EgoCentrism
and GeoCentrism; Human Significance and Existential Despair;
Bible
and Science; Fundamentalism and Skepticalism [1]
Issues raised:
Conclusions reached:
Part I: Historical
Overview
Part II: What type of "centre" does "Geo-Centrism"
refer to?
Part III: GeoCentrism
& Einstein's General Relativity
Part IV: Has
science disproved geocentrism? True & false statements regarding geoCentrism
Part V: Religion,
the Bible, and geoCentrism
Part VI: The connection to Existentialist despair and
the significance of Humanity
Part VII: Misunderstandings by fundamentalists and atheists
Appendices: Technical
Points:
1. The Microwave
Background Radiation and Broken Symmetry
2. Geo-stationary satellites
3. Would we think
that the Sun and the Earth orbit each other?
GeoCentrIsm = Earth + Center + ism: the belief that
Earth is at the center (of the universe).
Part I: Overview
Historical Overview
of the Issue
It used to be believed by most people that the universe is small – composed basically of the Earth, the sun and a few smaller and larger lights (planets and stars), with the Earth at the center of this universe (the ‘geocentric’ hypothesis). One of the most obvious things to be seen is that the sun rises and sets every day, and so it was believed that sun (and the stars and planets) rotate about the Earth, and that the most important things in the physical universe are human beings. Some people familiar with the Bible also believed that it taught all or most of this as religious truth.
Some even believed the Earth to be flat, and some of these believed the Bible taught this as well, but even in ancient times many understood that the Earth is spherical and that the Bible does not teach that it is flat. [There is however still a ‘flat-Earth society’, and they even have a web page.]
Later on it became the belief that the universe was a little larger than it had been thought to be, and that is was the sun which is at the center rather than the Earth, and everything rotated about the sun rather than about the Earth. Some people took this to mean that humans are less significant than they had considered themselves to be, and some assumed that all this disproved the divine origin of the Bible.
There is no scientific conflict with a claim that it has been divinely revealed that Earth is in some sense the center of the universe, since such a claim can neither be verified nor disproved, however there is a conflict with any claim that this 'geocentrism' has scientific rather than metaphysical meaning, in other words that it is in some sense rationally verifiable, which seems to be what modern geocentrists do indeed claim. A possibly more relevant religious issue today is whether the dethroning of humanity's home from a position at the geographical center of the universe neccesitates or implies humanity's concommitant 'insignificance', and the 'invalidity' of the Bible; certainly nothing in scientific theory would support such a contention, nor do most believers in the divine origin of the text of the Bible feel that human significance or the validity of the Bible are linked in any way to the validity of geocentrism, and so most do not feel any need to support modern geocentrism.Part II: The
Meaning of "Centre" in the word "Geocentrism"
Two Types of
Geocentrism
There are at least two important relative motions of the Earth and Sun, one composing the 24-hour daily cycle, and the other composing the 365-day annual cycle. Here we will deal first with geocentrism in the context of the 24-hour daily cycle.
Unambiguous Visual
GeoCentrism
The nail holding the hands of a clock is unambiguously at the center of a standard clock, and the hands rotate about it. When water drains from a tub into a small hole and a vortex is formed, the vortex is centered on the hole. These are two examples of visually established unambiguous centers.
If one had an unbiased view of the Earth and sun, eg a view from space, what would one see – the Earth going about the sun or the sun going about the Earth? In ancient times perhaps it was assumed by simpler people that the view from outside the Earth would show unambiguously that the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun went about it, just as unambiguously as the nail is the center of the clock and the hands go about it. We could term this “unambiguous visual geocentrism”.
Of course just as when one stands on the Earth and looks at the sun overhead (this is ‘the Earth’s rest frame) one sees that the sun rotates about the Earth making one complete revolution every 24 hours, if one were on the other hand to stand on the sun (this is ‘the Sun’s rest frame) and look at the Earth, one would see the Earth spin on its axis once every 24 hours[2]. Therefore there would be no way to settle the matter simply by a visual inspection of the Earth-sun system, and in visual terms it would simply be a matter of perspective (a matter of which frame you chose).
However, in ancient times and until relatively modern times the universe was considered to consist of just the Earth, sun, a few planets and some few thousand stars arranged in a sphere around the Earth. It was believed by most people that someone who could leave the Earth and gain the perspective of an outsider would see unambiguously that this was the case, and that the Earth was the center of the entire physical universe.
If the Earth is the fixed center of the universe (a frame at absolute rest) then the Earth’s perspective can be said to be absolute and therefore the ‘correct’ one, whereas if the sun is the fixed center then the view as seen from the sun is the ‘correct’ one. Since in ancient times it was believed that the Earth was the fixed center of the universe (and this fact could be established visually in an unambiguous way by an observer outside the Earth), the issue was settled.
Later when the sun was believed to be the center and the Earth to rotate about it, it was still believed that the universe was small and unambiguously centered on the sun, and so the matter was simply settled in the opposite way, and geocentrism gave way to helio(sun)centrism. Already at that time some people, thinking that the Bible taught a geocentric view, believed the Bible to be overthrown, but of course this was not so and even the scientists who overthrew the geocentric view accepted the truth of the Bible and did not think heliocentrism posed any challenge to it.
From web: Stanford Encyc:
extract, juxtaposed out of context: Copernican
theory. The significant point was not the replacement of the earth by the sun
as the center of all motion in the universe, but the recognition of both the
earth and the sun as merely possible points of view from which the motions of
the celestial bodies may be described. This implied that the basic task of
Ptolemaic astronomy — to represent the planetary motions by combinations of
circular motions — could take any point to be fixed, and that, as Copernicus
suggested in the opening arguments of “On the revolutions of the heavenly
spheres,” the choice of any particular point required some justification on other
than astronomical grounds.
neither Copernicus' nor Ptolemy's view can be true — though one may be
judged simpler than the other — because both are merely possible hypothetical
interpretations of the same relative motions. This principle clearly defines
(what we would call) a set of reference frames, differing in their arbitrary
choices of a resting point or origin, but agreeing on the relative positions of
bodies at any moment and their changing relative distances through time.
Nowadays we know that the universe is huge, not only compared to the Earth, and not only totally dwarfing our solar system with the sun and all its planets, but even making our entire galaxy seem tiny in comparison; indeed it may well be that the universe is infinite, and therefore has no unique center. Another possibility – raised by Riemann 150 years ago and later by Einstein – is that the universe is ‘closed’ and so it has no end, but also no unique center (see discussion later on). Either way neither the Earth nor its sun are at the center of the universe.
