大数据不等于科学规律( 五 )_我们从天文学史获得的重要教训是

Yet a proper synthesis of the mathematical and physical approaches to astronomy wasn’t achieved for many centuries. That’s because the available "big data"-the easily observable patterns of the sun, moon and stars-are cryptic, super?cial signs of the deep structure beneath.

16世纪时，哥白尼（Copernicus）发现，如果把太阳而不是地球放在天球的中心，就可以得到一个更加简洁漂亮的托勒密式模型。虽然托勒密模型在科学史上常常不受待见，但该模型在哥白尼的突破中起到了绝对关键的作用，因为它为模型参数之间的“巧合”提供了物理的解释。

Copernicus, in the 16th century, discovered that he could get more beautiful versions of Ptolemy-style models if he put the sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the celestial spheres. Ptolemy's work typically gets rough treatment in the history of science, but it was absolutely essential to Copernicus's breakthrough in o?ering a physical explanation of "coincidences" among the model's parameters.