Abstract:The heliocentric model has long been considered the core of the Copernican system. However, as a scientific historical fact, judging from the self-awareness of Copernicus’s views in the historical records, the attitudes of his followers and opponents towards his views, they are all concentrated on “geocentric” rather than “heliocentric”. Copernicus tried to restore the uniform circular motion of the celestial bodies by giving the Earth three motions, canceling the equant in the Ptolemaic system, and simultaneously achieving a reasonable explanation of the motion of planets, rather than simply changing from “geocentric” to “heliocentric”. Copernicus almost did not consider the dynamic problems of planetary motion and Earth motion, but his followers’ in-depth exploration on this basis broke through the shackles of old views, broke the “myth” of the uniform circular motion of celestial bodies, and finally proposed a set of unified mechanical systems that unify the motion of celestial bodies to replace the old Aristotelian physics. Under the influence of the Whig narrative of the history of science in the second half of the 19th century, people’s understanding of the Copernican system gradually changed from geocentric to heliocentric.
