Talk:Geocentrism

Edit concerning anachronistic stellar parallax reasoning

The previous wording applied the modern concept of stellar parallax, a relative shift of nearby stars against more distant ones in three dimensions, to ancient Greek evaluation of heliocentrism. However, ancient astronomers placed all fixed stars on a single celestial sphere at a uniform distance. Under that assumption, relative stellar parallax was not conceptually applicable. Their actual concern was that, if Earth moved within that sphere, the apparent angular separations between stars would change over the year, altering the shapes of constellations. Since constellations appear constant, the stellar sphere must be extremely distant. This preserves the reasoning without projecting later cosmology backward. To reflect that more accurately, I made two very small wording revisions:

Original Wording:

one ought to be able to observe the shifting of the fixed stars due to stellar parallax...

As they did not appear to move, either the stars are much farther away than the Sun… or the Earth is not moving at all.

Updated Wording:

one might expect the apparent positions of the fixed stars to change over the year... As they did not appear to move, ancient astronomers concluded that the stellar sphere must be extremely distant in order for constellations to remain unchanged.

This maintains the point being made while keeping the reasoning consistent with ancient astronomical beliefs. KADEG17 (talk) 22:36, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I followed up with a more drastic change that does not mention parallax until the historical context was set.

This section needs sources. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Challenging the view of circular orbits

This article states that the idea of the planets having a circular orbit wasn't challenged in the west until the 17th century, but in John Dee's 1564 Monas Hieroglyphica it is quite clearly stated that Mercury at least "makes and oval-shaped circuit on gis course through the Aether" ~2025-39945-14 (talk) 11:18, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

John Dee was not a major figure in the is history of astronomy. Monas Hieroglyphica "is an exposition of the meaning of an esoteric symbol that he invented." Even if he said such a thing in his book it is not notable here unless we have a secondary source. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:48, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

In correct claim in large delete.

This diff from 2014 introduced much of the content that was deleted by @UnitedKingdoms in this change with edit summary "Removed large AI generated summary and table. Most of the information is in the article already and would be better summarised in a paragraph. Order of the planets is already in the images." Obviously the deleted content from 2014 was not based on AI. Is the delete appropriate? Johnjbarton (talk) 20:29, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

If it was from 2014 I'll admit it was not AI. But a large, hard to read table didn't seem to add to the page in my opinion and made it messier than it needed to be. Keep in mind I'm still a new Wikipedian, so will go with whatever consensus we can find and am open to revert, but think any useful information could be made into a paragraph instead that fits better with the flow of the article without adding unnecessary page length. UnitedKingdoms (talk) 11:33, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

So advice then: the number one reason to delete the table is that it cannot be verified because no source is given. Without a source another editor won't be able to find correct ways to alter the table. Another reason would be that the meaning of the last column is unclear without more explanation. Claiming the table is messy is asking for arguments ;-) Johnjbarton (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2026 (UTC)