We know from photos taken by satellites and spacecraft and by infrared and microwave detectors that the universe is definitely not visually unambiguously geocentric, so this form of geocentrism has definitely been disproved.
Part III: GeoCentrism in General Relativity
In physics there is no real discussion of whether or not geocentrism is valid, since there is no scientific reason to suppose that it is. One might as well have a theory of moon-centrism, or of venus-centrism, and alpha-centauri-centrism, and this or that particle of dust-centrism, as many centers as there are points of space or particles in the universe, all competing for the title of THE center.
In fact, in modern cosmology the exact opposite is assumed, that the Earth is not in any special location: this is called 'the Copernican principle'. As a result one can assume that when looking out at the universe on the large scale, what one sees from Earth is in principle the same (in an overall, average sense) as what one would see from any other point in the universe.
The issue of geocentrism is not discussed, but a related matter is, and from that discussion one can see what the attitude of general relativity would be to geocentrism.
Newton proposed his 'bucket' experiment which is so incredibly simple – it just involves swinging an abject on a string around one's head yet illustrates a conundrum involving fundamental aspects of the universe, space and time (if you are interested in this issue, search on the web for 'Newton bucket', with perhaps the addition of the name 'Mach'). The basic issue is whether there is equal validity to considering the object rotating and the rest of the universe (the stars in the background) at rest, and the reverse, that the bucket is stationary and the rest of the universe, all the stars, are rotating. Those who would claim that physics indicates that both are equally valid, would see geocentrism, helio-centrism, and any other-centrism as all equally valid.
When standing on any given entity (choosing the frame of the Earth, sun, a planet or a star etc) one sees motion of the other entities about it; there is no unique center to compare things to, as there would be in a small universe with a visually unambiguous center. Since this is solely a matter of perspective, the question of ‘which rotates about which’ points to a more fundamental question: whether or not there really is some absolute sense in which one or the other perspective is the correct one (as discussed further below).
Modern physics teaches that there is no absolute frame, no one frame which is at rest in an absolute sense, and in any case there is no evidence that the Earth or the sun is ‘fixed’, and none that either is ‘the center’ of the universe, then both statements – that the Earth is the center and the sun rotates about it and the reverse statement that the sun is the center and the Earth rotates about it, are equally false, and it is all simply a matter of perspective. Thus not only visually unambiguous geocentrism is false but also any unambiguous geocentrism or heliocentrism is also incorrect scientifically, but a ‘relative geocentrism’ or heliocentrism or any other point or object centrism is scientifically valid as a perspective, a choice of frame.
Einstein’s general relativity formulates its equations to be independent of the frame chosen[3]. The true physics is in the phenomenon not the perspective, there is a relative rotation and that is real, but the question of which revolves about which is not physics, it is simply a matter of perspective (choice of reference frame).
Note: Of course one might assume that there IS an absolute rest frame, and perhaps the Earth is the arbiter of that frame since we don’t feel it to move, or if not, perhaps the sun, but neither is correct in the scientific sense, as discussed further below.
[There is of course another relative rotation, the yearly
cycle: ie a more perspicacious observer standing on the Earth would notice that
the rotation of the sun about the Earth is in a plane, and that the angle of
the plane changes in a cycle completed every 365 days. Any even
non-perspicacious observer on the sun would see that the Earth rotates about
the sun once every 365 of its days. Which perspective is correct? The answer is
again as above; see more discussion below.]
1) There is no scientific meaning to the question
"which REALLY rotates about which" since there is no measurable
'objective' etc means to make such a determination.
It is important to note that this does NOT mean that therefore the question is
open from the scientific viewpoint; from the scientific viewpoint it is a
scientifically MEANINGLESS question.
2) From the scientific point of view there is relative
rotation etc between the two and that is all that can meaningfully be said. It
is important to note that a theory which makes a determination as to which
'really' moves about which is NOT a more complete scientific theory, it is a
MEANINGLESS theory from the scientific viewpoint.
2) Science does not claim to have exclusive TRUTH, it deals only with issues
capable of resolution via 'objective/scientific' etc means, and so science does
not 'disallow' one from talking about religious or metaphysical truths, and so
for example science/scientists don't think science 'disallows' speaking about
"which one 'really' rotates about which" as long as one is not
claiming to be speaking from a scientific viewpoint, but is rather aware that
they are presenting metaphysical etc beliefs.
3)All the following statements are FALSE (not only from the scientific
viewpoint):
"science teaches that the earth rotates about the sun",
"science teaches (or the theory of relativity shows) that the sun rotates
about the earth"
"science cannot determine which one is really - in the scientific sense -
rotating about which"
"science has proven that the earth does NOT rotate about the sun"
"science has proven that the sun does NOT rotate about the earth"
Even the following statement is false: "it is equally true scientifically
to say that the earth rotates about the sun as to say that the sun rotates
about the earth". What is true is that THEY ARE IN RELATIVE ROTATION: and
THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO be said from the scientific viewpoint.
ASIDE: Worlds Within Worlds, and Gravity on the Brane: If we cut a
sentence into pieces, the pieces are not sentences, they are words. Cut a word
into pieces, the pieces are not words but letters. Using only twenty-six
letters in different combinations we can write the millions of words in
different European languages. Analogously, if we cut a chair in small pieces,
each piece is not a chair, it is wood. If we cut the wood into microscopic
pieces, we might get combinations of molecules we call wood, but cut that and
instead of molecules of wood each piece is an atom (or a combination of atoms
of various substances). There are about 100 atoms, and combining them in
various ways makes up the millions of different things we know of, whether
wood, stone, iron, molecules of DNA, air or the hydrogen which makes up the sun
etc. The ancient Greeks discussed the concept of 'atoms', that everything we
know of is composed of tiny substances which are not like the thing, but are
its elementary constituents. At some point, science's conception of the
large-scale universe was of the solar system, composed of the sun at center and
planets orbiting it, and the conception of the universe at the smallest scale
was of atoms with nucleus at the center and electrons orbiting it. The fanciful
speculation was then raised that perhaps this structure obtained at other
levels higher and lower – that the solar system was an atom of a higher-level
universe and the atoms of our universe were solar systems of tinier universes.
