>This is akin to
>mediveal cosmology maintaining that the Earth was the
>center of the universe. That claim was the
>ideological foundation of the institutional structure
>of power on Earth, and empircal facts that
>contradicted it were irrelevant.
This is anachronistic no? Geocentrism was inherited from the ancient world and "empirical facts" as they relate to astronomy were of little concern in the middle ages. You are talking more about the early modern world.
>This is why any theoretical acknowledgement of these
>inconvenient facts was fiercely opposed by the
>guardains of the geo-centric orthodoxy, and their
>proponents were persecuted and killed.
You mean like Giordano Bruno, executed in 1600? It is unclear that he was killed because of his views on astronomy:
>Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the
>Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his
>doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds,
>but for his theological errors, among which were
>the following: that Christ was not God but
>merely an unusually skilful magician, that the
>Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03016a.htm
>According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of
>Philosophy, "
in 1600 there was no official
>Catholic position on the Copernican system, and
>it was certainly not a heresy. When
Bruno
was
>burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing
>to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology."[7]
>
>Similarly, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908)
>asserts that "Bruno was not condemned for his
>defence of the Copernican system of astronomy,
>nor for his doctrine of the plurality of
>inhabited worlds, but for his theological
>errors, among which were the following: that
>Christ was not God but merely an unusually
>skilful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the
>soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc."[8]
>
>However, the webpage of the Vatican Secret
>Archives about Bruno's trial provides a
>different perspective: "In the same rooms where
>Giordano Bruno was questioned, for the same
>important reasons of the relationship between
>science and faith, at the dawning of the new
>astronomy and at the decline of Aristotle’s
>philosophy, sixteen years later, Cardinal
>Bellarmino, who then contested Bruno’s heretical
>theses, summoned Galileo Galilei, who also faced
>a famous inquisitorial trial, which, luckily for
>him, ended with a simple abjuration." [9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno