In the Light of Science by Demetris Nicolaides

Author:Demetris Nicolaides
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616144555
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services
Published: 2014-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

GEOCENTRIC VERSUS HELIOCENTRIC: THE RELATIVE TRUTH

Pythagorean Cosmology

Being a great geometer who understood well the relationships of spheres, flat surfaces, and lines, Pythagoras was probably the first to deduce that the earth is spherical. Several observations might have aided him in reaching such a conclusion. During a lunar eclipse the shadow of the earth on the moon is a circular arc. The masts of receding ships disappear last (and, equivalently, appear first when ships are approaching). Pythagoras himself knew that the evening and morning “stars” are really the planet Venus.

But the most notable achievement of the Pythagoreans in cosmology (often credited to the Pythagorean Philolaus [ca. 470–ca. 385 BCE]) was when they displaced the earth from the center of the universe and imagined it in motion. So, the earth revolves around a center occupied by fire, called Central Fire, and so do the moon, sun, planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—the ones known to antiquity, as only these are visible without a telescope), and the fixed stars—termed so because of their apparently fixed position with respect to one another; on the other hand planet means literally “wanderer” because planets were changing their position among the fixed stars.9 Central Fire is invisible because the inhabitable hemisphere of the earth faces always away from it, whereas the side of earth that always faces it is uninhabitable because it is too hot. Incidentally the moon’s synchronous motion—according to which its rotational period around its axis is the same with its revolution period around the earth—produces the same effect: the near side of the moon always faces the earth, whereas its far side always faces away from earth, making it always invisible to an earthbound observer. Revolving around Central Fire is another body, the anti-earth, termed so because of its position.10 It is imagined to always be in the same direction as the uninhabitable hemisphere of earth, so, like Central Fire, it, too, is invisible. It is not certain why anti-earth was required (some scholars speculate that it was needed to explain eclipses), or even whether anti-earth was really a planet at all—for due to its position anti-earth might have simply been the uninhabitable hemisphere of earth.

In addition to its revolution around Central Fire, earth also rotates around its own axis daily, accounting for the apparent revolution of the sky. This understanding was in audacious opposition to the popular view of an immobile earth at the center of the universe as well as to the evidence of the senses that do not feel earth’s motion. In an analogy, to understand the apparent revolution of the sky, pretend to be the earth and stand at the center of a room. Then begin to rotate around the axis of your body, say, counterclockwise. The walls, which you can think of as the sky (with the sun and stars), appear to revolve around you in the reverse direction, clockwise.

Only Central Fire is self-luminous; all other bodies are shining with reflected light from it. In fact this might be

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