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Raison d'État 3 months ago
It is :) By Copernicus' time, astronomers had observations over sufficient time to recognise the geocentric model was going to also require higher-order eccentrics to remain consistent with reality. If they'd had calculus, they could have kept going...

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Now that I think about it, I guess heliocentric is not so different, the noise is just much smaller, such that those factors are much much smaller (maybe, just guessing).