I will respond to selected portions of your post in separate posts. It is easier to remain coherent and concise that way.

Yes, we the people of Planet Earth are physical products of the universe, and we perform measurements. Since we cannot rule out the possibility that functionally similar beings are doing fundamentally similar measurements elsewhere in the cosmos, I would say that it is rather arrogant to say that our world is "privileged". Exceedingly rare, perhaps. Privileged, not necessarily.

Virtually all of us would wholeheartedly agree. What is supposed to be so ATM about that?
If I had the foggiest idea what you are saying, I might be able to judge whether or not your points are ATM in nature.

As I see it, the Copernican thought revolution demotes Earth from the old status as a stationary, fundamentally central object to that of being just another planet for the purpose of celestial mechanics. A geocentric thought process still makes sense for analyzing events and phenomena on this planet. What do you think I am missing?

The bold face is mine, and I do not see whatever point you are trying to make. Please give us some specific examples, and try to explain in plain English what you think the problem is, if any.

The ancient elite thinkers had a religious predisposition to regard constant-velocity perfect circles as the ideal of heavenly perfection, a point of view we long since have abandoned. Nevertheless, in the absence of a good gravitational theory of celestial motion, such circular terms were a reasonable starting point for the analysis of celestial mechanics. More on that later.

Oh yes it can, if we are concerned only with the geometric calculation of a good ephemeris, in the absence of a modern gravity-based dynamic theory. Let's look at Jupiter for example. Ptolemy's off-center deferent circle, with its equant-based variable speed of the epicycle center around its circumference, was a fairly decent first approximation of a Keplerian ellipse. The epicycle, with its period of exactly one year, created the familiar retrograde motion around the time of opposition, and the eccentric, variable speed deferent reduced the overall position errors over the 12-year deferent cycle. If Ptolemy had somehow discovered the Keplerian ellipse and accepted it, the residual errors would have vanished.

As I pointed out earlier, it was the emergence of a universal dynamic theory that made a stationary-Earth model fall apart, while showing good agreement with the stationary-Sun model.
Please give us some examples, and try to show us with some mathematical rigor what you think is elusive and what themes you are trying to develop.

I do not think it is ad hominim at all about the ancient Greeks. They bought into the Platonic/Aristotilean model of the universe : (a) terrestrial elements were on earth, and imperfect, corruptable (b) celestial objects, made of a ghostly element not of earth, and moving in circles around earth. Terrestrial elements (earth, water, fire, air) "belonged" in a certain place on earth, while the celestial objects "belonged" in the heavens and rotated around earth. Geocentrism was inextricably linked to this philosophical model of the universe.
So I contend that once the paradigm shift from circles to ellipses occured, the ENTIRE ball of wax from the Greeks had to be scrapped. If we just switched from circular to elliptical orbits, but kept the earth at center, then we'd just be doing some ad hoc attempt at breathing life into the dead Greek models. Why do that? Why not rethink the whole thing from scratch?



I do not agree. I think Ptolemy was immersed in the prevailing philosophical nonsense of his time and never would have abandoned circular motion. If Tycho had lived during Ptolemy's day, he would have generated data that Ptolemy would never have been able to model with his silly different size circles. Ptolemy would have never been able to write the Almagest. And then where would ancient Greek cosmology been then? dead in the water, that's where, right where it belongs.

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

There are two different categories of epicycles here, and they are used for utterly different purposes.

Ptolemy used a one-year epicycle in each planet's orbital construction to account for the recurring retrograde motions. Copernicus noticed that all of them were in unison with the Sun's apparent motion. When he transformed everything to a common center with the Sun near that center and nearly stationary, adjusted the orbital radii to the right proportions, and made Earth just another planet orbiting that same center, the Ptolemaic epicycles went away.

What did not go away were the residual position errors caused by the difference between perfect, constant-velocity circles and the actual motion now known to be described by Keplerian ellipses. Copernicus, still thinking largely in ancient terms, made do with slightly eccentric orbits and small epicycles with periods that were in proportion to the planet's orbital periods. It was an ironic regression from Ptolemy's approach to the same problem, and it made a relatively messy calculation which really was no overall improvement in accuracy over Ptolemy's work. Kepler's work was needed to clean it up with a general formula that was valid for all orbits.

