From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 9 Jan 2026 08:47:20 -0000 (UTC), Charles Packer   
    wrote:   
      
   >On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 19:53:38 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:   
   >   
   >> Paul S Person   wrote:   
   >>>This doesn't mean some physics theories don't have mathematics that   
   >>>/require/ different dimensions, though. Or at least are easier to use if   
   >>>different dimensions are posited.   
   >>    
   >> There is a longstanding tradition of this.  Many people posited that it   
   >> was much easier to do the math by pretending that the earth actually   
   >> went around the sun instead if the other way around.  What got Galileo   
   >> in trouble was claming that it actually did.   
   >>    
   >   
   >I hadn't heard this before. Could you identify one of these   
   >many people or cite a source for the assertion?   
      
   Bing is your friend! .   
      
   If you insist on the Earth revolving around the Sun, then Aristarchus   
   of Samos may have been the first (3rd century BC).   
      
   If you are willing to replace the Sun with a "mystical" central fire,   
   then the Greek philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas are cited.   
      
   The volume of the set known as The Great Books of the Western World   
   devoted to astronomy includes Ptolemy, Copernicus and Kepler (Newton   
   is in a later volume). There is an essay between Ptolemy and   
   Copernicus that points out that, if you take Plato's description of   
   the demiurge forming the planets around the central fire and compare   
   the ratios of their distances from such fire to the ratios of the mean   
   distance of the actual planets from the Sun, they agree well enough to   
   suggest that Plato is, in fact, a heliocentrist.   
      
   BTW, Copernicus did simplify Ptolemy to the extent that one less   
   circle was needed for each of the other planets (not the Sun -- it has   
   none, being at the center; not the Earth -- it had none in Ptolemy).   
   So, yes, the computations are a bit reduced.   
      
   It was Kepler who found that, if the Sun had an as-yet undiscovered   
   force, it could keep the planets moving around it in ellipses.   
      
   It was Newton who found that force in gravity.   
      
   Ptolemy, BTW, was merely following Aristotle, who insisted that the    
   Earth was at the center and that only circular movement could be   
   eternal.    
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)