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From: Gene Ward Smith <gsmith@math>
Subject: Re: Reality...??? 
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Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 04:10:16 GMT
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On 28 Nov 1994, Jeff Smith wrote:

> Wouldn't matter Chris.  I quote Bertrand Russell:  "If 50 million people
> believe a foolish thing (or disbelieve reality), it is still a foolish thing."
> This is like the situation when there was wide agreement on Ptolemaic cosmology
> Not many believed in heliocentricity--but it still existed.

Let me venture to suggest that there was nothing foolish about the
widespread agreement with Ptolemy.  Let me go even farther out on a limb
and propose that heliocentricity is false--the Sun is no more the center
of existence than is the Earth, and either one can be used as a basis for
a system of coordinates.  The real issue is dynamics, but calling that
"heliocentricity" is just evidence that Copernicus and even Galileo hadn't
completely understood the situation.
--
     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/University of Toledo
                 gsmith@math.utoledo.edu

