History of the center of the Universe Sun at the center of our Solar System. The word comes from the Greek ( "helios" "sun" and "kentron" "center"). The notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun had been proposed as early as the 3rd century BCE by Aristarchus of Samos, but had received no support from most other ancient astronomers. Nicolaus Copernicus' major theory of a heliocentric model was published in "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"), in 1543, the year of his death, though he had formulated the theory several decades earlier. Copernicus' ideas were not immediately accepted, but they did
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