Once again, if we are hidebound enough, we can transform the Copernican model, as cleaned up by Kepler, back to a stationary-Earth model with no loss of geocentric positional accuracy. The geometry alone is not the clincher.

Kepler was almost able to avoid ellipses--and the story goes, he could have, if he'd been willing to accept a small (8 arcmin?) error in one of the data points of the orbit of Mars.

Copernicus's model used epicycles as well--according to Koestler, even more than Ptolemy. The model probably didn't work as well even. Part of his problem was that he centered the solar system on the center of the earth's orbit. Using that notion--and Tycho's data--you're still going to have problems.

This is correct.

However, what I also wonder about is Kepler's 3rd harmonic law. As far as I can tell, this law only makes sense relative to orbits around sun, not earth. If the equation can be transformed to earth frame of reference, what form would it take?

Heliocentrism vs. Geocentrism - what the...?

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

That is easy. Use Tycho's approach.

1. Make Earth the stationary center.

2. Have the Sun orbiting at one astronomical unit.

3. Have all of the other planets in giant epicycles with their centers at the Sun's position, with each epicycle being the same size and shape as the orbit in the heliocentric model.

These epicycles will obey Kepler's third law.

Another way would be to give each planet a Ptolemy-style deferent centered on the Earth and the same size and shape as the heliocentric ellipse, and a one-year epicycle the same size and shape as Earth's orbit. Make sure each planet's epicycle component is in unison with the Sun's geocentric orbit.

The deferent components, as measured from Earth, will obey Kepler's third law.

Clear as mud? I can draw it better than I can write about it.

ok, that seems pretty clear.

Well, at least we probably agree that above types of attempts are clearly just geometric constructs and motivated by people who want to make ad hoc devices to save their geocentric model.

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

Not so fast! As has been noted before, Ptolemy blew off the classical ideal of perfect constant-velocity concentric circles as deferents for the planets. His eccentric circles with their equant-based variable velocity did not look much different from Keplerian ellipses for most of the planets, and he invented them without centering them anywhere near the Sun.
What do you mean by philosophical foundations? Can you give some specific examples of deductive leaps of logic? Please try to answer in fairly brief, plain English sentences that even a dumb musician like myself can understand.

Once again, let's not mix up the two functionally distinct categories of epicycles.

Each planet's Ptolemaic annual epicycle would have been an exact solution for the retrograde motion if,

1. The actual orbits had been perfect circles or,

2. The epicycles and respective deferents had been Keplerian ellipses with appropriate amounts of eccentricity.

The other type of epicycle is a stab at using combinations of uniform circular elements to do what Ptolemy did with his eccentric, non-uniform circles. Even after solving for the retrograde loop, there remains the fact that successive oppositions of each planet occur at non-uniform intervals. Ptolemy knew that without leaving a geocentric line of thought, and he attacked it with a non-uniform circle rather than resort to a clunky string of additional epicycles. Copernicus chose the latter method to account for these residual errors in a quest to stick with combinations of uniform circular motion, in keeping with Aristotle's ancient ideal which Ptolemy had rejected. The result was a messy, inexact construction which Kepler cleaned up by discovering that a simple ellipse was a good fit. For all we know, Ptolemy might have done something similar if he had been able to measure the positions as accurately as Tycho did. Changing the deferent circle to an ellipse with a focus at Earth's center would not have been a huge quantitative change, and it would have improved the results without resorting to a heliocentric line of thought.

I think most of us would agree that a geocentric line of thought is intuitive for analyzing what goes on around us. What is so ATM about that? If you are looking specifically for evidence that the positions of the planets are somehow related to cycles of events on the surface of our planet, I might consider that to be ATM, but the act of testing it from a geocentric point of view seems perfectly mainstream to me.

