Relativity of Motion – Bertrand Russell Quote

„In this respect, it is interesting to contrast Einstein and Copernicus. Before Copernicus, people thought that the earth stood still and the heavens revolved about it once a day. Copernicus taught that “really” the earth rotates once a day, and the daily revolution of sun and stars is only “apparent.” Galileo and Newton endorsed this view, and many things were thought to prove it—for example, the flattening of the earth at the poles, and the fact that bodies are heavier there than at the equator. But in the modern theory the question between Copernicus and his predecessors is merely one of convenience; all motion is relative, and there is no difference between the two statements: “the earth rotates once a day” and “the heavens revolve about the earth once a day.” The two mean exactly the same thing, just as it means the same thing if I say that a certain length is six feet or two yards. Astronomy is easier if we take the sun as fixed than if we take the earth, just as accounts are easier in a decimal coinage. But to say more for Copernicus is to assume absolute motion, which is a fiction. All motion is relative, and it is a mere convention to take one body as at rest. All such conventions are equally legitimate, though not all are equally convenient.“

Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell on the relativity of motion: No difference between the earth rotating or the heavens rotating around the earth.
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Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, mathematician, and social critic known for his work in logic and analytic philosophy.

Bertrand Russell explains the relativity of motion and compares the views of Copernicus and Einstein.


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Quote about the relativity of motion by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was a prominent British philosopher, mathematician, and social critic. He made foundational contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, and analytic philosophy and was active in peace movements and critical political thought.

Albert Einstein quote about science, coordinate systems, and perspectiveCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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""The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."" Albert Einstein
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Quote by Albert Einstein about coordinate systems and perspectives in scienceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS." Albert Einstein
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Quote about the hunt for stellar parallax and the shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican systems by Alan HirshfeldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"In Newton’s day, the Ptolemaic system and the Keplerian version of the Copernican system were taught side by side in the universities of the world. But the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side. In the minds of most scientists, the heliocentric universe had become fact…Yet there remained a crucial missing element in what was otherwise a complete and compelling picture of the universe: Not one shred of indisputable observational proof existed that the Earth moved through space.Here then was the holy grail of many an astronomer. To prove that the Earth in fact revolved in a wide orbit around the Sun, the parallax of just one star – any star – had to be detected. The hunt for stellar parallax was on." Alan Hirshfeld
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Quote by Spyridon Kakos about Galileo Galilei and the Copernican principle as a modern dogma challenging mainstream astronomyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"For centuries the case of Galileo Galilei has been the cornerstone of every major argument against the church and its supposedly unscientific dogmatism. The church seems to have condemned Galileo for his heresies, just because it couldn’t and wouldn’t handle the truth. Galileo was a hero of science wrongfully accused and now – at last – everyone knows that. But is that true? This paper tries to examine the case from the point of modern physics and the conclusions drawn are startling. It seems that contemporary church was too haste into condemning itself. The evidence provided by Galileo to support the heliocentric system do not even pass simple scrutiny, while modern physics has ruled for a long time now against both heliocentric and geocentric models as depictions of the “truth”. As Einstein eloquently said, the debate about which system is chosen is void of any meaning from a physics’ point of view. At the end, the selection of the center is more a matter of choice rather than a matter of ‘truth’ of any kind. And this choice is driven by specific philosophical axioms penetrating astronomy for hundreds of years now. From Galileo to Hubble, the Copernican principle has been slowly transformed to a dogma followed by all mainstream astronomers. It is time to challenge our dogmatic adherence to the anti-humanism idea that we are insignificant in the cosmos and start making true honest science again, as Copernicus once postulated." Spyridon Kakos
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Quote from Dr. Robert Woodhouse on the truth about astronomy and scienceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"If we consider that the advocates of the fixed and central position of the Earth can explain the heavenly phenomena as accurately, according to their own understanding, as we do, and that they additionally have the evidence of their senses, the Holy Scripture, and the facts on their side which we do not have, it is not without reason that they claim the superiority of their system. [...] However perfect our theoretical model may appear in our eyes, and however simple and satisfactory the Newtonian hypothesis may appear to us in explaining all celestial phenomena, here we must admit the astonishing truth that if our premises are challenged and our facts questioned, all of astronomy contains no proof of its own accuracy." Dr. Robert Woodhouse
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Salviati quote on the courage to trust reason over sense regarding Earth's movementCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"You wonder that there are so few followers of the Pythagorean opinion [that the earth moves] while I am astonished that there have been any up to this day who have embraced and followed it. Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true: they have, through sheer force of intellect, done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to be the contrary. For the arguments against the whirling [the rotation] of the earth we have already examined are very plausible, as we have seen; and the fact that the Ptolemaics and the Aristotelians and all their disciples took them to be conclusive is indeed a strong argument of their effectiveness. But the experiences which overtly contradict the annual movement [the movement of the earth around the sun] are indeed so much greater in their apparent force that, I repeat, there is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense that in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief." Salviati
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