Article October 2, 1995 Issue

The power of the right point of view

Wendy Joy Spille

What you see ... depends upon your point of view. This simple lesson from physics has had a major impact on scientists' quest for truth.

For centuries, it was believed that the earth was the center of the universe. This was the point of view that Ptolemy used when he tried to account for the motions of the heavenly bodies. The stars were easy; they moved in a uniform pattern. To help explain the more erratic motions of the planets, however, he envisioned a complex system of epicycles, involving small spheres attached to larger spheres, all moving around the earth.

When, about 1,300 years later, Copernicus mentally shifted his point of view to the sun instead of the earth, the movements of the planets resolved into a simple pattern of concentric orbits around the sun.

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