Today we have other speculations derving from the conception of gravity, to the
effect that our entire 3-d universe is only a 'sheet' or '(mem)brane' in a higher-dimensional
universe. In such a universe, defining the 'center' is a totally different
task.
Einstein’s General
Relativity and Geo- or Helio- Centrism
According to present day scientific assumption/theory/model
there is no particular location in the universe which is special, no place or
object which is stationary in the absolute sense; therefore the only type of
motion which can be meaningfully discussed is the relative motion between
(somewhat nearby)objects.
According to the modern scientific view the Aristotelian
system is INCORRECT (it attributed intelligence to the planets etc to explain
their motion), the Heliocentric and geocentric models are WRONG if they are
meant to imply that there is a unique center to the universe and/or that there
is some part of the universe which is uniquely at rest (the sun, or the earth,
or anything else) so that other things orbit them while they are stationary.
What one sees from a satellite is different from what one
sees from earth or from the sun, or from a merry-go-round while you are
standing on your head and doing somersaults: the pattern that is seen is
different, but they all are due to relative motion. Some reference frames, for
example one located on the sun, are more useful in that they produce simpler
patterns for the relative motions. But the sun is NOT STATIONARY in an absolute
sense and so it is only one of an infinite amount of valid reference frames
from which to describe the RELATIVE MOTION of the earth and sun.
Relevant Quotes from Prominent Scientists [4]
As the eminent Astronomer and General Relativist Sir Arthur Eddington
said: "...on the most modern scientific theory there is no absolute distinction
between the heavens revolving around the earth and the earth revolving under
the heavens; both parties are (relatively) right."
The great mathematician and philosopher Whitehead wrote[5]:
"Geocentrism and heliocentrism seem contradictory but relativity shows
both are true; of course if both are true, this means that neither are
‘unambiguously’ correct, they are simply valid perspectives."
As the brilliant mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russel,
a colleague of Whitehead, wrote: "whether the earth rotates once a day
from west to east as Copernicus taught, or the heavens revolve once a day from
east to west, as his predecessors held, the observed phenomena will be the
same; a metaphysical assumption has to be made"
Of course, a description of the universe in terms of a non-geocentric system
is simpler. However as the well-known philosopher of science Hans Reichenbach
wrote[10]:
"...the idea of simplicity cannot be used to decide between the Ptolemaic and Copernican conceptions. The Copernican conception is indeed simpler, but this does not make it any 'truer', since this simplicity is descriptive. The simplicity is due to the fact that one of the conceptions employs more expedient definitions. But the objective state of affairs is independent of the choice of definitions; this choice can result in a simpler description, but it cannot yield a 'truer' picture of the world. That these definitions, e.g. the definition of rest according to Copernicus, lead to a simpler description, of course expresses a feature of reality and is therefore an objective statement. The choice of the simplest description is thus possible only with the advance of knowledge and can in general be carried though only within certain limits. One description may be simplest for some phenomena while a different description may be simplest for others; but no simplest description is distinguished from other descriptions with regard to truth. The concept of truth does not apply here, since we are dealing with definitions.
Part IV: What Was Disproved
by Science: what is wrong, what is not wrong
There is one sense in which geocentrism was perhaps disproved. When people asserted that the Earth is the center of the universe, they presumably assumed that if one were able to go out into space and look, one would in fact see that the Earth is the center of the universe and the sun and stars go round it - I'll call that 'visually unambiguous geocentrism'. Certainly in the old conception of the 'small universe' this would be evident. And if the Earth was not at the geographical center, It would be the 'center of attention' or the 'central element' in that the sun would seem to be serving its needs by orbiting it, and the stars rotating about it in a circle.
However by the time of Copernicus it was realized that visually unambiguous geocentrism' is false; were one to stand on the sun and look at the Earth one would feel the sun is stationary and that the Earth goes around it, whereas as we well know, standing on the Earth one feels the Earth to be stationary and the sun goes around IT; and so on for other bodies, ie there is nothing unambiguous about the matter.
Furthermore, later discoveries showed that the solar-centered theory is also incorrect in that the universe is much larger than just the solar system and so the sun is not at all the center of the universe - it isn't even at the center of our galaxy. And the universe is certainly not 'small' - in all directions there are billions of galaxies composed of billions of stars, and there is no particularly visually unambiguous special placement of the Earth. In space, standing on some nearby star for example, one would simply see relative motion between the sun and the Earth (see technical section for explanation).
Also, scientific belief holds that:
·
there is no scientifically
definable unique center to the universe;
·
one can choose any point in the
universe as center with equal legitimacy or illegitimacy.
As a result it isn't true that the geocentric model is
invalid, it is simply no more or less valid scientifically than any other.
However, any claim that in fact the Earth is at the center of the universe
though not disprovable is also not provable, and so it is not a scientific
claim but rather a metaphysical one.
After the development of general relativity (GR) one would
not say that geocentrism is false, merely that it is as valid a perspective as
any other; it would be incorrect to state that scientifically the sun goes
around the Earth, but true to say that scientifically the frame in which one
considers the sun to be going around the Earth is as valid as the one in which
the Earth goes around the sun. However as a metaphysical statement one could
state that the sun goes around the Earth rather than v.v., but that this is not
scientifically demonstrable, within the confines of scientific
observation/verification there is no difference between any of these
perspectives and so the statement has no scientific meaning.
The equations of orbits also do not lead to either
unambiguous geocentrism or to unambiguous heliocentrism, they lead to totally
ambiguous 'relativism', ie that only the relative motion is absolute, all else
('geocentrism' or 'heliocentrism') is a matter of perspective. However,
although 'visually unambiguous geocentrism' is false, the statement "the
sun orbits the Earth" is not incorrect, it is simply a statement of how
things look from the Earth and physics after GR accepts such a statement as no
less valid than the one formulated according to how things would look from the
sun, ie "the Earth goes around the sun".
Scientifically
Non-Meaningful Statements
The existence of God is neither experimentally verifiable
nor falsifiable and so within the context of science the statement that God
exists is neither true nor false, it simply has no scientific meaning. The same
is true of both unambiguous geocentrism and unambiguous heliocentrism.
The Orbit of the Planets and
of Earth about the Sun
Taking records over a period of a few hours at night, one
sees the lights in the sky move across the sky, and so one comes to the
conclusion that there is a relative motion between them and Earth.
A careful observer will notice larger clearer lights and
smaller more shimmering ones. Taking records over a period of a few hours at
night, one sees the motion of the smaller lights move uniformly, whereas the
larger lights move about in very different patterns. One comes to the
conclusion that they are different entities and located at different places.
