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Once, Earth was the center of the universe. While Aristotle is credited with first asserting that to be Earth's rightful place, it was Claudius Ptolemy who took Aristotle's philosophical argument and turned it into a mathematical assertion. Ptolemy used geometric and trigonometric formulas to prove that Earth was fixed at the center of a spherical universe. This sphere held stars that were also fixed in place. Each day the heavenly sphere of fixed stars rotated and in doing so, carried the sun, moon, and planets past the earth. Astronomers, religious leaders, and the common public believed the Ptolemaic theory for the next three hundred years or so. After all, it had been mathematically proven.
We hear a lot about proving things these days in education. "Research based" and "scientifically proven" are phrases that are scattered throughout speeches, articles, policy mandates, and curriculum material with more frequency than phone solicitors call at night. I once wondered just where all this interest in something having to be "scientifically based" started. Perhaps it was Ptolemy. He was the one who used mathematical proofs to show the Earth's location and die movement of the sun and planets.
The problem was that he was wrong. It didn't matter that he hza proven it. It didn't matter that he had documented his work in not one book, but thirteen. It didn't matter that the Church embraced his geocentric view with fervor. And it didn't matter that his theory was accepted as truth. He was wrong. It wasn't that he was right for a while and then things in the universe shifted. It was that in spite of his mathematical proofs, he was wrong. That came out in 1 $14 when Copernicus distributed a hand-written hook to a few of his friends that, if it didn't turn the world upside down, at least put it in its correct celestial...