Ptolemaic universe

Cultural  

1. The model for the universe, put forth by the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy, that had the Earth at the center, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars revolving around it.

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The Ptolemaic system prevailed in astronomy for nearly fifteen hundred years, until the model of the solar system proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus (with the sun, not the Earth, at the center) was accepted. Church authorities forced Galileo to declare belief in the Earth-centered universe.

Example Sentences

In the pre-Copernican world it might have been possible to argue that here or there was the centre of the world - and by extension, the centre of the Ptolemaic universe - but in our Einsteinian one the epicentre of temporality itself must be both everywhere and nowhere at all.

From BBC

In this video we see just how intricate the Ptolemaic universe was.

From Scientific American

Its scene was the Ptolemaic universe with the Christian heaven and hell inserted.

From Project Gutenberg

It was then a Ptolemaic universe, revolving around the White House.

From Time Magazine Archive

Into the material embryo, about 40 days after conception, life entered from the outermost sphere of the Earth-centered Ptolemaic universe.

From Time Magazine Archive