W.Herschel(1738-1822) was one of the greatest astronomers in eighteen century. He observed the sky with his huge telescope, and counted the number of stars in many areas of the sky. And he assumed the shape of our galaxy.
But, as a matter of fact, Herschel's conclusion about the shape of our galaxy never derived from his observations without his strong belief about the shape of the galaxy. Then, who gived him such a strong belief about the shape of the universe before his observation?
German great philosopher, Immanuel Kant(1724－1804) wrote Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels(1755), And in this book Kant said about the structure of the universe. Kant's theory is similar to Hershei's.
Does Hershcel's great view about the Construction of the Heavens owe to Kant? There's no evidence about the connection between Herschel and Kant.
As NASA's MarsPathfinder reached Mars, many people began to take interest in Mars. Though today we know that the environment in Mars is too severe for life, the planet Mars reminds us of Martian. A big hit of the movie MARS ATTACKS! may be an example.
Percival Lowell(1855-1916) believed in Martian. He was a famous wealthy man, and he built an observatory for observing Mars.
But he was also interested in Japan. He visited Japan in 1883. (Japan saw the Meiji Restoration in 1868, and started modernization.) He wrote The soul of far east(1888), NOTO -an unexplored corner of Japan(1891), and so on. Was he interested in Japanese culture as different civilizations like Martian? It is very interesting, isn't it?
Today everybody knows that planets rotates around the sun.
Is the geocentric theory totally wrong? If you think that epicycles of the planets on the geocentric method are returned to revolution on the heriocentric theory, you can see that these two theories are equal. In fact, the geocentric theory is so minute that it could lead astronomical theories for about 1400 years.
Some elementary books about astronomy often overstate mistakes in the geocentric theory. But we have to do it justice as historic astronomical theory.