Thinking of the Earth as a Ball of Rock
Quadibloc
naturally, could be considered by some environmentalists as promoting
basic attitudes that stand in the way of the reverence for Mother
Earth that we need to treat it with respect.
On the newsgroup sci.astro.amateur one lonely thinker, Gerard
Kelleher, who goes by the handle "oriel36", has conducted a long
crusade against this kind of thinking. In general, all he has received
is ridicule for his efforts.
Basically, while he applauds, and has respect for, the achievements of
the great astronomers Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, who overthrew
the ignorant belief that we live at the center of the Universe, he
claims that Newton went too far.
Astronomy, in his view, should be based on insight and intuition,
rather than on brute empiricism. Thus, Kepler's laws reflect the
divine master plan of beautiful geometry for the Solar System - not
the interplay of angular momentum and the gravitational inverse-square
law.
I just thought I would mention his ideas here for the benefit of
anyone here who might be interested in them.
John Savard