These are the planets (clearer, larger) and stars (shimmering/'twinkling',
smaller). There is a relative motion of the stars, planets and Earth can be ascribed
either to the motion of the planets and stars about the Earth, or to some other
motion. As recognized by Copernicus, the simplest pattern is formed when one
assumes that the planets including the Earth move about the sun, while the
stars are stationary, far away from the sun, planets and Earth.
It was then claimed that the sun was the unambiguous
center of the universe rather than the Earth, and the proponents of geocentrism
were discredited, but only in order to put forward the new idea of helio(sun)centrism.
Of course from the modern perspective, the ‘disproof’ of
geocentrism is itself ‘disproved’; both geo-centrism and helio-centrism are equally
incorrect as cosmology but equally correct as perspectives.
“Center” Issues and their Resolution
The issue of which is the center, the earth or the sun, or
any other point in the universe, actually involves several issues: which is at
the center of the universe, which is at the center of revolution ie which
revolves about which, and which is more central ie more important. In addition
there was the issue of whether or not the Earth moves at all, irrespective of
whether or not it is at the center.
Nowadays we know of two separate motions of the Earth, the
spin or rotation about the the axis which produces night/day variation, and the
orbit about the sun, which has virtually nothing to do with the seasons - the
seasons are due the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of orbit.]
It seems that geocentrists believed the Earth to be not only at the center of
the universe and at the center of rotation of the sun, but also that it is
stationary. [And perhaps they would not have said that the Earth's axis is
tilted but rather that there is a tilt to the plane of the sun's orbit about
the Earth.]
Basically today we'd say that the first issue is meaningless from the scientific point of view since there is no such thing as the center of the universe, the second issue is meaningless since there's a relative orbiting/revolution of the sun and Earth (they revolve about each other) and there's no justification to claiming that one is unambiguously at the center of the orbit while the other revolves about it, and the third issue is moot for the same reason as the second - there's a relative spin between the sun and the Earth, and there's no justification to claiming that one is unambiguously moving and the other is at rest. Also, the second and third issues are fully settled visually and calculationally, since it is clear that it is far simpler to visualize the earth-sun motion, and to calculate it, if one considers the sun as stationary and the Earth orbiting it while spinning on its axis.
Part V: Religion, the Bible,
and GeoCentrism
The Church and the Copernican Model
The Church claimed that the Bible taught that the Ptolemaic geocentric system was correct, ie that the Earth is at the center of the universe, and that the sun and planets go around it. After Copernicus, people claimed that this picture was untrue and that the true model is the Copernican helio-centric (solar-centered) picture of the universe, ie the sun is at the center of the universe and the Earth goes around it, and therefore the Bible's teaching is false and therefore the Bible does not originate with God.
Of course when picturing the 'small universe' one could
imagine the Earth being at the bottom with the sun in the middle to better
serve the earth, and the stars on top, also to serve the Earth. It certainly
would not necessarily be the case that a created universe, in which humanity is
the most significant, and in which the sun and stars orbit the earth would
necessarily have the earth at the center, so 'geocentrism' really does not mean
the belief that the earth is at the exact center of some limited-size universe
but rather that the sun unequivocally goes around the earth, instead of the
opposite. And that the earth is somehow 'central' to the (purpose of the)
universe.
The Biblical (Torah) phrase
'the sun rises'
The Torah uses the phrase 'the sun rises' in various
contexts while making a point, eg as if one were to say 'pay your night workers
right after they finished work, not days later, so pay might-laborers when the
sun rises', however it does not state as a teaching "the sun rises rather
than the Earth moving". So clearly the issue is not whether or not it is
the earth or the sun which moves but rather when to pay one's worker and it is
unimportant which moves around which, that is not the focus of the Torah’s
teaching on the matter. And when it says something like "you will be
rewarded/punished as surely as the sun rises" this has nothing to do with
which one moves but rather it is an expression of inevitability, ie one should
be as sure of the reward/punishment as one is of the sun appearing after a
certain amount of night.
In any case, even those who believe in the divine origin of every word of the Torah do not believe the phrases such as “and God saw”, imply that God has eyes or that the phrase ‘God stretched out His hand’ or ‘God went down …to see’ implies God has hands or goes from place to place, or needs to in order to see better. The sages taught that ‘the Torah speaks in the language of humans’, and there are many cases of this in the Torah and certainly ‘the sun rises’ can be taken as one of them and so there is no religious need to claim that the Torah mandates a belief in geocentrism.
Jewish understanding of the Torah, based on teachings
handed down orally from Moses to the sages of his time and from then on down
the ages clearly indicate the one should not necessarily interpret every phrase
literally when it speaks of cosmology. Rather than religious people having to
defend themselves by trying to prove that the phrase "sun rise" in
the Torah does not mean that God requires people to believe in geocentrism, on
the contrary, it would be incumbent on a critic to prove that - according to
Jewish conception - when the words 'as the sun rises' were placed in the Torah
they were meant by God to be literal and religiously-binding teachings about
the motions of bodies in the heavens.
Those who believed the universe to be earth-centered of
course were not likely to have done so due to an understanding of General Relativity.
Nor does it mean that those who believe in the divine origin of every word of
the Torah should necessarily interpret every phrase literally when it speaks of
cosmology (see discussions of allegories in the Torah) – when the words 'as the
sun rises' were placed in the Torah it is not at all obvious that they were
meant to be literal teachings about the motions of bodies in the heavens.
Certainly however, it is not scientifically necessary for those who disbelieve
in the Torah to insist that the geocentric-seeming terminology employed in it
is necessarily an indication of its non-divine origin.
Does the Bible require belief in geocentrism?
The great majority of Orthodox Jewish Rabbinic authorities and their followers, who believe that the Torah (which Christians call "the old testament") as given by word-for-word dictation to Moses, do NOT believe that the Torah presents geocentrism as a doctrine, and do NOT believe the earth to be the center of the universe. This is not a 'modern' rethinking of old positions, nor is it the view only of heretics or the less-religious: Copernican theory and geocentrism was never a contentious issue in Judaism, and even the most fervent, devout, saintly and scholarly among Orthodox do not believe geocentrism is Biblically-mandated, and do not believe in geocentrism.
