Teaching Galileo? Get to know Riccioli! -- What a forgotten Italian astronomer can teach students about how science works

TL;DR

This paper explores how studying Riccioli, a 17th-century astronomer who supported geocentrism, can help physics students understand the iterative and uncertain nature of scientific progress.

Contribution

It highlights the educational value of teaching about scientists with incorrect theories to illustrate science's evolving and provisional nature.

Findings

Students gain insight into science's non-linear progress

Learning about Riccioli shows science involves revising beliefs based on new evidence

Historical cases of incorrect theories can enhance scientific literacy

Abstract

What can physics students learn about science from those scientists who got the answers wrong? Students encounter little science history, and what they have encountered typically portrays scientists as The People with the Right Answers. But those who got the wrong answers can teach students that in science answers are often elusive -- not found in the back of a book or discovered in a bold stroke of genius. Giovanni Battista Riccioli, a 17th-century astronomer who argued that science supported a geocentric universe, and whose arguments made sense given the knowledge of the time -- is an example of such a person.