Maybe, but I really think Ptolemy and the bulk of ancients/medievals were very immersed in all the philosophical nonsense such as "perfect circles" , "natural place", etc. I think if Tycho's data was available to Ptolemy, Ptolemy would have said something like this to himself" " At first glance, I don't get it. Tycho just threw me a loop. Of course the earth is center , of course celestial objects are "ghosts" not of the earth and only circles befit them. For some dumb reason, I just can't get my epicycles to fit Tycho's data. I'm at a stalemate. The only remaining possibility for me to devote my life to now is to continue adding more epicycles, or combos. of equants, eccentrics, etc. until I get it right, then I can in retirement write my Almagest". Of course, after all of above ruminations, Ptolemy would have died without ever publishing, and the theologians would have just put blinders over people's eyes, ignoring Tycho, and going on with their geocentric dogmas.

We'll never know for sure. It's hard to get into the heads of the ancients/medievals, there is much in their mindset that mystifies me.

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

We can only guess at what Ptolemy would have done, but my educated guess is that he would have done whatever was needed for his purpose, perhaps proceeding as Kepler did initially. Most of the planets would have fallen into place with minimal tweaking, while Mars would have been a bear. It could have taken anywhere from a few weeks to a lot of years, depending on his insights into recognizing mathematical patterns.

Let's not be too rough on the ancient thinkers. Perhaps it was bad religion to sanctify a mere geometric construction, but a combination of circular elements was as good a starting point as any for calculating a periodic pattern of motion. In a thought experiment one could imagine a spinning potter's wheel with a luminous spot on its edge. That spinning wheel could be mounted on the edge of a larger wheel to serve as an epicycle. In the absence of a gravitational theory of celestial dynamics, such a set of wheels is good as anything.

Once again, any of these planetary orbit constructions can be transformed to a stationary Earth model, if all we have to go on is geometry.

What you are missing is that the Copernican revolution has been applied much more widely than celestial mechanics. Geocentric approaches will not show the mainstream is wrong, but can uncover epistemological assumptions of mainstream science. Part of my point is that science regards its assumptions as absolute and refuses to see how they are culturally conditioned. The geocentric component in any science incorporates the perspective of the observer into its system, while for non-geocentric astronomy the perspective of the observer is irrelevant. Using a telescope is geocentric in the sense that coordinates derive from the earth’s equator, even though the mathematics derived from telescopy is not geocentric. Astronomy asks how we can observe the cosmos while geocentric approaches ask how we can relate to the cosmos. Both are essential if we are to understand the cosmos.

My approach to this set of problems draws on the work of Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976. In his 1962 essay Modern Science, Metaphysics and Mathematics Heidegger said ‘Bohr and Heisenberg think in a thoroughly philosophical way and only therefore create new ways of posing questions.’ Heidegger studied science from a philosophical perspective, not to critique science from its internal criteria but to test it against broader cultural criteria. He used Kant’s argument that ‘in any particular doctrine of nature only so much genuine science can be found as there is mathematics to be found in it’ to place physics within a philosophical framework, arguing that self-evident principles such as Newton’s laws of motion can be evaluated against older philosophical methods.

Heidegger’s categories for thought draw from Plato, Aristotle and Augustine. His central idea that the meaning of being is care made his 1926 book Being and Time a main source for existentialism. There he analysed the epistemological assumptions imbedded in the Copernican worldview, especially how Descartes developed a modern metaphysics whereby mathematical measurement became the criterion of reality. Heidegger contrasted the epistemology of extension, Descartes’ criterion for the scientific worldview, with an epistemology of ‘things for use’ whereby human existence - ‘being in the world’ – is a defining framework. The meaning that things have for people is defined by networks of relationship, not just by objective measurement. My argument here is that a cosmological approach which studies phenomena for which the earth is at the centre is helpful for relating astronomy with philosophy. Such a cosmology does not help to understand the universe as a whole, but it does help to understand how our life relates to the universe, to the extent that human existence is geocentric, based on the ordinary temporal framework of the calendar and the spatial framework of maps.

This use of philosophy may seem peripheral for a scientific discussion per se. Indeed it does not have any comment on the accuracy of any particular scientific claims. However, to understand the role of geocentrism for human culture and worldviews, such philosophical considerations need to be examined. My interest here is to analyse the linkages between objective scientific worldviews and the phenomena of human culture.
The semantics of ‘privileged’ are interesting. I certainly feel highly privileged to be a collection of stardust that is able to discuss cosmology on the internet.

