Re: An astronomer's view of mechanics

oriel36 quoted:
SAGR." I know; such men do not deduce their conclusion from its
premises or establish it by reason, but they accommodate (I should
have said discommode and distort) the premises and reasons to a
conclusion which for them is already established and nailed down. No
good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent
that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous."

This is a crime of which neither I nor Newton and Flamsteed may be
justly accused.

Copernicus spoke of the loops of the planets being untangled by virtue
of an annual motion of the Earth. As you have noted, and praised.

This is a part of the theory of the heavens which Copernicus called by
the name "heliocentric".

So the Earth moves around the Sun once a year.

And the other planets also move around the Sun, without loops.
Retrogades are simply an appearance, caused by the Earth overtaking
the slower-moving outer planets (for example; in the case of an inner
planet, it is because that planet is on the opposite side of its
orbit, so moving in the opposite direction from Earth without
reversing its orbit).

You agree with those things, as you have stated them often enough.

And then, when Flamsteed comes along, and says the very same thing in
slightly different words, you say he has made a terrible mistake that
has put astronomy on the wrong footing ever since.

Yes, he chose a different phrasing; he speaks of planets being direct
in the Sun's night sky, as though they could ever be seen in such
glare!

I cannot begin to grasp what offense he has commited against the truth
by the sentence you quote. It is just another way to say the planets
go around the Sun, and in doing so, they never reverse their course to
make loops; those loops, those retrogades, are an appearance we see on
Earth because the Earth, too, is in motion.

John Savard

.

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