Saturday, June 30, 2012

A Copernican Revision

As modern Astronomy has established, the familiar phenomenon of the daily east-to-west transit of the Sun across the sky is actually caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis, with respect to which the Sun is immobile.  It is this re-attribution of motion, i. e. from the Sun to the Earth, that is the methodological innovation that Kant ascribes to Copernicus.  In other words, contrary to what has been asserted here previously, and elsewhere, Kant's 'Copernican revolution' is independent of Copernicus' Heliocentrism, i. e. which pertains to annual, not daily cycles.  Thus, Kant's interest in the Geocentricism of the Earth spinning on its axis is not tantamount to a 'counter-Copernican revolution', as has been previously argued here.  In other words, his 'revolution' pertains to a motion-rest relation, not to a center-orbit one.

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