Paul Martin wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

Even Galileo failed to understand that, whereas the Church actually did.
They wanted him to merely state (correctly in my opinion) that the re
normalisation of orbital paths to a heliocentric model, was a matter of
mathematical convenience and that to say it 'meant' the 'the earth goes
round the sun' was unjustified.

Are you saying the earth doesn't go around the Sun (as a first
approximation)?

To a pedant, that is correct. The earth orbits the centre of mass of
the whole solar system (to a first approximation). That might not
always lie within the Sun.

No it doesn't.

In fact nothing is doing anything. MODELS of a sort of three
dimensional analysis of the solar system, give approximately correct
results if that is _assumed_ to be the case. What is ACTUALLY happening
is anybodies guess.

The map is not the territory.