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The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for GodHe proposed that it was the Earth that rotated and that the stars were in effect motionless. He proposed moreover that in order to explain these apparent movements of the planets against the background of more distant stars, the planets and the Earth, in addition to rotating, revolved around the Sun. That is, the Earth was demoted. You know the phrase- another linguistic artifact-the world, or the Earth. What is the definite article saying? It's saying there is only one. And that also goes straight back to pre-Copernican times, as does the phrase, natural as it is, of the Sun rising and the Sun setting. Copernicus, by the way, felt his idea to be so dangerous that it was not published until he was on his deathbed, and even then it had an outrageous introduction by a man named Osiander, who was worried that it was too incendiary, too radical. Osiander wrote, in effect, "Copernicus doesn't really believe this. This is just a means of calculating. And don't anybody think he's saying anything contrary to doctrine." This was an important issue ...» |
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