Understand assumptions and know uncertainties: Boscovich and the motion of the Earth

Abstract

The general prohibition of books advocating heliocentric theory put many progressive Jesuits in a difficult position. One of the most prominent Jesuit scientists of the 18th century, Rogerius Boscovich, was in particularly affected by conflicts between a beautifully simple theory of gravity by Newton, his Jesuit peripatetic education, Church doctrine and the lack of crucial experimental evidence for the motion of the Earth. I present the development of Boscovich's ideas prior to the lifting of the ban, and his retrospective considerations in later writings. These show that Boscovich's acceptance of the motion of the Earth was primarily driven by the existence of a working physical theory that also explained the motion of the Earth, and the lack of a consistent theory that supported any variation of a geocentric system.