John Harrison and celestial sphere geometers

Most here are descendents of the dull and dreary celestial sphere
geometers who made Harrison's life so miserable,talentless men attached
to the Ra/Dec system and the idiosyncratic way to justify the return of
a star to a terrestial meridian using the axial and orbital motions of
the Earth.

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OC...ison+longitude

No doubt your dominance is even more assured today than it was when
Harrison wrote that but then again the document is a lovely reminder
that the monarchy,the seafaring tradition and the inventiveness of the
society at the time was still capable of blossoming in a hostile
enviroment.

At the core of relativity is Newtonian conceoptions,at the core of that
is celestioal sphere geometry and at the core of that is a simple error
made by Flamsteed in attempting to justify the celestial sphere
sidereal value by using the Earth's axial rotation an subsequently
orbital motion.

"Flamsteed used the star Sirius as a timekeeper correcting the sidereal
time obtained from successive transits of the star into solar time, the
difference of course being due to the rotation of the Earth round the
Sun. Flamsteed wrote in a letter in 1677:-

.... our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I
doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be
isochronical... "

Nobody with the authority to recognise the fundamental error is one
thing but that is provides an obstacle to understanding and using axial
and orbital motions in isolation from each other proves to be the most
remarkable situation of all.This is not just a matter of tidying up the
fascinating Longitude story,the expansive and encompassing
astronomical tradition is weighing heavily in on the matter and
specifically the Western heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus and
Kepler.

Many will clam up out of indoctrination and incompetence but there are
people capable of recovering the correct astronomical principles from
the awful maneuvering of celestial sphere geometers .