History of the center of the Universe the center of a spherical, stationary Earth, around which the sun, moon, planets, and stars rotate. With the development of the heliocentric model by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, the sun was believed to be the center of the Universe, with the planets (including Earth) and stars orbiting it. In the early 20th century, the discovery of other galaxies and the development of the Big Bang theory led to the development of cosmological models of a homogeneous, isotropic Universe (which lacks a central point) that is expanding at all points. In religion or mythology, the "axis mundi" (also cosmic
Analogy of the sun the Good, we would only be able to see with our physical eyes and not the "mind's eye". The sun bequeaths its light so that we may see the world around us. If the source of light did not exist we would be in the dark and incapable of learning and understanding the true realities that surround us. Incidentally, the metaphor of the sun exemplifies a traditional interrelation between metaphysics and epistemology: interpretations of fundamental existence create—and are created by—ways of knowing. It also neatly sums up two views for which Plato is recognized: his rationalism and his realism (about