Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Robert Sungenis on the debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism: Reflections on the importance of philosophical pressupositions in science

Geocentrism is the model according to which the Earth is at the orbital center of all celestial bodies. We could summarize this view with this saying: The Earth is the center of the universe.

Since Galileo, it is widely held that the geocentric view has been empirically refuted by a heliocentric system, and no informed person would doubt that. 

However, among astrophycisists, there are some of whom argue that both the geocentric model and the heliocentric model are empirically equivalent, and therefore there is not scientific way to decide the question. The decision is, at the bottom, philosophical and extra-scientific.

Albert Einstein, for example, argued this:

The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolomy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either coordinate system could used with equal justification. The two sentences: "the sun is at rest and the Earth moves", or "the sun moves and the Earth is at rest", would simply mean to different conventions concerning two different coordinate systems. (The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, p.212. Emphasis added.)

According to Einstein, it is all dependent on the perspective that we choose (conventionally) to assume. For example, if you assume that the Earth is at rest and that all the other celestial bodies move, you can make calculations and predictions which can be empirically confirmed. But the same happens if you assume that it is the sun which is at rest and the Earth is moving...

So, both models are empirically equivalent (i.e. equivalent from the point of view of the empirical evidence).

More recently, Stephen Hawking, in his lastest book The Grand Design, has made exactly the same point than Einstein:

So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true (p.41. Emphasis added)

The underlying point of Einstein and Hawking is that, from a purely empirical point of view, both models (which are theoretically contradictory) are empirically equivalent, and hence there is no scientific justification at all to consider that one of them is the correct one. It is entirely dependent of the perspective that you assume that will determine which models explain the data, but (as Einstein notes) the perspective in question is a matter of convention.

Theirs is a kind of empirical relativism.

Now, I myself am a critic of geocentrism and a supporter of heliocentrism, but in all honesty I think that Einstein and Hawking have a point, if we limit out analysis to the empirical evidence alone. 

Now, obviously limiting oneself to scientific evidence alone (without any awareness of the underlaying philosophical assumptions) is simply naive. All of science has philosophical pressupositions which are assumed without question by scientists (the function of questioning such assumptions correspond to philosophers, not to scientists as such).

As philosopher Stephen Braude comments in his insighful critique of Ruper Sheldrake' work:

But no scientific theory is throughly empirical, and like many theories in science, Sheldrake looks more empirical than it is. Like all scientific theories, however, it rests on philosophical pressupositions. Every scientific theory starts from some assumptions or other about what nature is like and what observation is, as well as methodological assumptions about which investigate and explanatory procedures are appropiate to which domains. ("Radical Provincialism in Life Sciences" in The Journal of the American Society fo Physical Research, vol 77, January 1983).

Scientists as scientists seldom are trained to discover the working assumptions of their own discipline, let alone to critically examine and defend them from philosophical objections (again, this is the work of philosophy, not of science).

Braude adds that such philosophical naivité and ignorance is evident in the work of many parapsychologists. (He highlights this point in the case of survival research,  which makes a lot of implicit philosophical assumptions which are not almost never discussed, let alone defended. In my opinion, Braude's insight on survival research is one of the reasons which explain the thereotical lack of sophistication and development in much of the contemporary work on survival).

For example, at times Einstein seemed to believe that his special and general theory of relativity was purely empirical. Such radical and naive empiricism was instrumental in Einstein's rejection of absolute simultaneity. Most lay people and scientists think that Einstein "refuted" absolute simultaneity, but most philosophers of science who have studied the question are skeptical of such claim.

Philosophers of science have shown that Einstein's theory and metholdology is full of pressupositions, some of which are false or at best doubtious. See a philosophical discussion of some of the problems of Einstein's theory in William Lane Craig's book Time and Metaphysics of Relativity (Springer, 2001), and also the collection of essays by several philosophers of science edited by Craig and Quentin Smith in Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledg, 2007)

A contemporary defender of geocentrism is Catholic thinker Robert Sungenis. In his controversial book "Galileo was wrong, the Church was right" he makes exactly the same point of Einstein and Hawking (and many other scientists), namely, that from an purely empirical point of view, both models are equivalent.

Watch this video by Sungenis explaning his arguments:

I side with defenders of heliocentrism, and consider that it is a better and more reasonable model than geocentrism.

But I fully admit that my preference of heliocentrism is primarily philosophical, that is, I consider that the pressupositions underlaying heliocentrism are more plausible than the ones underlaying geocentrism.

In all honesty and with some reluctance, I have to admit with Einstein, Hawking, Sungenis and others that that science, by itself, seems to be ambiguous regarding this problem and cannot settle the question.