[noamyoungerm]

> the whole "Earth is the centre of Universe" thing that held back modern thinking

This says much more about how we dismiss ancient civilizations as inferior than it does about ancient civilizations themselves.

The fact is, the geocentric model was an excellent one, able to explain all observations at the time in a sensible and straightforward way. Admittedly, more data helped to develop the heliocentric model, but there were valid scientific criticisms against that model at the time. In particular, it took Kepler to provide truly sensible and strong arguments in favor of heliocentrism.

The geocentric model is so good that even today it is often the sensible model to use when thinking about some astronomical problems. I hate to hear it being dismissed as 'wrong' - because from a physical perspective the two are simply geometrical transformations of one another, they are both 'right'. It's simply that one of them is simpler than the other for most problems.

But most of all, I hate hearing people say it 'held back thinking', because I assure you that the people doing the thinking back then were just as capable of doing good, logical, rational thinking as we are today, and didn't need anyone to claim they were too stupid to think critically for themselves about the scientific understanding of the time.

[inlineint]

> because from a physical perspective the two are simply geometrical transformations of one another

Not really, at least if you want to keep simplicity of Newton's laws which are formulated for inertial reference frames. The reference frame in the heliocentric model is inertial, while in the geocentric one it is not.