The Case for a Hierarchical Cosmology

Abstract

Once upon a time philosophers and cosmographers insisted that the motions of the planets must be circular and uniform. An irrelevant aesthetic concept of ‘perfection’ and a more valid mathematical need for simplicity were at the root of this long-held error. Nowadays, theoretical cosmologists insist that the large-scale distribution of galaxies most be homogeneous and isotropic, and most astonomers believe that the expansion of the universe is linear and isotropic and that it proceeds at a uniform rate measured by the Hubble ‘constant’ H.1, 2