In fact, we may look to the seminal location of these issues to account for the fact that they rarely trouble us. Instead of taking that as an indication of their incidental nature, it can be seen as a reflection of their basal position in our thoughts. As such they would be disposed of early and at so deep a level that it might rarely occur to us to reopen those questions. Despite the generally intensive efforts at analysis in our times, the issues we would like--or perhaps fear--to use as our bases are those we often discuss, not those we actually use.

The location of the tension in question is not its only worrisome aspect; its nature is at least an equal cause for concern. Strained by it is what would in any case be a delicate connection: the link between what we see (through the senses) and what we say and believe.

The fact that we have been able to link the world of our experiences with language is certainly central to most of our achievement, and may itself be the most important one. Language is necessary to coordinate our activities and to preserve previously gained knowledge, both of which are crucial to human culture and technical achievement. Although heliocentrism cannot be said to have hindered technical advance -- on the contrary -- we might wonder if there was not some price paid in the area of culture. Our perceptual universe is unchangeably geocentric. Yet our intellectual world, where our culture is stored and developed, uses a heliocentric system. The effects of such a conflict are bound to be extensive and profound.

We will confine our discussion to one example of what might be seen as a development of our having to cope with this tension. It is no longer strange to hear a work of fiction praised as being true. The notion of truth has usually been that what was said or written corresponds in some sense to reality, but on the face of it this is not a claim that can be made of fiction. No doubt, the claim is made primarily of the message or insight which we take with us from the work. But this cannot be the whole scope of the claim, for the message is often uncontroversial and unoriginal, and in order for it to constitute praise of the work, the claim of truth must apply also to the work itself. Why not? Just as in regard to the physical world we are willing to apply the truth predicate despite appearances to the contrary, so too in the literary world we might take similar liberties. Such supply twists can only be the product of long "athletic" training which began at a very early age, perhaps the age at which the Copernican theory was first presented as the picture of reality.

The reference system necessary in order to take the sun as stationary is literally inhuman. No one, not even the astronauts, has even been in a frame which remotely approaches it, nor is anyone likely to do so in the foreseeable future. (It is not easy even to think of a practical reason for anyone to do so.) Furthermore, the point from which the common models of the solar system, a staple of the science museums, is even less accessible, located some astronomical distance outside the plane of the solar system. To apply these models to the world around us, we must move, in our imagination, to a point incredibly beyond any of our experience. The result is a perspective which can be called ours only in a most tenuous sense.

Conversely, the fact that if we observe the skies we cannot but see all the objects in it as circling us is not a consequence of some "special" limitation on our part. It is the result of the fact that we observe the skies only from an inertial reference frame which is fixed with respect to the earth. The geocentric system is ours in simple, yet important sense: it is the one in which we live.

We might say that one of the functions of science is to fill the void that was once occupied by myth, to help us come to grips with the world around us (hence the earlier term "scientific myth"). Professor Kuhn refers to a feeling of "at homeness" in the universe, for which we seem to have a need. It is difficult to see how a theory which trivializes the relationship between us and what is, after all, our home can be satisfying in this respect. We live on earth. We are born here; we die here. We contemplate the unmeasured heights of the heavens and the fathomless depths of our fellows, all on earth. We have been witness to the growing possibility, are witnessing the increasing necessity, and, it is to be hoped, will witness the developing actuality, of a planetary consciousness. This could only be expedited by a growing recognition and acceptance of the fact that, for all practical purposes, as far as we are concerned, we live at the center of the universe.

NOTES

1. Kuhn, Thomas, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957).