Even among the most Orthodox Jews only a small minority (the group known as Chabad Lubavitch) believe in geocentrism, and believe the Torah teaches it. Similarly, many Christians feel that belief in the Bible as divinely- revealed word of God requires belief in geocentrism, but many devout Christians do not believe this. So it would be incorrect to say in a blanket statement that those who believe in the Bible or in the Bible as divinely-revealed word of God believe in geocentrism, though it would be true to say that some do. An impartial observer could not justifiably claim that the Bible teaches geocentrism, rather the claim could only be made that some religious people believe it does.
Science and Religion
It is incorrect to say that "science disproved the geocentric model in favor of the heliocentric" or even that "science proved that the geocentric model is incorrect". Furthermore, science does not offer any scientific objection to someone claiming some religious truth that in some sense the earth is the "center" of the universe, just as science does not have objections to other religious claims such as the existence of God, or of revelation or miracles. What is objected to by science would be a claim that there is scientific content in these claims, ie that they can be proven by objective human measurement or experiment. As long as it is a metaphysical claim, there is no connection to science and therefore no objection from science.
Similarly, if what is being claimed is only the validity of
a perspective, even one from which to perform a measurement, then science has
no objection.
There is no scientific experiment which proves God exists or does not exist. Therefore the statement “God exists” is not scientifically correct or incorrect, it is simply a metaphysical statement, which science does not deal with since the terms can not be defined in a way which gives them scientific meaning. Similarly the statement ‘the Earth is the center of the universe and the sun rotates about it’ is not necessarily scientifically wrong, it is simply a metaphysical statement; ‘geocentric’ belief is not 'scientific' in that it has no scientific meaning, and so 'geocentrism' is not 'scientifically wrong', it is simply a metaphysical or religious belief. What IS false is that geocentrism is a valid scientific interpretation of the universe.
VI. Existentialist Despair
and the Significance of Humanity
The earliest conception of the universe may well have been
that of a flat Earth at the bottom of the universe, the sun at the center to
give it light and warmth, and the stars at the edges. Certainly the conception
was mostly of a stationary Earth and an orbiting sun. This is reflected in the
phrase "sun rise" and "sun set" meaning the sun moves
around the Earth to make day/night cycles. The wording of the Torah reflects
this language use.
In phrases such as 'the central point', the word 'central' means something like 'the most important'. To a large degree the reason that people believed the Earth is at the center of the universe was because they believed that it was most important, so the issue of significance is tied up with the issue of location. Earth was considered to be most important because humans lived on it, and humans were considered to be the most important entities in the physical universe. Thus the issue of geocentrism was closely tied to the issue of the 'centrality' of humanity in the universe. It was therefore almost inevitable that when geocentrism was dethroned, so too would be the notion of the significance of humanity.
The connection between the two aspects of 'centrality'
went two ways. To many people the implication of this belief that the Earth is
at the center of the universe was that human are the most important component
of the universe. Conversely to many it was probably obvious or important that
Earth is at the center of the universe due to the belief that humans are the
most important part of the universe.
However from a philosophical or religious point of view there is certainly not necessarily a connection between all these different concepts. Being at the center it is not an indication of centrality to purpose. A large hall created for people to walk in can have a ceiling at the top with various designs, and chandeliers hanging down to the center. Though the chandeliers are at the center and people walk on the bottom, on the floor, clearly the room was designed for the needs of people, not for the lights. Similarly it can certainly be that a Creator who considers the Earth as most important, would created the sun at the center of the 'small' universe, with the stars on top, in order for both to best serve the Earth at the bottom of the universe.
A location at 'the center of space' is neither a
requirement of being the most important or 'central' aspect of the universe,
nor is it always a sufficient indication of centrality of importance (it is
neither necessary nor sufficient). Nevertheless, somehow the two concepts
became intertwined: Human significance became tied to the idea of the 'central'
position of the Earth.
EgoCentrism and GeoCentrism
Although the fact
that the Earth orbits the sun does not by itself imply that it is less
significant than it, but when one considers the Earth as just one of many
planets orbiting the sun, then it seems as though the Earth is no more
significant than the other planets. So it is perhaps the existence of other
planets which makes the Earth seem less significant, not the issue of which
orbits which.
But of course if the other planets do not have life then
the one with life is most significant from the human perspective. And if planets
form in a way which leads inevitably to many - eg condensation from a large
'cloud' of matter orbiting the sun - then the existence of the others is not an
indication of Earth's insignificance; on the contrary, it can be believed that all
the others were created as part of a pre-planetary 'matter cloud' so that the Earth be able to
emerge from it.
Some believe that the physical smallness of the solar system
relative to the universe renders humanity insignificant, and totally refutes
the validity of the humanity-centered Bible, and many assert an existential
meaningless instead. This is of course a very logically-flawed argument, since
one has nothing to do with the other. Instead of this issue of the significance
or insignificance of humanity and its relation to the location of the Earth
being seen as a philosophical or scientific issue, it is a statement of human
psychology: many people believed the universe was small and the Earth was at
the center, they believed their significance derived from the physical
centrality of the Earth and from the fact that Earth is a major component of
the universe. When they become aware that this is not so, and experienced a psychological
shock and became convinced that they are not in fact significant cosmically.
In some sense existential despair is a form of EgoCentrism
as great as that underlying GeoCentrism – both are projections onto the
universe of one’s psychological reaction to the universe.
In actuality, of course the size of the universe, the placement of the Earth within it, and what rotates about what all have nothing to do with human significance. And the Torah (what Christains call 'The Old Testament") certainly did not link the significance of humanity to the placement of the Earth. And in any case the Torah does not teach that the Earth is at the center or that the sun goes about the Earth – and even the scientists who discovered that the old ideas of science were wrong believed in the Bible and did not think that it taught these incorrect ideas. The location of the Earth and the question of what rotates about what is a purely-scientific issue.
Although that really ties up the matter, we’ll continue to make some other interesting points. For example, it certainly is the case that from the Torah perspective humans are very significant and that their significance is not tied to their relative size compared to the rest of the universe, however Maimonides taught that humans are NOT the most significant intelligent entities in the universe. This is not to say that Judaism accept that indeed humans are insignificant, just that both statements – that humans are insignificant or that they are necessarily the most significant – may be untrue according to Judaism.
Also, the statement that some fact of astronomy proves that humans are insignificant is an untrue statement since science does not deal with the significance of humanity, which is a matter either for sociology, evolutionary psycho-biology, or metaphysics.
Is Human Life Significant?
What is “Significance’?