This religious approach was just wrong, as it imposed a conceptual frame on reality rather than observing what was really there. Assuming circles were primary places a modern mathematical mindset on a very different ancient mentality. Plato’s epistemology, for example as discussed at http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/Clas...te-Ascent.html takes circular motion as just an example of divinity, not a necessary principle.

Epicycles are about as elegant as imagining the planets like a roller coaster doing loop the loop without a track. A geocentric elliptical model is a contradiction in terms, as the discovery of ellipticity required heliocentrism as a prior condition. In any case, I am not advocating the geocentrism of pre-modern obsolete astronomy. My mathematical point, made in the opening post, is that geocentric cycles such as variance in rain amounts according to the phases of the moon could be objectively measured and used, so should be studied scientifically. Neglect of such topics is connected to the overall scientific world view which rejects geocentrism as false and so refuses, essentially for socio-cultural reasons, to look at statistical analysis of how terrestrial cycles may be structured by rhythms of the solar system. Beyond this mathematical use, a geocentric perspective can also be helpful, as I argued in my recent thread on precession, as a framework for longer terrestrial cycles which also appear within human culture. Study of this area is speculative and inexact but can be pursued rigorously in the hope of finding quantifiable methods.

The circular motion myth was secondary to the main assumption that the earth was at the centre of the universe, an assumption that works for every purpose except astronomy. The ad hominim, which I fear is more widespread and deep than you assume, is to say that because the Greeks were wrong in one thing they were wrong in all. A lot of human thought retains a continuity with the ancient world, including in geometry, logic and ethics. Limiting our sources to modern science is somewhat analogous to the Athenian myth that Athena sprang full grown from the brow of Zeus. I simply believe that the limits of scientific method give science responsibilities that it is not equipped to fulfil.

The main deductive leap I was criticizing was essentially the logical positivist claim, made by Rudolf Carnap, that science has proven powerful in discovering truth, non-science has proven flawed in discovering truth, therefore there is no knowledge outside science. The inexactness of non-science has a connection to truth, even if it cannot be systematized. For example, mythic archetypes are meaningful and have a truth content.

The limits do not impart those responsibilities, they just make the responsibilities impossible to fulfill.

The limits of philosophy give it no equipment whatsoever

Not that there's anything wrong with that

Well, I guess we'll disagree on this point. I don't think the geocentric model was separable from the idea of circles in ancient/medieval times. It was all one big package based on Aristotlean "physics". The Greeks would not have accepted the idea that the "perfect" heavens were elliptical.

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

sigh,,, maybe something relevant to the OP would have worked here? Or a smiley to show that this wasn't just obtrusive.


to the OP, of course our measurments and systems are geocentric in their origins. that is our veiwpoint. there is no philosophical argument to this. it is fundamental to our technologicaly limited view of a universe that is, as yet, ever growing to meet our observational ability, in all directions; be it microscope or telescope.

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I once put instant coffee in a microwave and nearly went back in time - Steven Wright

Upon going back to the OP, I can see that this thread has digressed into quibbling with details, rather than exchanging thoughts about the broad spectrum of philosophy in which science is a powerful, useful tool that nevertheless has its limitations. This broad spectrum fundamentally deals with the relationship of us Earthlings with the world around us, meaning Planet Earth and the surrounding cosmos of which it is a part. As such the thought processes dealing with the big picture are naturally geocentric. So once again, why is this thread in ATM, rather than General Science or perhaps Off Topic Babbling?

See here:

Is it allowed?

The OP was suggesting his personal beliefs were 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

He believes something to be worthy of scientific inquiry when most scientists disagree, but I see nothing unorthodox about framing the act of testing his idea in geocentric terms, should anyone wish to do so.

Sigh?

I think you can find that in the rest of the post that you quoted fromThat's all that is meant by ATM.Testing of ATM ideas is not unorthodox, it is the thing to do, you're right. That doesn't make the subject not ATM.

Only the geocentric parts of astronomy are of any practical use. Sherlock Holmes, a great empiricist, said it mattered not a jot to him if the sun went round the earth or the earth went round the sun, and he would promptly try to forget Watson's advice to him of the Copernican view. This underlying problem goes back to Bohr etc, who put quantum mechanics and cosmology in a philosophical framework which subsequent physicists seem to have forgotten. It is useless to build particle accelerators and space rockets which don't help the situation for people on earth. 99% of human activity can get by with a geocentric framework so it is a bit stupid to say that the earth is not privileged.

