Ladislaus
COORDINATE SYSTEMS USED IN GEODESY
BASIC DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS
By Tomás Soler and Larry D. Hothem, Member, ASCE
... In other words, here we have the modern experts in this field telling us that no accurate shape for the Earth has ever really been achieved. If this is so and all past measurements cannot be regarded as absolutely accurate
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The science of surveying, that is, determining the layout of land, goes on all around us all the time.
Geodesy is but surveying on a larger scale. Back in Cassini's days they traveled from Paris to St Spain
In 1735, Newton's heliocentrists, financed by King Louis XV this time, one group went to Peru under Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie La Condamine and a year later another group went to Lapland under Maupertuis.
The reason Cassini wanted to measure the shape of the Earth was because Newton had said it was shaped with a bulging equator that made the Earth spin like a gyroscope. Cassini, a geocentrist wanted to prove Newton wrong as with geocentrism it is the universe that spins like a gyroscope.
Needless to say the heliocentrists got their way and Cassini's Earth shape was dismissed. But bot sides measured the Earth as a globe. Geodesy uses measurements based on space coordinates. As these bodies never cease moving relative to each other and the Earth, absolute accuracy cannot be determined. That is what is meant in the quote.
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