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What he believed became as a law to his immediate successors. His tenets were accepted as final by their great popularizer, Ptolemy, three centuries later; and so the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus passed under a cloud almost at the hour of its dawning, there to remain obscured and forgotten for the long lapse of centuries.
It is true that the critical student will assign little weight to the current belief that the vague theory of Pythagoras that fire was at the centre of all things implies a conception of the heliocentric theory of the solar system.
The conception of law which is unmistakably conveyed by Kepler's discoveries, and the evidence they gave in support of the heliocentric as against the geocentric theory, could not fail to incur the reprehension of the Roman authorities.
Yet, as we now see, the heliocentric doctrine, which we know to be true, had been thought out and advocated as the correct theory of celestial mechanics by at least one worker of the third century B.C. Such an idea, we may be sure, did not spring into the mind of its originator except as the culmination of a long series of observations and inferences.
All that is required is that the heliocentric picture be taken for what it is, namely, a purely kinematic aspect of the true dynamic ordering of our cosmic system, which in itself calls for quite other means of conceptual representation.
He also discovers that there are four of these little stars revolving round the planet. What is the explanation of this singular phenomenon? They cannot be fixed stars, or planets; they must then be moons. Jupiter is attended with satellites like the earth, but has four instead of one! The importance of this last discovery was of supreme value, for it confirmed the heliocentric theory.
Though never intended as a representation of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies, it maintained its ground until the era of Kepler and Newton, when the heliocentric doctrine, and that of elliptic motions, were incontestably established. Even Newton himself, in the 37th proposition of the third book of the "Principia," availed himself of its aid.
The picture of the universe which has thus arisen before our mind's eye is a startling one only so long as we keep comparing it with its heliocentric predecessor.
The very ancient BRAHMAGUPTA, one of the JYOTISH works, is an astronomical treatise dealing with such matters as the heliocentric motion of the planetary bodies in our solar system, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the earth's spherical form, the reflected light of the moon, the earth's daily axial revolution, the presence of fixed stars in the Milky Way, the law of gravitation, and other scientific facts which did not dawn in the Western world until the time of Copernicus and Newton."
He estimated the diameter of the sun at the seven hundred and twentieth part of the circumference of the circle which it describes in its diurnal revolution, which is not far from the truth; but in this treatise he does not allude to his heliocentric theory.
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