When we see a colored object, though the light waves coming from it have a certain frequency of course the 'color' is a sensation our minds create when our brain has the light waves as input. The color is not a property of the object, it is a property of our mind's reaction to the object. When we say a food is delicious, we mean not there is 'deliciousness' in the food, but rather our mind gives us the sensation of 'delicious' when our brain feeds us the sensory input from our taste-buds.
Similarly, “significance” is a conception of the human mind, not a property of an entity. The feeling that something is significant is just that, a feeling. That which is considered significant is not in itself significant since the significance does not reside in the entity or event, but rather the feeling of significance is an aspect of the mind which feels the sense of significance: ‘significant’ describes not the referent but the reaction of a mind to it; ‘significance’ is a feeling we have in relation to something, not a property of that something (object or event etc).
Endowing Something With Significance
Similarly, nothing can be ‘given significance’, e.g. a death cannot be endowed with significance by some action of the survivors; the significance is forever resident in the mind of the feeler, just that as a turn of phrase we can say for short that the significance lies in the object/person etc.
[The same for ‘meaning’ and for ‘beauty’.]
To give significance to one’s life, or endow it with meaning, is the same as to see it as beautiful, i.e. it is to have the feeling of significance/meaning/beauty associated with the thought of one’s life. The significance/meaning/beauty are not properties of the life lived but are words describing the feelings of the mind contemplating that life.
Love and Significance (the significant
other)
‘Human life is significant/insignificant’ is a statement of the feeling of a mind in reaction to something, it cannot be an ‘objective’ statement about the things/entities/people themselves outside the mind that feels this.
To say that e.g. ‘love gives significance to human life’ means that some person/people feel a sense of the significance of their/another’s/human life when they are in love or feel love etc and the memory of this feeling gives rise later to the statement ‘love gives significance to human life’.
Human Significance and the Size of the
Universe
As some would put it, a Human is a being evolved from slime crawling on the face of a speck of dirt in a galaxy which is itself an insignificant speck in the universe.
In actuality however, whatever the size of the universe etc, life is neither significant nor insignificant; rather the contemplation of the size of the universe can give rise to feelings in some people of the significance/insignificance of life.
Should the size of the universe etc give rise to the feeling of human insignificance? Is it irrational to feel otherwise?
Well, in any case often feelings have nothing to do with what is rational intrinsically. But in this case, since objectively neither are factually correct, logic is not relevant. Whatever people feel they feel. Perhaps if we knew all there was to know about human brains etc, we could predict what a ‘rational’ mind would feel upon being presented with the understanding of the size of the universe, and then expect that as the ‘rational’ feeling. As it stands, since some people feel one way and others another, there does not seem to be anything intrinsic in the wiring of the human brain which establishes the necessity of all human brains reacting in one particular way.
When Significance Does Not Exist
Since significance is a property of the mind of a sentient being, if there is no sentience extant, or no sentience exists which is capable of experiencing the feeling of significance, then there is indeed no significance to anything in the universe, indeed the concept of significance has no meaning, it would never arise, no entity would say ‘significance is meaningless’ because they would not even understand the concept - no, the concept would not even exist - and it must first exist for it to be incomprehensible.
Human Significance, The Anthropic
Principle & Cosmology
There is an anecdote about husbands discussing who in the household makes the important decisions, and they agree that they do, for example what foreign policy the country ought to have, and they leave the small decisions to their wives for example which school to send their children to.
What are the important or significant things? Of course ‘importance’ or ‘significance’ are human concepts, referring to the feeling in a human mind that something is important or significant. If we want a theory of the universe, what is it that we seek – a theory of the most significant things, ie those which humans feel are most significant, like the meaning in life, or its purpose, or all about love. Of course physics doesn’t deal with any of this, it deals with the truly important things , like how old the universe is, what it is mostly made of and how it evolved to this point.
What’s more fundamental – sociology, psychology or physics? According to reductionism all sociology is neurophysiology which ultimately is physics. However there’s a loop since the particles of physics, eg the electron, is essentially a concept, which combines in it all the theoretical understandings associated with correlations between certain measurements and equations, and all this is in the human mind. Maybe physics will give us keys to understanding the physical universe which will then help us understand (eg via neuro-physiology and evolutionary biology) something about the human mind which will help us understand why we feel that this or that is significant, and help us understand why we think in terms of causality at all, and why we come up with models like ‘an electron’.
In the meantime though physics ignores everything about mind and about life and when coming up with a theory of cosmology it ignores even the existence of planets and even of individual star systems. For he cosmology of general relativity the universe is essentially just a gas of particles. It is quite amazing that by employing these models one can make predictions that are later verified! Somehow there is a disconnect between levels, whatever we don’t know about the mind doesn’t seem to interfere with learning about the big bang (but of course again the big bang theory is an invention of the human mind etc).
The anthropic principle is another area where these considerations are relevant. It has been applied to cosmology, to say that the fact that the universe is as we see it to be because various types of universe could have emerged but only one type is consistent with what we see around us. Clearly humans – with very sophisticated brains - have been produced in this universe, and the production of complex organisms such as cells, and of human brains require certain types of physics, requires particles and atoms and molecules and therefore quantum mechanics and SR, and so on, and therefore we should not be surprised to see about us a universe with particles and quantum mechanics and SR. There may have been/be other universes without these but there would be no brains to observe their existence. The anthropic principle has been applied in various ways, some quite controversial. Basically its applicability depends on an assumption as to the specialness of humans, and perhaps of 'life' and 'mind' – are these two special, other than the rest of the physical universe, or are they simply complex organization of the same thing as the inanimate; does the universe have to be a very specific type in order for us to have developed, or is our universe not significantly different at the physics level than a universe in which life and mind could not have developed – or would they necessarily develop in any universe which would also produce the elementary particles we know of, and would produce plastic and wood. It may well be that the existence of minds require some very subtle and sophisticated properties in the universe, perhaps already present at the origin, and these might also explain matters of interest to cosmology. Or it might be that one could ignore mind in theories of the universe at all levels and it is only incidental in physics and cosmology. We simply do not know yet enough cosmology and enough about the mind in order to make a real judgment.
