[RegulatorCountry]

There have been knock-down, drag-out flame wars over this on FR.

Nobody seems willing to grasp what Einstein meant, in introducing his theory of General Relativity in The Evolution Of Physics, when he wrote:

"The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, 'the sun is at rest and the earth moves,' or 'the sun moves and the earth is at rest,' would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."

So, according to Einstein, geocentrism is not so much a matter of "right" or "wrong," but a point of view based upon a CS or coordinate system, and, according to him, the debate was rendered moot by General Relativity.

I expect the controversy will continue, though, because no one is willing to grasp the implications. It threatens too much orthodoxy, in which a powerful hierarchy is too thoroughly vested.

Sounds like history is repeating itself, but the shoe is on the other foot, lol.

[James C. Bennett]

Yes, you could make a relativistic argument that the Earth is fixed and the rest of the universe revolves around it.

But the problem with doing that is, you’ll have to alter the laws of physics and gravitation, to make it seem as if the Earth’s influence on it is greater than the giant bodies that it “apparently” seems to force to revolve around, in the same relativistic view.

It would be an unnecessary complication, better gotten rid off by accepting that it is the Earth which is doing the revolving.

[UCANSEE2]

Well, I don’t care if we are the center, or the Sun is, but if we pick the Sun, then all our measurements should start from there, instead of some unstable wobbly ball flying round the flame of a candle.

[rawcatslyentist]

"Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
—Obi-Wan Kenobi

[dr_lew]

A man is here revealed who posesses the passionate will, the intelligence, and the courage to stand up as the representative of rational thinking against the host of those who, relying on the ignorance of the people and the indolence of teachers in priest's and scholar's garb, maintain and defend their positions of authority. His unusual literary gift enables him to address the educated men of his age in such clear and impressive language as to overcome the anthropocentric and mythical thinking of his contemporaries and to lead them back to an objective and causal attitude toward the cosmos, an attitude which had become lost to humanity with the decline of Greek culture.

Albert Einstein, in his foreword to Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, written at Princeton, 1952

... and what do you suppose he meant by THAT ?

[messierhunter]

So, according to Einstein, geocentrism is not so much a matter of "right" or "wrong," but a point of view based upon a CS or coordinate system, and, according to him, the debate was rendered moot by General Relativity.

Geocentrism claims that earth is a preferred frame of reference of one reason or another when in fact it is anything but. Even in general relativity, a non-rotating inertial reference frame can be considered preferred because it is the only one in which the laws of physics can be described without explicitly referencing distant masses.