Here is new fable which helps to explain what I mean. When Uranus was discovered in 1781, it was a signpost for a Promethean revolution in industrial innovation and political liberty. When Neptune was discovered in 1846 we saw the rise of chemistry and globalization by sail. Pluto in 1931 marked the atomic age. In 2003, a new planet was discovered, variously known as Eris, Lila or Xena http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/.

Following Dane Rudhyar’s call to use the name Proserpine, I think of this planet as Persephone. My reason is mythic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone tells the myth of Persephone’s capture by Pluto, plunging the world into eternal winter, and how the god of death tricked her to eat four pomegranate seeds before Hermes could bring her back to earth, causing one month of winter for each seed.

My interpretation reads this myth in planetary terms. The one-third/winter represents the land and the two-thirds/summer represents the oceans which cover 71% of our planet. Under the atomic rule of Pluto, we are on a destructive path of seeing our traditional land-based civilization as the only way to live - viewing the one-third as the whole even though it is destroying our planet. Returning to life with Persephone, humanity will follow the path of the whales to colonise the two-thirds world covered by the oceans, not evolving to swim but by living on top of fresh water dams as I described briefly at www.ascm.org.au/jgOnline/jg2007Autumn.pdf. The next century will be a period of recovery from the destructive limited controlling vision of recent times. The four seeds eaten by Persephone represent our ties to the earth, but the eight months of summery freedom will start a new Aquarian age, with an ocean-based civilization that will allow the earth to recover.

It is a quite a bit wrong to say that the earth is physically privileged.

As for the rest, it isn't relevant to science.

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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

This is the problem with human history: egotism. Maybe if the ancients understood what modern science teaches about mankind's place in space and time (very limited), we'd stop this silly egocentric thinking/behavoir which leads to infinite problems. Humility would be a nice change of pace. From a humble viewpoint, mankind could make rational/sustainable plans for its future.

Carl Sagan very eloquently used to show how a proper perspective on our place in the universe could lead to us being good "stewards" of planet earth.

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'Just be a good team player in life', Andrew Evans

They provide employment for the best and the brightest so that new age dimwits don't have to compete against them for the hamburger-flipping jobs.
Planets and their satellites bear witness to frequent collisions with asteroids. It is not stupid to say that Earth is not privileged; it is stupid to view it as privileged and not be able to get ourselves and a part of our ecosystem off of it just in case.
Wrong. The necessary innovations and (yes, I'll use the word) philosophies were already in place for these things. Even though Herschel built his telescope himself, he did not mine the metals nor make the glass that went into it.
"Globalization by sail"? Hello, what do you think was going on for the previous 400 years? How did the non-native people of the United States get there before the start of this "globalization by sail"?

Perhaps you meant "globalization by steam"? That might make a little more sense, but again all of this was well under way before Adams and Leverrier picked up a pen and set to work.
Too bad we no longer think of it as a planet. What about the early 20th century, with its discoveries in quantum mechanics, special and general relativity? I don't recall any planets being discovered then, do you?
Like Pluto, not recognized as planets by anyone but astrologers.
A whole bunch of new age navel-gazing.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

To reiterate: discoveries of planets do not drive technological, social or even "spiritual" progress. The discoveries of planets and such are the products of technological advances combined with a climate that encourages the search.

Herschel found Uranus by accident, he was looking for comets instead.

Because Uranus was discovered and seemed to fall into place in the conjectured Titius-Bode "Law", there was a motivation to find the missing planet expected at 2.8 AU. Diligent search turned up 1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno and 4 Vesta between 1801 and 1807. It does not appear that anyone was looking for any after that; 5 Astraea wasn't discovered until 1845. (Maybe the discovery of 5 Astraea, not the discovery of Neptune, was the signal for "globalization by sail". ) After that the speed of discovery gradually increased through the 19th and 20th centuries, taking off with breath-taking speed once the necessity to find potential hazardous asteroids became apparent.

