Greetings,
Allow me to pick a nit :-)
quote:
Common sense told the fifteenth and sixteenth century Europeans that the the earth was flat...
—deerbreh
No.
The world was known to be a sphere from ancient times.
This claim is an urban legend - e.g. that Columbus thought the world was flat (he didn't, he just had a bad estimate of the circumference.)
The false view of that period (pushed by the church) was that the earth was the fixed immovable centre of all.
This is what Galileo disagreed with - his last words being "...and yet it MOVES".
The church was happy to accept the world was a sphere, but could not accept that it moved or turned (because people would fall off when they were on the bottom, and because we couldn't feel it turn.)
quote:
...and that the sun rotates around the earth.
—deerbreh
Yes.
This is what Galileo argued against.
Iasion
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