DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN ASTROPHYSICS

The earliest attempts at scientific models were made by the Greeks. The models were, in general, Earth-centered, or geo-centric. Note that what this means is that the Greeks attached physical meaning to the Celstial Sphere construction. They not only used the notion that the Earth was sitting in the center of a large sphere to build a toy model which they used to visualize the motions of objects in the Solar System, but they also thought that this model was actually how the Solar System (Universe) worked. They had scientific reasons for believing this idea, e.g., lack of parallax and some conclusions based on faulty physics. The Greeks were not completely arbitrary.

Comment-- After Copernicus, in terms of the scientific model, the pace of the development of Modern Astrophysics really picks up. Tycho Brahe develops a large and accurate database (constrains the observable properties of the REAL WORLD), Johannes Kepler develops a geometric model which explains the data, and Galileo and Newton develop a theory for the physical foundations of the model of Kepler.