Add to Geo article

From emails, edited:

preface: Various writers pointed out that the overthrow of geocentrism seemed to reduce humanity to cosmic insignificance, the mechanistic interpretation of all including our brain seemingly made us into soulless machines, automatons, the big bang theory took away the idea of the universe as designed and created, and evolutionary theory, genetics, psychology and neuroscience removed our role as beings in the image of God capable of freely choosing between good and evil, designed for a purpose, etc. But it all started with the reaction to the Copernican overthrow of Aristotelian Ptolemaic geocentrism.

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Add quote from Rosen in binder, and Komar notes etc. NOW ON SITE PAGE

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I would prefer an article focussed on the underlying aspects, eg are humans significant, is there meaning purpose, MR, not with the question of the literal or allegorical meaning of the psukim.

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physics and the relativity of perspective:

• the psychological/perception aspect is obviously valid

• of course any eq can be cast in any coord system (and see deep discussions in the literature re 'covariance' and Krwtchmer? etc)

• it may be that a statement implying geo IS valid, but even if so, it is true about ANY point in the universe, not specifically about the Earth

• even if the geocentric system is incorrect we are significant, ie we accept that it is incorrect, that is not an issue. 

• of course there is no Jewish religious dictum that says that the statements implying geocentricity in Tanach are meant to convey that God expects Jews to believe that the Earth has some physics-relevant special physical location in space! ie it is obvious to Orthodox Jews that God did not intend that we should think that we are required to believe geocentrism etc. eg: Torah quotes a lot from people's perspectives etc, eg "bney elohim". re geo: Torah does not say "And God spoke to Moses saying "you must believe that 'the sun rises', meaning it moves around the Earth, and it does so in a sense that physics can prove" or whatever. Judaism does NOT say this, Judiasm accepts that much of what is written in the Torah is "lashon bney adam". 

• A Jewish physicist has no problem with a book authored by God which speaks in human terms, as long as it doesn't make claims about physics like the spurious one in the previous sentence. (I wrote about all this extensively elsewhere, it is not the focus here.) 

So if we accept non-geocentrism and are not worried re the psukim, why is it interesting to go through the whole GR aspect re center etc? Bec we know the sci relg conflict started with this issue, and it made a huge impression and then after GR was discovered we have eminent relativists saying that GR shows geo is not more incorrect than any other, and I wanted to explain why that is so. Not that we believe in geocentrism or believe the Torah requires us to believe in it, but rather that this issue was culturaly-important enough to get Eddington and others to make these statements because of the history involved, and so it was interesting to me to explain what they meant.

And this is a sort of part of the 'convergence' notion.

From email:

New for Geo & allegory: for new book (re mind and human signifiicance)

How do we understand the geocentric language (and other reflections of older pictures of the physical universe) used by prophets, by King David in the psalms, and even in phrases in the Chumnsh (five books of Moses)? 

Imagine a couple in love at that time, the husband is singing to his wife "my beloved is like the sun which rises in the morning, proud like the unicorn which gallops in the field" imparting his deep feelings to her, and cries with joy when hearing them...but then we transport her to our time where she learns the sun does not actually rise and there are no unicorns, and she feels her husband betrayed her with lies. Absurd, right? Or if we were to ask her to write the poetry of her husband for us, would we ask her to first study contemporary astronomy and physics in order to re-write it accordingly? Nonsense.

It is an accepted Traditional Jewish teaching that God dictated every word of the chumash to Moses directly, using human language - even when describing God's own actions. So in the creation account we are told "and God said "let there be light". But htis is a lie, since God does not 'speak'. Speaking means generating sound waves via a larynx etc etc, and it is nonsens eot think tha thtis is wha tis meant. "And God saw that it was good". But God does not 'see" which required light receptors and photons etc. The Torah is written in human-language. And certianly the prophets wrote in  language refelcting thwir own human contemporary undestandings of nature.

When a spiritual poet like King David looked at nature, he was filled with awe,  and joy, and there welled-up a closeness to its creator, and this was expressed in song. The words were written from the persepective of a person living three thounsand years ago, long before science developed its understandingds, and so the 'science' which could be etracted from thos ewords would fit the contemporary science , ie that of sumeria, egypt and babylonia. The significant element is the feelings which well-up in the reader, reflecting the deep spiritual intentions imbued in the songs by the great mystic David, God's beloved shepherd, who wrote those words under the influenc eof divine inspiration. The cosmographic model reflected in the words are not relevant, and Judiams does not expect God to reveeal the physics of thousands of years ahead to his prophets for them to incoporate it into their songs. In Biblical Hebrew, the word 'navi' which is translated as "prophet" means "someone in contact with God" not "someone who predicts the future" Sometimes God told the future to a prophet and asked theprophet to relay this to the people. But most of the messages were not about the future. The essence of prophecy is the connection to God and the ability when "in a state of prophetic inspiration" to receive comprehensible relayable spiritual messages (not at all necessarily predictions about the fuiture), and often to then say them to others in ways they will understand. When the prophets spoke in poetic language, this was the essence of their prophecy, not some cosmographic model which formed the literary basis for their poetry, and God most certainly does not expect that we shuld adopt those cosmographic models, it would be a trivialization of the prophecy to think that was its intent.

