Question

How was the initial skepicism of Nicholas Copernicus heliocentric theory useful to the scientific method?

Answer 1

He said that the earth revolved around the sun He found this through observation

Answer 2

The question contains a false assumption. In fact, there was no initial skepticism of Copernicus's ideas. They were generally encouraged and found to be of interest, by scholars and the Catholic Church. The idea that they were bitterly resisted is a bit of PR promulgated by later thinkers who wanted to represent themselves as being much more revolutionary and bold than they really were.

There were certainly some questions. Copernicus's ideas required the plants to all orbit slightly different centers, close to the Sun, because he assumed the paths were circles and not ellipses. That was weird. It didn't explain why the Moon, of all heavenly bodies, orbited the Earth instead of the Sun. The biggest problem is that if the Earth orbited the Sun, then the stars should show a parallax (shift position as the Earth came closer and further from any one of them, as it orbited the Sun). Geocentric theories didn't have this problem. (The reason no parallax is observed is because the stars are ridiculously far away, millions of times farther than the size of the Solar System, but this did not seem plausible to 16th century thinkers.)

So at the time of Copernicus, heliocentric models solved some problems, but raised others, and the same could be said of geocentric theories. It really wasn't possible to decide, in clear conscience, between them, and each had its supporters. The triumph of the heliocentric theory would await Newton's discoveries in gravity, and Tycho's superb series of precise astronomical observations, which combined allowed a description of the solar system that was far simpler than either of the older models, and seemed much more self-evidently correct.

Answer 3

Thank you for this answer. you helped me. :P