[OPE-L:4855] "Is TSSI Copernican?"

From: P.J.Wells@open.ac.uk
Date: Fri Feb 09 2001 - 06:27:56 EST


"Up to a point, Lord Copper."

Insofar as it is rediscovering a paradigm which has been ridiculed where it
has not merely been ignored, then TSSI is indeed Copernican; this of course
puts Marx in the role of Heraclitus.

In other respects, though, I should be sorry if TSSI came to be so regarded.

If one follows Koestler''s account in "The Sleepwalkers", Copernicus 

(a) was motivated by the view that the Ptolemaic system was insufficiently
rigorous in implementing the doctrine that heavenly motion was perfectly
circular of necessity

(b) introduced a greater quantity of redundant celestial clockwork than even
the Ptolemaists made use of

(d) was extremely cautious about claiming that his scheme was more than an
alternative method of saving the appearances.

On this account (and accepting TSSI's claims) it is the simultaneists who
are the Copernicans: TSSI is Keplerite.

Julian



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