charlie@ihlpf.UUCP (07/19/83)
#R:cca:-514600:ihlpf:22600020: 0:983 ihlpf!dap1 Jul 18 13: 7:00 1983 The earth is not the center in the sense that it is not the focus of the ellipse which the other planets travel in and is not in the plane in which they travel in. THIS is the issue that the early church was referring to. You could also claim that under their cockeyed scheme the earth was spinning around the sun in a rather eccentric orbit. They were perfectly able to see that, it doesn't take an Einstein to point that out. What's "amusing" to me is that some people think that nobody realized this simple minded notion until Einstein. This is just NOT correct. Einstein's big revelation was not that everything was relative. In fact, his theory stems from the fact that some things are NOT relative, namely the speed of light, and the consequent rearrangement of physical laws that results from this rather astounding fact. People knew that the speed of a train looks different to a passenger and someone standing beside the tracks long before Einstein pointed it out.