4 thoughts on “A solstice question”

  1. Because that’s how it looks to the naked eye. The sun comes up in the east, moves in a half-circle across the sky, then sets in the west. The next morning it reappears in the east and repeats the cycle, day after day, year after year. Before science explained it, it doubtless seemed that the only logical deduction was that the sun was making a circle around the earth each day. Solstices and such would probably have been attributed to a predictable shift in the orbit of the sun. Other than to note the seasons and predict when to plant crops and so forth, common people probably didn’t give it much thought one way or the other. It was the accepted explanation, so why question it?

  2. So, you say it looked like the sun is rotating around the earth.

    How would it look if the earth were rotating around the sun?

  3. I’m saying that I doubt it ever occurred to them to even think of it the other way around. Much of perception is based upon experience and belief. I recently heard a scientific explanation that when the first ships arrived on the coast where primitive peoples lived who had never seen ships before (Mayans), that the people didn’t even see the ships until they were practically upon them at the shore, because they had no frame of reference to understand the vision before them. It is obviously more complicated than what I am relating here, but the principle exists that we sometimes see what we think we should see, based on the filters of our frame of reference, instead of what is objectively there.

  4. Thanks for the exchange Debby.

    The point of the question and response, attributed to the philosopher Wittgenstein, is that we answer that’s what it looked like. But that’s what it looks like the way it actually is (as we now know!), so why did they choose the false interpretation?

    Something besides the visual evidence contributed to their misunderstanding.

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