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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Bronowski and historical fossils
Message-ID: <12368@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 02:37:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12368
Posted: Fri Mar 14 02:37:32 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 19:32:48 EST
References: <8603090839.AA00847@decwrl.DEC.COM> <277@lanl.ARPA> <12332@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <389@lanl.ARPA> <391@lanl.ARPA>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 19
Keywords: fossils ignorance

In article <391@lanl.ARPA> jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes:
>In article <389@lanl.ARPA> jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes:
>>      ...   (There was an ancient Greek called Democratus (I think) who
>>discovered that the Sun was the center of the solar system, and the planets -
>>including Earth went around it.  He even had the distances about right.
>>Why don't we know this theory as the 'Democratian System'?  Because his
>>civilization DIED and Copernicus had to do the work all over again.)
>
>I was afraid I'd get this wrong.  The man's mane was Aristarchus of Samos.

Things get named historically for all sorts of reasons.  Being the logically
correct name is only sometimes the reason.  Aristarchus's suggestion was
mere conjecture then.  Ptolemy rejected it on the experimental grounds that
parallax was not seen.  If your explanation were correct then nothing would
have ever be named after Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, etc.  Besides, Coper-
nicus did NOT do the work all over again.  A discussion of non-geocentric
systems is included in Ptolemy, so that he can then reject them.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720