Just wondered if geocentrism is an allowed topic or not?

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"To the world you might be no-one, but to one person, you might be the world" - Anon

There are several threads on geocentrism. Read them, and if you have something new to add, please feel free to start a new one (all the others are currently closed).

BTW, are you also member Stavro (apparently Stavro Jones), who last posted in 2006?

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Forming opinions as we speak

Boy, that sure looks like a trick question.

Are you going to ban him for sock puppetry if he says yes?

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Rather interesting link in his signature...

ETA: said link is now gonzo...

Looks like Stavro had one post and wasn't banned. There are other posters that have changed their handle, but no longer use their old one, and have let the mods and admins know. So my guess is that 'fessing up isn't an "instaban" offense.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

send me $5, and i'll tell you what the secret is.

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The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

No, not at all. We'd give him the option to unify the account.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Not a banned topic. But you'd better come up with a damned good reason why the earth-centered frame, or any frame for that matter, should be considered privledged when all physics and astronomy argue that no frame of reference can claim such a right.


ETA: It's been a while since I've posted, I know. Real world intrusions. I've been lurking with interest, however.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

The earth-centred frame is our observation point. All the astronomical observation information in the BAUT observation section is geocentric. In my own amateur observations I have put together a geocentric planet calendar - posted at Planets 2008

Depends on what you mean by "our observation point." See for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

That's nice, but Eta C wasn't talking about picking a physically arbitrary viewpoint. He was pointing out that there is no evidence that the Earth's reference frame is physically privileged.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

interesting comment when you think about it from " or any frame for that matter , should be considered privledged when all physics and astronomy argue that no frame of reference can claim such a right "

hmmm...?

As Van Rijn noted, I wasn't claiming one can't pick a center point. In fact, picking an origin that makes calculations easy is one of the tricks you learn. The point is that you can pick any location as the origin of your coordinate system and get the same results for your calculation. This is different than claiming that a particular origin is the absolute and true origin to the exclusion of all others (i.e. privledged) as Geocentrists (note the capital) want to do.

What's interesting about my phrasology North? It's just a bit of rhetorical flourish.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

It's good to see you posting again Eta C.

Thanks, I misunderstood what people meant by geocentric. ATM ideas which claim the earth is somehow a physical centre of the universe are obviously wrong. However, if you can bear with me on a point of philosophy, I do think planet earth is somehow 'privileged' as the only known site of consciousness. We do in practice make our planet the centre of astronomical calculation of star locations etc through right ascension and declination, and would find it difficult and useless to think of any other point of reference for observation. So celestial coordinates are geocentric. More simply, we routinely use geocentric words such as sunrise and sunset, showing how deeply this illusion is imbedded in our culture. Observation of planetary tidal effects in the ocean is also by nature geocentric, measuring the gravity of sun and moon with earth treated as a centre. Tides are small beer against the Big Bang, but of wide practical use. You may define these points as irrelevant to astronomy, but it is worth more carefully demarcating where geocentrism is useful.

OK, now take that philosophy to Mars. Would it be easier to maintain those geocentric concepts you mention, or to develop their arescentric equivalents?

Fred

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I agree. I like Eta.

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Arescentric for sunrise etc. Star coordinates viewed from Mars are much the same as from Earth except for the different tilt of the Martian equator and double length of year. Comparing the USA 48 states to the size of the Milky Way galaxy, the distance from Earth to Mars on this scale would at most be about a millimetre, and the closest stars, in Centaurus, would be about one hundred metres away. The stars look the same from Mars and Earth.

But the other objects of the solar system don't. And, those are gross visual effects. We do take the Earth's motion about the sun into account when we want to make careful measurements. If we were on Mars, we would do the same.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

No, I'm not willing to bear with you on a point of philosophy. We're discussing science, and the Earth is, physically, an arbitrary reference frame, regardless of your reasons for picking it.

As already noted, in precise astronomy, the Earth's motion around the sun is taken into consideration. Then there are things like Hipparcos which didn't do observations from Earth, and had to consider even finer corrections.

They're irrelevant to the point that the earth is not a physically privileged reference frame.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Thanks, Neverfly & Dragon Star. It's nice to be missed. The real world is keeping me from posting as much as I used to, but I still check in every day or so, so look for Wolfgang's lovely mug to show up now and again.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

He always looks vaguely stunned. But then, I suppose most of us do when reading a lot of this stuff.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

With respect, there is more nuance to this than mainstream astronomy allows.

