Does the sun spin around the world or does that world spin around the sun?

You hirsute heretic . . .

So, I'm guessing everybody was as bored as I was last night? David, I don't want to be disagreeable, but do you also think phonetic Latin should be employed as well.

Well, I do have a beard, but I recently shaved my shoulders.

If the planet really circles the sun, what keeps the flat side sunwards, and why isn't always daytime?

It is always daytime. It's also always nighttime.

Doesn't that prove the sun circles the earth?

QED.

Thank you.

Everbody needs a little insanity in there lives, and I'm yours.

Drop the 's' in that word and I can reciprocate that statement.

Actually you will not know for sure unless you witness it for yourself. If you can't witness it for yourself, then you must take someone else's word for it. Heck, I can't say for sure we humans ever even landed on the moon, I just take someone else's word for it that we have.... I'm notorious for not believing anything unless I see, hear, touch, or taste it for myself. :-)

While the 5th grade answer is that the earth is in orbit around the sun, the astrophysics graduate school answer is a bit more complicated. The sun has a far greater mass than the earth, so its mass is dominant in the relationship, but the earth acts upon the sun as well. Further the Universe has no fixed frames of reference, so we can't really say the earth revolves around the sun as if the fixed x-y-z origin of the universe were at the center of the sun; it isn't. The sun is in motion, the galaxy is in motion, space itself is in motion.

What we CAN say is that relative to the sun, the earth revolves around the sun as do the other planets, but just keep in mind that there's more going on than that.

What aspect of Fresco's "notions of science" (in his post reprinted below) do you disagree with?

"Above 5th grade you may learn that in physical terms they both rotate about a common centre of mass situated within the Sun's perimeter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_mass

The sun rotates around it's center of mass. The earth revolves around that center of mass (and does so in an elliptical orbit).

Science is hard! (At least,it is for those who aren't paying attention.)

You sure have a hard on for trying to prove me wrong. Do you have any other such targets, or is it just me? Clown.

Correction clown!
You are doing a bit of semantic nitpicking about the words "rotate" and "revolve" in order to attempt to save face with respect your nonsense about my original comment. Technically all bodies in the solar system revolve around their common centre of mass.
http://www.timingsolution.com/TS/Study/cm/
Science is harder than history.!

Whereas philosophy is a wonderful La-la land of word salad--and anyone can play!

...An irrelevance....yet Wittgenstein might agree with you but for reasons you might not like, because they might also undermine "history" .

Jeeze, Bubba . . . are you so eaten up with the pettiness of the academic life that you actually believe you can offend or hurt me with comments about history? History, insofar as it refers to past events, exists independently of me or of you or of silly remarks (and so many or your remarks are silly). Attempting to insult history is like trying to insult gravity, or cosmic radiation. It is entertaining, though, to see you play such a game.

My sandbox is bigger and more important than your sandbox! How nice for you, Bubba.

Anybody can play either science or philosophy, neither is an exclusive club. And to the majority of the public, statements by scientists are nothing more than word salads. Yet, if you take the time and effort to delve beneath the surface of either science or philosophy, you'll find that both of them contain both genuine, useful and relevant aspects, as well as their fair share of wankers and poseurs.

I was right there with ya up to the point where you seggested that there are useful elements in philosophy.

Here, have a banana . . .

I got a job teaching English with my degree.


Also, it was majoring in Philosophy that convinced me that Christianity (and every other religion) is all made up. So there's that.