Aryabhata · Mathematics
Aryabhata’s most daring claim - that the whole sky wheels westward each night not because the heavens turn but because the <em>earth</em> spins on its axis - argued with a homely image of a boat, a thousand years before Copernicus, and rejected by the astronomers who came after him.
You learned that Aryabhata attributed the apparent daily motion of the stars to the earth’s rotation on its axis, defended it with the boat analogy (a principle of relative motion), computed a strikingly accurate rotation period, and that later orthodox astronomers such as Brahmagupta rejected the moving earth.…
Leads to Nicolaus Copernicus.
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