The centaur 2060 Chiron is an excellent example of the necessity for a climate that encourages search. It was discovered in 1977 because its slow motion stood out from the main-belt asteroids. A search of old plates turned up images in 1969, 1952, 1943, 1941 and, incredibly, 1895. It was even marked on one of the plates in 1943 (I think) but nobody cared to follow up on it. The technology to find it was available in 1895; the motivation to find it wasn't available until 1977.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Just out of curiousity, which episode was that?

Arthur Conan Doyle
A Study in Scarlet
Chapter 2
The Science of Deduction
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/doyl.../chapter2.html

“My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way:
Sherlock Holmes — his limits
1. Knowledge of Literature. — Nil.
2. “ “ Philosophy. — Nil.
3. “ “ Astronomy. — Nil.
4. “ “ Politics. — Feeble.
5. “ “ Botany. — Variable.
Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally.
Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology. — Practical, but limited.
Tells at a glance different soils from each other.
After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in
what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry. — Profound.
8. “ “ Anatomy. — Accurate, but unsystematic
9. “ “ Sensational Literature. — Immense.
He appears to know every detail of every horror
perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
When I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in despair. “If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all,” I said to myself, “I may as well give up the attempt at once.”


Other comments on this are at
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/d...es_050310.html
Author's note: When I once read that Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes did not care about the Earth's orbit I thought it might be a good idea to have him collaborate with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. So being in both the "Doyle" and the "Astronomy" Clans, I thought I'd give it a go. So here is the two-part "Case of the Vanishing Robbers" -- Laurance R. Doyle

and

http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~ams/sh/universal.html quotes “Holmes's knowledge of astronomy was nil; he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the solar system. "You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work." and comments “now, how are we supposed to understand that? Well, on the one hand astronomers might with some right take this name as a sort of joke or ironic provocation. Imagine naming a minor planet after such an ignoramus! On the other hand we do know ? we have seen it time and time again ? that Watson actually wasn't quite aware of Holmes's many talents and the extent of his knowledge. And finally, we could also put on our relativistic glasses and claim that Holmes simply was ahead of his time, because in principle it is completely unimportant whether you consider the Earth to revolve around the Sun or the Sun to orbit the Earth. The mathematics are just much easier if we consider the first option.”

So your argument is that because science is complicated it is good? I agree with this to some extent as there are many unintended benefits from physics and astronomy, including a broad cultural benefit of valuing facts. Narrow linear logic can produce amazing facts, but my concern is that scientists lack the ability to evaluate and prioritise these facts. Evaluation may sometimes be inherently ‘dimwitted’, to use your term, but it is central to policy and decision making. The best and brightest should focus on things with direct practical application. Curiosity is a luxury we can afford, but it should not be the main driver for research. A geocentric approach can help to put astronomy in its place.
If we did view our earth as privileged we would provide much more resources for its repair after the immense damage caused by scientific conquest over the past few centuries. Fixing the earth is a vastly better strategy than the cosmic escape you seem to imply.
I am citing the discovery of planets as signposts not direct causes.
Even by 1860 sailing ships still carried more than ten times the cargo of steam ships. My reference was to the way the world ocean became a corridor for global integration in the nineteenth century, through industries such as clipper transport and whaling. Australia was barely contacted before the nineteenth century when it became integrated with global trade networks. In any case your criticism is a secondary issue to the basic intent of this fable which was to formulate a new cosmic mythology for the coming century.
I expect that Pluto and Eris/Persephone will be reinstated as planets when the narrow mechanistic thinking governing the IAU gives way to a broader perspective which recognizes that the relation of planets to earth is a legitimate area of study. As with Neptune and Uranus, I look at the discovery of Pluto as an allegorical signpost for an era in which earth moved into a phase where the energies and symbols associated with that planet predominated. So Pluto in some sense governed the entire twentieth century, much as Neptune governed the nineteenth, Uranus the eighteenth and, I suggest, Persephone will govern the twenty first. This is not a falsifiable scientific argument, but as I originally said, a mythic fable. The myth is interesting because the symbols line up so well with the history. The new age is an inexorable scientific cosmic reality, although as I previously commented I do not expect it to start until about 2150. I will have to put up with old age domination for the rest of my life time. You are welcome to reject my ideas about a global oceanic technology – time will tell if I am right.