Geocentric model they also appear to revolve around Earth about once per day. The stars appeared to be fixed on a celestial sphere rotating once each day about an axis through the geographic poles of Earth. Second, Earth seems to be unmoving from the perspective of an earthbound observer; it feels solid, stable, and stationary. Ancient Greek, ancient Roman, and medieval philosophers usually combined the geocentric model with a spherical Earth, in contrast to the older flat Earth model implied in some mythology. The ancient Jewish Babylonian uranography pictured a flat Earth with a dome-shaped, rigid canopy called the firmament placed over
Mathematical physics Having introduced experimentation, Galileo then refuted geocentric cosmology by refuting Aristotelian physics itself. Galilei's 1638 book "Discourse on Two New Sciences" established the law of equal free fall as well as the principles of inertial motion, founding the central concepts of what would become today's classical mechanics. By the Galilean law of inertia as well as the principle of Galilean invariance, also called Galilean relativity, for any object experiencing inertia, there is empirical justification for knowing only that it is at "relative" rest or "relative" motion—rest or motion with respect to another object. René Descartes adopted Galilean principles and developed