Albion

Reminds me of that wonderful post at TalkDesign - the creationist attitude to evolutionary theory is that it's either a totally unchanging dogma or it changes ever couple of seconds and so it isn't worth paying attention to anyway, and it's both unfalsifiable and falsified. Makes you sick when scientists turn themselves inside out not to claim too much for a scientific theory, just to have it misunderstood (or, more likely, misrepresented) like that.

Doubting Didymus

Oh come on. The sun is the gravitational centre of the solar system and the planets revolve around it. Do you really think that the fact that the planets orbit elliptically means that the heliocentric theory is not true, only useful? The rotation of the galaxy is not relevent to the heliocentric theory of the solar system

The heliocentric theory is true. I really don't know what else to call it. It's not just 'workable', 'helpful' or 'nice', it exists. That planets orbit the sun is a true thing, by even the strictest standards I know.

Starboy

The truly sickening part of it is that we do live in the scientific age. Our current existence on the planet depends on science, yet the vast majority of the population do not have clue as to what it is. This is both scary and sickening. As I have said before, science is something completely new. A vast enterprise that doesn't produce truth yet yields an understanding of our surroundings and gives us control undreamed of 400 years ago. It isn't religion or philosophy or mathematics it is science. A human enterprise that is practiced everywhere on the planet and operates in very good agreement and yet has no human central authority.

Starboy

Starboy

DD, we have some big planets in this system, the center of the solar system is not the center of the sun. If you take a small child by the arms and twirl them around, the center will not be your center, but the center of mass of you and the child. Go study your physics. The devil is in the details.

Starboy

[ September 08, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

Starboy.

When I say 'the heliocentric theory is true' I mean that the modern version of it, whatever physics included, is true. That my representation of that theory was not 100% correct should not be relevant.

You have said that you don't think the heliocentric theory is true. However, would you not agree that this statement is true: the planets and sun operate according to the modern heliocentric theory. Note that I am not asking what you think about the theory itself, just asking what you think is true about the real - life solar system.

Starboy

DD we are both picking at nits. To a good approxiamation the sun is at the center of the solar system and the planets orbit around the sun. But if you are looking for the "truth" it is much more complicated than that. When you use the word "truth" with people who think they know the "truth" you are already getting it wrong.

Starboy

Doubting Didymus

Also, a more accurate description would be of swinging one child on each arm, no?

Starboy

DD, that is funny. Take an astronomy class while you are at it.

Starboy

Starboy

Good night all!

Doubting Didymus

I don't think so at all, I think that the heliocentric theory is true. I think it satifies all reasonable standards of truth. When I talk about the universe with a flat earther who 'knows' the 'truth' that the earth is flat I do not say "your opinion may be true, but my scientific opinion is more useful", I say, "your ideas are demonstratably untrue, and the real truth is that the earth orbits the sun".

I may be proven wrong next thursday, but I don't think that is relevant at all.