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Since the Sun is much bigger and brigther in Earth's sky than the other stars, when in History was was it first claimed by someone that the Sun was a star like the others?
What inspired Dante Alighieri to write "the Sun and other stars" in the last verse of the Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, long before Copernicus was born?
What inspired Dante Alighieri to write "the Sun and other stars" in the last verse of the Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, long before Copernicus was born?
Any ideas on that?
In the Ptolemaic model, the Sun and the Moon were categorized as planets, all of which were considered wandering stars (as opposed to the fixed stars, which were considered to be permanently fixed in their places). Different kinds of stars, but all stars, as stars were then defined. In his works, Dante sometimes refers to the planets as planets (pianeta) and other times as stars (stella).
So the term 'the Sun and other stars' is not a phrase that suggests that Dante understood that the Sun was like, say, Sirius or Polaris, but just that the Sun was one of the various objects in the sky categorized as stars (stella) - the term being more narrowly used now. And neither Dante nor anyone else 700+ years ago would have understood that the Sun (and what they called fixed stars) generated their own light, and that in this way they were fundamentally different from what we now define as planets.
Sumerians already have wall carvings that depict the star and planets in sometimes around 2000-2500BC
1) What does that have to do with when it was first realized that the Sun was a star?
2) It looks like there are 11 round objects around what is presumably the Sun. There are only eight major planets (including Earth), and the Sumerians could only see six* (including Earth, assuming they might recognize it as a planet). So if that's supposed to be the Solar System, one wonders what all those excess round things are supposed to be.
*Well, technically they could see seven, as Uranus is sometimes visible to the naked eye. However, it is barely as bright as the faintest stars, and it is highly unlikely that any ancients would ever notice it changing relative position. Even given the technology of the telescope, it was over 170 years before anyone noticed the movement of a certain faint 'star' - Uranus. This despite the fact that it had been recorded numerous times before that, always being assumed to be not a planet but a star. And this at a time when the technology of paper and ink allowed widespread recording of such data that was not possible for the Sumerians (who used clay tablets - much less convenient and far more limiting).
It was first said to be a star (or perhaps that other stars were suns) by Anaxagoras around 450 BC but the news was not widely celebrated since religious authorities were somewhat heavily invested in other explanations. It could get you in serious trouble or burned as a heretic -- as was the friar, Giordano Bruno. Copernicus, earlier, and then Bruno and Galileo and other learned people came to know it was a star, but it was unhealthy to say so very loudly until the 1800s.
There's no way of knowing the first person in the history of the world who claimed that the bright object in the sky during the day (the sun) is the same type of object as the bright lights in the sky at night (whatever they would have been called at the time, in their language).
But as for scientifically claiming or stating that the two are the same, perhaps with some proof, in recorded history, that might be tracked down. But I'd suspect it was only in the past four centuries or so, at most. And it probably started as a theory rather than definite proof.
It was first said to be a star (or perhaps that other stars were suns) by Anaxagoras around 450 BC but the news was not widely celebrated since religious authorities were somewhat heavily invested in other explanations.
In what other explanations were the Greek pantheists so heavily invested?
Last edited by mensaguy; 01-11-2023 at 08:42 PM..
Reason: Fixed quote
It was first said to be a star (or perhaps that other stars were suns) by Anaxagoras around 450 BC but the news was not widely celebrated since religious authorities were somewhat heavily invested in other explanations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
In what other explanations were the Greek pantheists so heavily invested?
Anaxagoras' crime wasn't asserting that the Sun is a star, but that the Sun and the Moon were objects such as the Earth is an object, as opposed to being deities. As a result, he was sentenced to death but 'merely' exiled instead.
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