Aristotelian cosmology

Aristotelian cosmology places a stationary Earth at the center of a finite cosmos, surrounded by nested celestial spheres. It distinguishes the changing elements below the Moon from the regular, unchanging heavens.

Geocentrism: A family of cosmological models that place Earth at or near the center of the universe. Aristotle’s cosmos is a distinctive physical account within this broader Earth-centered framework.
Aristarchus of Samos: An ancient Greek astronomer who proposed that Earth rotates daily and orbits the Sun annually. His heliocentric proposal opposed the stationary Earth at the center of Aristotle’s cosmos.
Aristotle: A fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher whose works shaped Western traditions in logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. He articulated the physical principles and celestial order that define this cosmology.
Medieval cosmology: The diverse accounts of the universe developed in medieval intellectual traditions. Medieval scholars incorporated Aristotelian celestial structure into influential Christian and Islamic worldviews.
Aristotelian physics: A system of natural philosophy explaining motion through matter, place, causes, and the elements. Its account of natural motion supports Earth’s central position and the heavens’ circular motion.
Ptolemaic system: A geocentric astronomical model that uses deferents and epicycles to calculate planetary positions. It shares Earth-centeredness but treats planetary motions through a different mathematical scheme.
Eudoxus of Cnidus: A Greek mathematician and astronomer who developed a system of concentric spheres to model celestial motions. Aristotle adapted and elaborated the concentric-sphere approach associated with Eudoxus.
Thomas Aquinas: A medieval theologian and philosopher who integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. His synthesis helped transmit Aristotelian accounts of the cosmos through Latin scholastic education.
Four elements: The ancient scheme in which earth, water, air, and fire are the basic constituents of the sublunary world. Their natural directions of motion explain why heavy matter gathers at the cosmos’s center.
Copernican heliocentrism: The model that places the Sun near the center of the planetary system and makes Earth a moving planet. It overturns the stationary central Earth that anchors Aristotelian cosmology.

Linked from 18 pages