Galileo was right, but so were his critics (2015)
For a general timeline of events that led up to the &#x27;Galileo affair&#x27; and what happened after, check out &quot;The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown&quot;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tofspot.blogspot.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tofspot.blogspot.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;the-great-ptolemaic-sma...</a><p>The fact that the Earth moves was not &#x27;proven&#x27; (or more technically, had strong empirical evidence for that hypothesis) until 1806 when Giuseppi Calandrelli reported parallax in α-Lyrae. That&#x27;s ~250 years after Copernicus, and ~150 after Galileo.<p>Note that by 1700 or so, everyone had switched to Kepler&#x27;s model: not necessarily because they thought it was &quot;right&quot; (there was no empirical way to tell), but primarily because the math was much easier and it got correct results. There were actually seven models floating around during the 1600s:<p>* Heraclidean.  Geo-heliocentric.  Mercury and Venus circle the Sun; everything else circles the Earth.<p>* Ptolemaic.  Geocentric, stationary Earth.<p>* Copernican.  Heliocentric, pure circles with lots of epicycles.<p>* Gilbertian.  Geocentric, rotating Earth.  (proposed by William Gilbert in De magnete)<p>* Tychonic.  Geo-heliocentric.  Sun and Moon circle the Earth; everything else circles the Sun.<p>* Ursine.  Tychonic, with rotating Earth.<p>* Keplerian.  Heliocentric, with elliptical orbits.