And if the prophets lived today and were overcome with awe at the wnders of the universe, and the depth of the big bang theory and of quantum physics and general relativity, and composed a song to God which transported its hearers to higher spiritual levels, and this would be sung for humdreds of years - until in 250 years we discovered the full theory of quantum gravity which replaced all our current theories, when we would quickly hide those songs in shame. Absurd. So do we expect that God would reveal those future theories to prophets if they lived today? Just to make their spiritual prose "scientifically-correct'? Nonsense.

So there is absolutely no relgioius reason to try to 'rescue' geocentrism.

However there IS a religious reason to show the interesting fact that when some theologians at the time of Copernicus were  certain that science had 'disproved' the Bible and so tried to disprove science, that they were wrong on both counts - the passages were not disporven, and in fact the science was correct, expect tha tit was wrong in exactly the way thatthey thouight it made the Biblie worng, ie by inapporpriately attributing an absolutist inteprretation. Geocentrists thought Earth is the cente rof the uiverse in an absolute sense and they were wrong, and Copernicans thought the same about the sun and they were just as wrong. The sun is not even at the cente rf its own galaxy, let along of the yunverse. Except that anywehere in theuniverse one could as per general relativity, state that one is at the center. Many people would probably agree that there are interesting and deep psychological, theological and scientific lessons to be learned from all this.

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Tying non-geo to loss of sig, and interpreting Bible literally re cosmography, is perhaps holdover of ancient pagan materialist notion of god

Prior to the arising/emergence of nmc, people thought of gods as physical entities, just more powerful, and living up there in the sky' or on top of a great mountain (eg Olympus). The physical universe was all that existed for them, and so its structure was important from a 'religious' point of view. For example huimans could be significant only if they were at the center, and indeed one sees the sun and moon orbiting the earth, ie all is cenetered on us humans. And so it was unsettling for those who maintained this type of perspective when it was realized that this physical cosmography was incorrect. However to the nmc, it is clear tha tthe signficiance lies in nmc, whichever creature possess it is connected to the essence of existence, the higher deeper level than is manifest in the physical universe (in matter and energy in space and itme and in the structure-pattern of the larger scale eg geocentrism, sun-centrism, or whatever). However this physical-based persepctive is inappropriate for nmc's, who ar emeant to understadn that the essence lies in that realm, not in the physical. Humanity is signficant because it s nmc-connected, and via this (or the 'soul') connected to the deepest levels, and because machines and rocks do not 'feel' as do nmc's, and wha tis significant is the feelings of nmc's, the strivings, the free-willed moral chocies, all of which are at the nmc-lavel and cannot exist in a purely-material universe, and so do not exist in the material level of our dual nmc-physical universe. It is absurd to judge the signifciance of humanity based on the cosmography of the physical structure of the material aspect of the universe.

Any nmc being is significant. so humans are sig. and Bible introduces this notion in its way, re tzelem ruach and MR.

indeed, re the notion of 'significance':

in binder: Jeans quote re significance is based on mind, universe physical exsts in our mind or due to it, so how can we be insig?!

So after I speak of sig as mind, this is good to insert, it ties a basic theme, of mind as fundamental, to the other main theme, significance, and it shows that if one is nmc then the psychological roots of AMN disappears. 

nmc is plggd into and derives form a level beyon the physical, so noo nmc would deduce form facts in physical un that nmc's are insig where sig is itself existent only due to the existence of nmc!

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Geo: Copernican revolution displaces Earth as center and placed th sun there. But this is as false according to GR as geo. And if one means only that coperncan ie sun-centered model is simpler, then well it is simpler to describe the motions of the planets but the Copernican is simpler in terms of what we observe as what is moving etc. The point is more that geocentrists thought the ible is telling us atronomical info, and the alleged info was not correct as an absolute tatment, and the bible is form absolute truth so it seemed like a constradiciton to religion, but all this was built of false ideas of religion, of the bible, of the role of theplaent nd stars etc, and of the absoluteness of the sun as center etc. 

[Interesting that one doesnt need copernican idea to dethrone geocentrism: Imagine if no copernian discovery, just telescopes to see we are in a galaxy of stars , mny with anets, maybe wih beings. Then it would not at all be obvious that religious people would assume earth is the center.It is only bec turally when people thought only earth existed an the sky ws lights that thry thought earth ws the center, resonable.

