessors. Heliocentricity only “overthrew” geocentricity as Kepler developed his actually simpler and much more accurate elliptical astronomy in the first quarter of the seventeenth century."

http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/the-phlogiston-theory-is-not-equivalent-to-the-aquatic-ape-hypothesis/?utm_source=feedly