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thomblake comments on Recommended reading: George Orwell on knowledge from authority - Less Wrong
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Not if you take "the sun goes round the earth" to be an explanation for the sun's apparent movement in the sky.
It's not as if the Earth goes around the sun. The earth is in an orbit around the center of the galaxy and the sun interferes with it making it do so in a curly manner. You sol-centric people are small minded!
The sun does go round the earth, and it's a perfect explanation/prediction of its movement in our sky. If you plot the point on Earth's surface above which the Sun is located, it goes round and round the planet (with seasonal perturbations).
The only problem with this theory (things go round the Earth) is that it doesn't explain the movement of bodies other than Sun and Moon. Retrograde motion leads you to epicycles, which are hard - you never have quite enough of them. That's why "things go round the Sun" is much better, at lest until you discover extrasolar objects aren't immobile.
But as far as the Sun-Earth system is concerned, both theories are equally valid.
Er, actually, of course, "things go round the Sun" doesn't correctly explain day and night. The correct theory is that the Earth turns on its axis, and goes round the sun but much more slowly. That's why the unified theory of "sun going round the earth" is much simpler and more elegant to start with.