VII. How My Article has been misunderstood
by both fundamentalists and atheists:
Fundamentalists: Some religious fundamentalists
have understood my article as intended as a proof that indeed the sun orbits
the Earth in an absolute sense, with the implication that this is somehow a
scientific statement, whereas as we indicated above it can only be meaningful
in a metaphysical sense, whereas as a scientific statement it is false. Some
have also thought that my article claims Judaism believes the Bible teaches
this type of geocentrism, whereas in fact it is my impression that most
Orthodox Religious sages today and in previous times do not feel the Bible
teaches this at all; even at the time of Copernicus there never seemed to be
any Jewish problem with Copernican teachings, it was simply seen as a matter
for science to determine.
Atheists: On the other side of the fence, atheists or those hostile to Biblical religion have misunderstood my article and interpreted it as though I were claiming that 'unambiguous geocentrism' is scientifically valid. In addition, when in my writings (for example the original article of which this is a revised & condensed version, or my article on evolution, the big bang, and the bible) I make statements such as 'the Creator could have made the Earth in such a way that…" I do not mean that I am assuming that there necessarily exists a creator, but rather I am talking about a scenario in which it is assumed that there is a creator.
My articles are meant to bring a scientific perspective to religious people, and a religious perspective to scientifically-minded people, and so are couched in the terminologies of both religion and science. The original article was published in a fundamentalist journal, and so has a somewhat religious slant, but careful readers will see that its intent is the same that of this revised version. In general, I believe that those reading my articles carefully rather than cursorily or with an agenda will not misunderstand them in the ways outlines above.
Appendix: Technical Point: The Microwave Background
Radiation and Broken Symmetry
A pen balanced on
its tip will soon fall - and after it stops moving it will point in a specific
direction. Is there physical significance to that direction?
As the pen is
balance don its tip, it is subject constantly to the random motions of air
molecules bombarding it from all sides. There is constant fluctuation in the
amount and strength of bombardment in each direction and at each place on the
pen, and very soon there will be slightly more bombardment at one place on one
side of the pen then on other sides and at that instant the pen will tip over.
Since the direction of the push is random and could easily have been another
direction, indeed a bunch of pens stood on their points will fall in different
ways and point in different directions, there is no physical significance to
the direction that the pen points.
Since the pen
initially was symmetric with respect to all directions and now is not, this is
called ‘broken symmetry’, with the term applied to situations where the
breaking of the symmetry is due to physical causes but the specific way it is
broken (eg the direction chosen) is random and has no intrinsic physical
significance.
The big bang
initial explosion resulted in radiation which turns out nowadays to be in the
microwave range. Since it occurred at the initial instant when the universe was
basically a point, it is detected anywhere in the universe, and at any point
will be seen to be coming equally from all directions.
Of course if one
travels in any direction at some speed there will be a Doppler effect and the
radiation will appear differently in different directions, and so one can
calibrate one’s instruments anywhere in the universe so that they move in all
directions at all speeds until they find that the radiation is arriving in the
same amount and same frequency from all directions. The set of all such
instruments in the universe then specifies a unique ‘frame’. Is this then an
absolute frame, against which all other frames are moving?
One can of course
use that way, to tell civilizations far away what the speed of one’s galaxy is
relative to the microwave background radiation, but this specific frame of the
radiation is a random ‘choice’, it is an example of broken symmetry, and the
direction has no intrinsic physical significance and it is not meaningful to
say that this one frame is at rest and all others are in motion.
Appendix: Geo-stationary satellites
Question asked by a reader: “How can one explain geo-stationary satellites from the geocentric view? If the earth is spinning so are the satellites. But if the earth is still, then the satellites aren’t moving either. If so, what keeps them up?”
First of all, in physics
'geocentric' or 'heliocentric' is not of a view of how things are, it is simply
a choice of coordinate system, which is always based on some one point as
center, and a choice of reference frame which takes one thing or actually one
frame as stationary and everything else is measured relative to it (re thing vs
frame: one generally needs objects to specify a frame, and the frame can be
chosen so that one specific thing/object is stationary).
However the real physics is without coordinates and reference frames and General Relativity is formulated in mathematical symbols/concepts that are coordinate-free and reference-frame independent. Of course in order to make a prediction as to what we would find if we measured such and such or saw such and such phenomenon, one needs to know from what frame and coordinate system the measurement or observation will be made - eg if one will be standing on Earth and looking at the sky then the coordinate system and reference frame will be 'geocentric' - and then we can choose that frame and coordinate system in the calculations of the prediction of how things would look from that coordinate system/frame, but the resulting statement or prediction is not a physics theory. It is simply a statement of physics as expressed in a particular choice of coordinates/reference frame.
So physics does not support the
statement that the universe is centered on the sun or Earth or other body or
point in space or event in spacetime – after all, if the sun is the center or
Earth is, or any other thing or point, physics would ask what keeps it at the
center, and what made it the center, and what makes the sun go around the Earth
rather than vice versa, or if it is a point in space then why is that place
special - none of this is explicable or sensible within physics, so this is not a physics view at all, instead
it is a choice of coordinate system/reference frame. What physics (Einstein)
tells us, and general relativity formulates is that it is not wrong to choose
any coordinate system centered on any given point, any reference frame anchored
to any object. The physics is consistent in any given choice but the true
equations of the theory itself are formulated in a way that is independent of
these specific choices.
So to answer the question: general relativity is a local theory, where local is
a subtle concept. In this context the local frame of the satellite includes a
small region of spacetime close to it and not including the Earth. It is in
free fall, as are all orbiting objects (the Earth and the satellite are both in
free fall), and does not experience inertial accelerations or forces so there
is no need for it to explain anything at all, it is to all intents and purposes
either stationary or moving with constant speed. That it is in orbit is only
known when including the Earth in the picture and then the frame is not local
anymore. To really understand this one would need to read a lot more on the
subject.
Looked at another way, if one attempted to explain things from a reference
frame anchored on the Earth+sattelite one would have to account for the general
relativistic effects on the sattelite of all the rest of the universe whirling
about the Earth at a high speed, which might just pull it away from the Earth
enough to keep it at a certain height. But more correctly, if one tries to
includes both the Earth and the satellite in one ‘local reference frame’ since
they are not in motion relative to each other and one tries to really take this
frame seriously then one is going out of the realm of validity of general
relativity and physics and if so then whatever keeps the Earth where it is as opposed
to everything else in the universe which is moving around it (eg the sun) also
keeps the satellite there.
Appendix: Why Would we think that the Sun and the Earth
Go Round Each other?
Everyone clearly notices that the sun appears at the
horizon on one side of the sky and disappears at the horizon on the other side
of the sky. If one assumes it maintains its circular shape as it disappears,
then one concludes that it actually goes below the horizon rather than being
extinguished. Then the same applies at the appearance of the sun, it does not
grow in size as it appears, rather it comes complete from below the horizon.