Http://www.bautforum.com/questions-a...principle.html in Q&A opens up the problem that geocentric views seem to be pushing a religious agenda. Respondents there make it clear why scientists must emphasise that a simplistic geocentric astronomy that aims to push a religious barrow is just wrong.

But science can go too far. The wiki article on Copernican Principle linked from the Q&A thread quotes a statement: "It is evident that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe.”

My comment on this hinges on what we mean by unique. Science can provide a factual account of astronomy, but has not yet answered the question whether the earth is unique.

For example, if intelligent life and celestial mathematics have only evolved on our planet, then the earth is unique in this respect. We don’t yet know the answer to this. But if we are unique in this way, as seems the case from evidence to date, astronomy’s mapping of the universe, based on the geocentric grid of our terrestrial and celestial equators, is also unique, as the only point in the universe from which anyone has built a mapping system to show where everything visible may be found in the sky. The sky map is an imaginary grid of lines centred on the earth, used for all astronomical observation. Of course any other observation point such as Mars would have its own unique grid, but as far as we know the grid here on earth is the only one there is.

This observation about mapping does not affect the science, but it does suggest there may be other valid ways of approaching the question of whether a geocentric cosmology could make some sense.

How? We are discussing science, not personal beliefs or religion.

What I see is that you are pushing an idea, and you are trying to come up with different definitions and throwing in "maybes" and fuzzy ideas. You can have whatever beliefs you want, but unless you can show the science, it's not relevant to a scientific discussion.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Or, so far has answered yes. No Earth size extrasolar planets (yet), and no SETI results.

What does it mean if we are alone? What should we do differently?

There are different levels at which this can be approached. At the level of Big Bang cosmology and CMBR, it makes no sense to talk about a geocentric approach as the earth is in no way privileged, as Eta C has said.

However, noting that the sky map of astronomy is geocentric, locating objects in constellations, the earth may well be the only place in the universe to have produced such a map. This intellectual product presents a limited sense in which we can say a geocentric approach makes sense, in that the earth seems to be unique and privileged as a central point from which the universe reflects on itself. I don’t think this has implications for how astronomy operates, but it does have implications for how astronomy relates to other sciences.

A further level at which geocentric approaches are coherent is in the actual relation of the earth to the cosmos. For example, these graphs of observed planetary positions http://www.bautforum.com/attachments...-1999-2008.gif and http://www.bautforum.com/attachments...endar-2008.gif are practical geocentric maps of the solar system, not in a Ptolemaic sense, but as empirical diagrams. My recent discussion of precession Precessional Cosmology sought to explore a similar agenda of how to analyse geocentric rhythms.

The rebuttal of geocentrism in the wikipedia article on Copernican Principle, (“no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe”) seems to flow directly from modern cosmology. The example of SETI etc suggests this rebuttal is overstepping the bounds of what science can say, as our planet seems in some ways unique.

Alternately, and far more logically, astronomy (though I'm pretty sure you're on about astrology again) seems geocentric because our science of it was developed on Earth, and if there are other intelligent species performing astronomy out there, their astronomy (and astrology, if they have it) is based on observations with their own planet in the center.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

A statement like "unique and privileged as a central point from which the universe reflects on itself" has implications about your personal beliefs, but not about science. For science, you'd have to actually make a scientific argument.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Isn't most of this quibbling about exactly what "position" means?

Most people, when they say "geocentric" are talking about the physical position of Earth and it's physical relationship to the Universe (i.e does the Universe rotate around a fixed-Earth?)

(That's what I'd guess the OP was about.)

The other meaning of position, such as "importance", which one might ascribe to Earth based on the seeming uniqueness of, well, us, is quite different.

(This seems to be what Robert Tulip is writing about... which, since the OP has run away...)

Or am I missing something?

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"Importance" is a value judgment. It's not a scientific argument. The same holds with "uniqueness." Mars, Jupiter, the sun, the Andromeda galaxy, etc., can all be said to be unique in some fashion, as far as we can currently observe, so why don't we pick them to be the center of the universe?

Well, let's ask Robert. Robert, are you just pointing out your personal beliefs, or are you trying to suggest your ideas on geocentrism are scientific arguments?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I am trying to suggest my ideas on geocentrism are scientific arguments. As I did not start this thread I will present my ideas in a new thread soon. I have read Ray Tomes' recent comments about cycles on About BAUT and at General Science and will try to bring these in to this discussion, as they are central to the problem of the scope of astronomy - how geocentric cycles should be a mainstream scientific study but have been relegated to lesser importance by the assumption that they are linked to false Ptolemaic views.