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Re: Are the cosmological diagrams Copernican??
In Brad's forwarded message, Martin Urmson (I think)
wrote:
> It strikes me that your illustrations on pages 41/42
imply a heliocentric
> view of the solar system, ...
This is the crux of the message. Do we agree with
this? (I do not know
which illustration(s) is/are meant).
> while many assumptions of provenance result in a
> date preceding Copernicus. From what I know of
Copernicus, he is
> unlikely to have been the author.
Agreed.
> loud-mouthed troublemakers such as Giordano Bruno,
who was
> executed in 1500 or so.
That was 1600 but I don't know if that makes any
difference in this context.
Anyway, even if the illustration referred to has a Sun
in the centre, I am
not at all sure that that should imply belief in a
sun-centred solar system.
In fact, quite a few other illustrations in the VMs
have the Sun and Moon
in similar 'positions', i.e. at top and bottom of
pages. This would be
evidence of an Earth-centred system, which does not
help us much because
the Sun-centred system was not universally accepted
until much later.
Cheers, Rene
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