Either the sun then is destroyed or thrown out or used for something else and
another is made for the appearance on the other side 12 hours later, or it is
the same sun, and so the implication is that it goes below the Earth after
disappearing and travels underneath the Earth to the other side to appear from
there.
If it shouldn't get too close to the underside of the
Earth in order not to burn it, the sun should maintain distance as it travels,
but perhaps does move closer and travels along the perhaps flat underside of
the Earth.
Then one realizes that the Earth is a sphere, and so the
picture is even nicer, the sun orbits the Earth and thus gives light and warmth
to all parts of the Earth in succession. [11]
……………………..
1. Mach’s Principle: From Newton’s Bucket to Quantum
Gravity, edited by Julian
Barbour and Herbert Pfister (Birkhauser, Boston, MA, 1995),
p. 530; 21 different
formulations are listed.
2. Denis. W. Sciama, The Unity of the Universe
(Anchor Books, New York, NY, 1961).
3. Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics (Open Court
Publishing Co..
6th ed. Originally Published as Die Mechanik in ihrer
Entwicklung historisch-kritisch
darstellt . 9th
Edition.
4. Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy (University of
California Press,
5. Ref. 3, p.
xxviii.
6. Ref. 3, p. 279.
7. Ref. 3, p. 341, emphasis in the original.
8. Max Jammer, Concepts of Space (Harper Torchbooks,
New York, NY, 1954), p. 141,
quotes the 4th German edition of Ref. 3 wherein Mach states
that “… for me, above all,
there is only relative motion, and in this respect I cannot
make any difference between
rotation and translation.” (our translation).
9. John Norton, “Mach’s principle before Einstein,“ in Ref.
1, pp. 9-55, 36.
10. Georges Sagnac, C. R. Acad. Sci.
154, 708-710,
1410-1413 (1913). Albert A. Michelson,
“The effects of the Earth’s rotation on the velocity of
light,” Phil. Mag.
8, 716-719
(1904).
11. Robert Wood, Physical Optics (Dover Publications,
Inc., New York, NY, 1967), 3rd
ed., p. 29.
12. Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew
Sands, The Feynman Lectures in
Physics,
Vol. II (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. , Reading, MA, 1964) p. 14-7.
13. With terrestrial pendula one does not consider the
rotation of the pendulum bob for
the bob partakes of the rotation of the earth.
14. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (Bonanza
Books.
15. The first part, up to “actual” is from Ref. 3, p. 279
(immediately preceding Statement 1).
The remainder is from Ref. 3, p. 284.
16. Ref. 3, p. 393.
17. Ref. 3, p. 187.
18. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution
(Vintage Books,
1959), p. 187.
19. Robert W. Brehme, Am. J. Phys.
44, 506-514
(1976).
20. Ref. 3, p. 280 (emphasis in the original). See also p.
271.
21. Ref. 3, p. 160.
22. Mario Bunge, Am. J. Phys.
34, 585-596
(1966).
23. Albert Einstein, “Autobiographical notes,” in Albert
Einstein Philosopher Scientist, edited
by Paul Schilp (Tudor Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1949),
p. 21.
24. John Earman, World Enough and Space-Time, Absolute
Versus Relational Theories of Space
and Time
(MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989).
25. Ref. 23, p. 69.
26. Ref. 22, p. 589. Bunge lists Duhem, Pearson, Le Roy,
Goodman, Reichenbach, and Frank as
authorities who agree with Statement 2.
27. Ref. 3, p. 284.
28. Joseph Norwood, Jr., Intermediate Classical Mechanics
(Prentice Hall,
Cliffs, NJ, 1979), p. 274.
29. Hans Reichenbach, The
Philosophy of Space and Time (
1957), p. 254, and From Copernicus to Einstein (Dover
Publications, New York, NY, 1980), p.
84.
30. Ronald Adler, Maurice Bazin, and Menahem Schiffer, Introduction
to General
Relativity
(McGraw Hill Book Co., New York, NY, 1975), 2nd ed., pp. 437-448.
31. Carl Hoefer, “Einstein’s formulation of Mach’s
principle,” in Ref. 1, pp. 67-90, 80.
32. Clifford Will, “Testing Machian effects in laboratory
and space experiments,“ in Ref. 1, pp.
365-386.
33. Ref. 24.
…..…………END………
[1]
A condensed version of a long article of mine in
B'ohr HaTorah many years ago, reprinted in "Science in the Light of Torah"
(Hardcover) 1994. By Herman Branover (Editor), Ilana C. Attia (Editor) http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568210345/701-3640134-8113113
. The version here is edited and contains some
addition material. Although the longer article is written for the lay
reader, it might nevertheless be considered somewhat technical by readers
unused to physics; it is also long, so that readers may not see the forest for
the trees. As a result, reading this condensed version with a clear statement
of the essential points as an introduction can be very useful.
[2] Of course the sun spins as well, but we ignore this here.
[3] and independent of the coordinate system chosen [actually the coordinate system includes the frame].
[5]
“Science and the modern World” Alfred North
Whitehead 1925
[7]
"
[9] Mach wrote:
(from Web) “the Ptolemaic or Copernican view is our interpretation, but both
are equally actual …The motions of the universe are the same whether we adopt
the Ptolemaic or the Copernican mode of view. Both are indeed equally correct;
only the latter is more simple and more practical. The universe
is not twice given, with an earth at rest and an earth in motion; but
only once, with its relative motions alone determinable”
(emphasis in the original).
[10] H. Reichenbach,
The Philosophy of Space and Time, p. 217
[11] One can also imagine that the Earth maintains North/South position and orbits the sun, so that all parts of the Earth obtain exposure to the sun. Note that this has nothing whatsoever to so with seasonal variations of climate etc, it is a 24-hour cycle, and so it has nothing to do with what we nowadays call the orbit of the Earth which has a 365-day cycle, but rather with the 24-hour cycle of spin or rotation. It would be counterintuitive to postulate the 365-day cycle with circular orbit to explain the 4 seasons since there's no difference between the different positions, and so one might assume instead that the Earth moves closer and further to the sun, thus creating the seasons. However, then one realizes that other parts of the Earth have entirely different seasons, and in fact the Southern Hemisphere has reversed seasons, which makes the closer-further explanation basically impossible.