The New Geocentrism

This is the first of a series of posts offered by Mary Daly and ScienceMom arguing against a new form of geocentrism being promoted by some Catholics.

The New Geocentrism:

To embrace geocentrism is to deny gravity. If one said, "I don't believe in gravity; the Hebrews had no word for it and we don't need one either," then the fundamentalism of the position would be clear, but all this quoting of scientists (out of context) will be confusing to those with a weak science background. I'm afraid there are too many of those.

How does geocentrism relate to gravity? It's not too difficult to see, but we need to back up for a moment.

What is a center?

It's what things go around, let's say.

But when physicists since Einstein say that there is no proof of what's the center, they mean something quite different from "the Bible is as good a physics text as any." What they mean is that the math, the equations that describe motions in the universe, can be written from any perspective.

This is absolutely true, and includes not just the perspective of the Earth and of the Sun, but of any comet, of any asteroid, and, for that matter, the tip of the nose of any ballerina of your choosing. If the new generation of geocentrists were to acknowledge that the centrality of the earth, in universe motions, is just about on a level with the centrality of a ballerina's nose, then people would understand that his position has no serious merit and provides no opportunity for an advance in our understanding of the actual constitution of the universe.

That is the situation.

True, when you are engaged in exclusively earth-centered navigation, when you are a ship, for example, it is simplest to talk about the sun rising and setting, as if we were in the center. This is not a peculiar observation; and it is true that even men who are certain that the Sun is in the center may write equations about such motions as if the earth were the center and the Sun in motion above it. I once had my hands on a book that spoke of the earth as center, and one of its evidences was that modern navigators use such equations, so that is why I mention it here.

When you plan travel to a planet such as Pluto, however, (or planetoid or whatever it's to be called), you enlarge the frame of reference, and you need to put the Sun in the center. If you wanted to go to the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, the position of the Sun would quickly become irrelevant, and the centers of your equations would, I suppose, involve many things, perhaps including the centers of each of the galaxies in turn.

So what is true? Is there such a thing as truth? I feel quite strongly that any argument which boils down to Pilate's question needs an intense review.

What is Gravity?

It was Galileo who asked the basic question: What is gravity?

Easy! It's what makes things fall.

No, that is just the definition of gravity. How does it make things fall? What is it, really?

And then he made this incredible statement: if you can tell me why/how a spoon falls to the ground, I will tell you why/how the Moon goes about the Earth. He actually understood that these were the same phenomena. This was an amazing insight. It is from Galileo specifically that we made the incredible leap of understanding that the physics in the sky is the same as the physics on the ground. New Idea. Very New. Very important, and it was from Galileo, specifically, though Newton generally gets the credit.

Newton built on this specific passage from Galileo. When he said an apple fell on his head, he was sitting under a tree reading Galileo. This is almost literally true. He read Galileo and he made the equations that describe both the spoon and the Moon, and they describe a jillion other things.

So here's the point.

Once Galileo made that statement, and once Newton made those equations for gravity, we were no longer engaged in relativity: there was a reason for the sun to be in the center. It's bigger. Or, I should say, it's heavier. It's pulling us in and the balance between it pulling us in and us traveling in a straight line East through space is the curve of our orbit.

If the Sun goes around the earth, then gravity is not the reason for our relative motions; indeed gravity does not function at all between us. Nor does gravity function in the relative motions of any of the planets. It functions on my spoon, but not on our Moon, which operates according to another set of physical laws.

This disorderly notion is the reason that a serious physicist will find the position of Sungenis hilarious or horrible, but will not take it seriously for a moment because he can't do a jot of celestial physics if he drops gravity.

Then why did Einstein say any perspective was as good as any other?

A Question of Philosophy

Well, you Thomists, jump in. Here's the door:

Einstein, like Stephen Hawking in the next generation, was philosophically confused about the difference between math and physics. Equations can be written any way at all. But the universe is what it is. The universe is not an equation; it is a reality. It is this way and not another way.

Einstein got uncomfortable with the confrontation between mathematical and physical reality and that's why he said, when confronted with equations that described things in terms of random motions and probability, that he did not believe that God played dice with the world. It wasn't because he was a theist; it was because his gut refused the diet of theoretical math as a final description of the real universe. The real universe is not a probability, it is this way. Einstein had opened the door for substituting math for physics, but when he saw the next room, he rejected it. But he rejected it by gut, not by philosophy, because he didn't know enough philosophy.

So this is the point about geocentrism: any set of equations which describes the motions of objects in the Solar system without taking gravity into account is just math; it is not about the universe. And if you choose your math on the basis of the theology of a nation that couldn't pass first year algebra, then you're just not a physicist, and not a philosopher, and not a theologian for the faith of the Incarnate Son of God who came to this universe to be with us.

By the way, satellites in space can actually calculate the earth wobbling in space from season to season and also when there is a major earthquake. So the image of centering the universe on a ballerina's nose is rather more serious than you might have thought.

On to Part II