Seleucus of Seleucia was an ancient astronomer who defended heliocentrism, arguing that Earth orbits the Sun and rotates on ...

“Certainly,” Gingerich says, “Ptolemy did not commit fraud. And his great contribution of the geocentric theory,” he adds, “was the true testament to Ptolemy’s greatness as an astronomer.

Ptolemy’s model and many earlier ideas of the Solar System had the Earth at the centre of it. As observations of the motions of the planets became more detailed, the descriptions of the Solar ...

In the chaotic aftermath of Mongol expansion in the mid-13th century which had left the Abbasid capital of Baghdad in ruin, a new centre of learning soon came to the forefront. Ironically it was the ...