And so why didnt God tell them otherwise and write chumash otherwise? Same answer as for why God doesnt tell us know the secrets of physcs and cosmology we will discover in a thousand years.  ie what should GOd have written in the bible, the copernicn wrond interpretaitom or GR which is known to be not fully correct?

Then later would be discovered that are far off center. iin the glxy, then that ther ar many other galaxies, and then later the understnaing that frm wherever one is, one sees oneself as the cente rof expansion of the universe, but everyhere would feel the same. This would be equivalent to the copernican revolution...

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from other email

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 meant for university students rather than for chabad people in Crown Heights etc, so material is geared to them. 

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Preface:

Judaism certainly does NOT require belief that the Earth is stationary and the sun goes round it etc. 

I personally don't believe the Torah even implies that it does so, nor that it implies that we should believe it to be so. 

I think that the essential issue is not whether psukim in the Torah have literal meaning implying geocentrism but rather the philosophical implications which were attached in the past to the issue, eg re human significance, eg:

even if there is a God, would God care about what we do etc?

even if the universe was created, why would we think that the creation had as a central purpose the creation of humanity?

A similar types of issues. 

Torah is not about whether Earth is at the center of the universe but rather about the fact that humans are 'central' to achieving the purpose of the entire creation; humans are indeed central, in a far deeper sense than in geocentric beliefs. The situaiotn is analogous to that regarding the notion of 'heaven': people used to think it meant a physical location at a high elevation above the Earth's surface, but now we understand it as meaning a reality which is all spiritual, rather than a physical location, and it would be quite odd for someone to insist that Judaism required belief that Heaven is some height above the Earth. Also it would be odd to think that the fact that religious Jewish people once thought this, is somehow a proof that the Torah is false or not from God.

The focus of the article should be on the deeper issues, eg the last section re significance, so the article should open with a discussion about this issue, as in the website version. Then the discussion which follows, re being the 'center', and general relativity etc, is placed in this context.

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Imagine a 'Biblical flat-earther' insisting that the Torah requires belief that:

• the surface of the Earth is flat;

• Heaven is a physical location;

• it is located at a certain physical distance above the Earth's surface. 

This would all certainly contradict science (and by now our own understanding based on various observations and deductions modern people have made during travel etc).  

However the situation regarding geocentrism is very different. Indeed the Torah utilizes geocentric terminology, however this does not mean that Torah believes in geocentrism nor that geocentrism is true but rather ....

.....the article indicates why what the Torah states in its literal sense, using geocentric terminology, is not 'false', it does not somehow 'contradict science' in a way that would make it impossible for someone who enfranchises science to believe in it.

See the first sentence of footnote 1 of the BH journal article.

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See the first sentence of footnote 1 of the BH journal article.

Operational definitions

If someone supports actual geocentrism, then it would really be necessary to explain what this means operationally, ie is there a prediction regarding a physically-doable experiment which would produce a different result according to that view vs what science would predict? eg would a year-long video of the Earth and sun, taken in space far away from the sun, show something that would surprise science? If not, then what exactly is meant by 'geocentrism'?

I am sure that those who hundreds of years ago believed in geocentrism would have been sure that if humans could go out into distant space and see the sun and earth and watch it for a year, they would come to the conclusion themselves that geocentrism was correct. I don't know exactly what they would have expected one would see or how that would prove geocentrism, but I am sure they would have believed that. 

When I say I don't know what they would have meant, it is because after learning GR one sees that Einstein thought very deeply about all this and why he came to the conclusion that there cannot really be any physical meaning to such a claim since one would have to establish the reference frame of the one making this observation, eg are they staying stationary relative to an observer on Earth's surface who of course sees the sun going round them? (first one must distinguish between the daily relative motion  and the annual relative motion).

What's the claim? 

Maybe someone has explained what chabad might mean by 'geocentrism'? If it means kabalistically or psychologically or philosophically or whether there is a physical claim....

Maybe the claim is only that the Torah would not use this language if it was totally factually incorrect, and that although of course we don't believe in geocentrism any more than we believe in heliocentrism, the fact that the Torah uses geocentric type phraseology means that it cannot be disproven, not that it is correct in any physical sense. And then marshall evidence from GR to support the claim that it cannot be disproven.

But then one needs to discuss all other 'non-scientific' sounding phraseology in TOrah.

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A crucially important but somewhat subtle point 

(which will certainly have escaped some readers attention) 

The claim that the Earth is the center of the universe in an absolute sense, in a physics sense, is no more incorrect scientifically than the claim that the sun is the center in this sense. Both are wrong scientifically. And so is any claim about any other location being the center. There is NO unique center in the physical sense, as I labor to indicate in the various GR-based parts of the article. Philosophically of course we can consider humans as central as I pointed out above, etc. And Kaballistically etc; but to claim it in the physical sense is counter to science. However it is fine to consider it as center for various calculations, for way of speaking etc.

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 meant for university students rather than for chabad people in Crown Heights etc, so material is geared to them. 

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