The wheel

When the contemporary reader comes across topics which are now considered 'fact' they are being fed a narrative which suits the audience and although not strictly lies, the stories themselves go back much further.

The idea of the grotesque name 'big bang' was always in circulation despite the fiction that it became a conceptual necessity last century. Poe comments on Pascal but even this is a modified version of an even older conception using a celestial sphere.

"Hitherto, the Universe of stars has always been considered as coincident with the Universe proper, as I have defined it in the commencement of this Discourse. It has been always either directly or indirectly assumed -- at least since the dawn of intelligible Astronomy -- that, were it possible for us to attain any given point in space, we should still find, on all sides of us, an interminable succession of stars. This was the untenable idea of Pascal when making perhaps the most successful attempt ever made, at periphrasing the conception for which we struggle in the word "Universe." "It is a sphere," he says, "of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference, nowhere." But although this intended definition is, in fact, no definition of the Universe of stars, we may accept it, with some mental reservation, as a definition (rigorous enough for all practical purposes) of the Universe proper -- that is to say, of the Universe of space. This latter, then, let us regard as "a sphere of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere." In fact, while we find it impossible to fancy an end to space, we have no difficulty in picturing to ourselves any one of an infinity of beginnings." Poe, Eureka

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/eureka.html


The difficulties in extrapolating the Earth's motion from circumpolar motion was one of the great incentives a few centuries earlier but not until Copernicus shifted the arguments to retrogrades and away from the rotating celestial sphere did the real breakthrough come -

"And wherever anyone would be, he would believe himself to be at the center..Therefore, merge these different imaginative pictures so that the center is the zenith and vice versa. Thereupon you will see-- through the intellect...
that the Earth and its motion and shape cannot be apprehended. For the Universe will appear as a wheel in a wheel and a sphere in a sphere-- having its center and circumference nowhere. . . " Nicolas of Cusa 15th century


The oldest conception I know of is St Augustine who considered the question -

"Some of the brethren raise a question concerning the motion of
heaven, whether it is fixed or moved. If it is moved, they say, how is
it a firmament? If it stands still, how do these stars which are held
fixed in it go round from east to west, the more northerly performing
shorter circuits near the pole, so that the heaven (if there is
another pole unknown to us) may seem to revolve upon some axis, or (if
there is no other pole) may be thought to move as a discus? To these
men I reply that it would require many subtle and profound reasonings
to find out which of these things is actually so; but to undertake
this and discuss it is consistent neither with my leisure nor with the
duty of those whom I desire to instruct in essential matters more
directly conducing to their salvation and to the benefit of the holy
Church." St Augustine


The empiricists adopted a rotating celestial sphere in the present era and condemned everyone to the very structure people wished to escape from and the funny thing is that the discus of St Augustine is really the galactic motion of stars and their solar systems once the stellar circumpolar element is removed.

Looking at the ephemeral social/political opinions in this forum, I do wonder who has the depth and breath to deal with the real issues which prevent people from appreciating their own motions daily, annual and with all those stars in a galactic circle.

I should have guessed that Gerald wouldn't respond to a direct question. I had hoped that he might, just might, have the good manners to do so. But no, true to form he reverts to, as he sees it, the safety of posting a minor variation of the same old material almost as if the rest of the world doesn't exist.


I might, just might, have had what some call a "light-bulb moment".

Our pet parrot said, "I would always imagine that true observers would be delighted with the perception that they turn to face the Sun in two separate ways as summer/winter is really an offshoot of the polar day/night cycle when combined with daily rotation."

Yes Gerald, I agree with you. The night sky at midnight GMT in January isn't the same as the night sky at midnight GMT in July and the height of the sun above the local horizon at noon GMT isn't the same in December and July either. The trouble is that for years you have consistently refused to accept this. Have you finally changed your mind??