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

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You didn't get your urrent employment specifically because of philosophy, though. You got it because you have a university education and are a native speaker of English.

I'm pretty sure my education in Philosophy enabled me to pass the National Teacher's Exam and the EFL specialty area test without having specifically taken Education courses. I was already familiar with Chomsky and Piaget, for example, because of my background in Philosophy. With that, I became a teacher in the US, and because of that background, I was qualified to teach university-level English in Korea. It takes more than just an undergrad degree and native-speaker status to get a university position over here.

Anyway, the degree has been useful, so I maintain that Philosophy isn't useless. And don't forget the things I said about science springing out of philosophy, the cataloging of logical fallacies, etc. I think if you look at some of the greatest scientists, you'll find that they were well-read in philosophy, too. If you study the history of science throughout the centuries, you'll find a lot of philosophy and philosophers there.

I realize that it's fashionable these days to disparage philosophy as useless, but I can't find any reasoning that rescues that position from the accusation of bias and narrow-mindedness. (No offense intended.)

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@FBM,

Good clip.

I note however that Feynman uses the term "philosophy" conservatively here to imply "epistemological consequences of selection of competing models". I seem to remember him giving a rather more disparaging answer to questions to him regarding "his diagrams involving particles travelling backwards in time" ...something to the effect... "it works...don't ask me...go and ask a philosopher what it means".

IMO, the interesting philosophical question concerning scientific models revolves around accounting for their "success" in enhancing human prediction and control. In this respect "logicality" and "coherence" are often not apparent.
To paraphrase Feynman "I don't think anybody understands quantum theory".

I note too that Rorty dismissed the "realism/anti-realism debate" despite his apparent support for Feyerbend.

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@fresco,

Yeah, Feynman was more disparaging about philosophy in his later years.

I once made the mistake of opining in a forum of largely atheists that physics - insofar as it is arguably an inquiry into how things really are - could reasonably be considered a branch of metaphysics. You can probably imagine the shitstorm that ensued. It didn't help in the least to differentiate between the philosophical and vernacular definitions of "metaphysics." Not one bit.

Granted, even in philosophy it's hard to nail down a clear definition of the word, but it doesn't mean "woo peddling" the way they took it to mean.

I just stumbled upon this:

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@FBM,

My argument is that any comprehensive university education (and i aid nothing about undergraduate studies) combined with your status as a native speaker of English would have qualified you, whether or not your concentration had been philosophy.

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@Setanta,

The three years' minimum experience as a teacher was also required, and I doubt I could've passed the NTE and the EFL specialty test if I had majored in, say, History or Physics. I could be wrong.

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@FBM,

Although you might well have passed those examinations if you had had a concentration in English, or literature, or any number of liberal arts courses of study. As for history, my adviser in history in university (i doubled in history and English--the latter for literature, my university not offering a separate course of study in literature) once told me that history is the study of everything. That was rather pompous and grandiose, but it does point to something which is true about liberal arts studies, which is that a sound liberal arts education is not just about the area of concentration. I find that people who concentrate in sciences seem to think it an annoyance that they have to meet a foreign language requirement, that they have to take courses in history, in English, in philosophy and any other of a number of liberal arts type of courses. I can see your remark about physics, but not about history. I would say that you were prepared not because you studied philosophy in particular, but because you had a good liberal arts education in general. The first university i attended was a "teachers' college" as they are often called. We all considered the education courses to be pretty feeble stuff--things we would have learned anyway.

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@Setanta,

Maybe, maybe not. But in the end, neither the degree nor the education itself was useless.

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@Setanta,

I have not said that it is a useless course of study.

Setanta wrote:

Somewhat useful, then . . . as a disclaimer, i don't claim to be an historian, just a student of history. That's an idle pursuit, much like philosophy. It can be useful if it leads one to avoid making mistakes that others have made in the past. I suggest, though, that that is pretty rare.

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@Setanta,

Cool.

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@knaivete,

"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."

Um, no. Perimeter is a term from TWO dimensional geometry. The sun has an outer surface, not a perimeter. If you take a picture of the sun and project it on a wall, you could talk of the perimeter of the IMAGE of the sun, but that would be rather silly, don't you think?

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@Banana Breath,

Quote:

"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."

Um, no. Perimeter is a term from TWO dimensional geometry. The sun has an outer surface, not a perimeter. If you take a picture of the sun and project it on a wall, you could talk of the perimeter of the IMAGE of the sun, but that would be rather silly, don't you think?

Agreed. What is sillier still is you ascribing the assertion to me , I was quoting fresco. Don't you bother reading the other posts and following the plot? Do you comprehend that the mention of fresco followed by words in quotation marks indicates a reference to what he has written?

Quote:

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."

1 Reply

@Banana Breath,

Quote:

perimeter noun

the line or relatively narrow space that marks the outer limit of something <soldiers guarding the perimeter of the camp>
Synonyms borderline, bound, boundary, brim, circumference, compass, confines, edge, edging, end, frame, fringe, hem, margin, perimeter, periphery, rim, skirt, skirting, verge

Merriam Webster

Actually, the case study I cited above suggests that the centre of mass occasionally moves outside the sun's visual perimeter according to the conjunction of the planets.

Footnote for Philosophers
Note that in general terms the "multi-body problem" in physics has philosophical significance in promoting the epistemological status of quantum theory over that of classical mechanics on the basis of elegance of solution.

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@fresco,

Perimeter is simply the wrong word.
"A perimeter is a path that surrounds a two-dimensional shape. The word comes from the Greek peri (around) and meter (measure)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter

That being said, there's nothing magical about the surface boundary of a star. The extreme case demonstrating this would be a binary star system with two identically sized stars. In this case the center of mass would be outside of the outer surface of both stars at a point in space midway between them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star

There isn't much difference between an orbiting planet and an orbiting star except for the fact that if it becomes large enough then its gravity can cause the fusion reactions that make it a star.

1 Reply

@knaivete,

Knaivete, as you can see on my profile, I'm new here, and haven't quite adjusted to the quote boxes yet. How do you make those?

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@Banana Breath,

Banana Breath wrote:

Knaivete, as you can see on my profile, I'm new here, and haven't quite adjusted to the quote boxes yet. How do you make those?

When you want to quote someone, drag your cursor over the text to be quoted. This will highlight it. Then look above the text box. The fourth button from the left says "Quote." Click that and

Quote:

voila!

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@Banana Breath,

Quote:

I'm new here, and haven't quite adjusted to the quote boxes yet. How do you make those?

Highlight then right click on what is to be copied.
Click on 'Reply', click on 'Open BBCode Editor', click on Quote .
Paste highlighted text between the two sets of square brackets which contain the words [ ( quote )] and [(/quote)].

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@Banana Breath,

Since you are new here you may be unfamiliar with the linguistic concept of appropriate versus "right and wrong" which often comes up.
You may not like my choice of word because our lexicons differ. Or you may not appreciate the fact that provided overall meaning is being conveyed, there is no such thing as absolute semantic value of a "word".(See Quine or think about poetry). You have decided, without detailed knowledge of semantics, (and for reasons of making "a valued comment") that "perimeter" can only be used in the specific sense of having an absolute meaning based on two dimensional figures. That is simply not the case. Meaning depends on context. And a major point is that C of G problems are usually simplified as two dimensional anyway !
Between the two of us we might compromise on the word "periphery" as being more appropriate, but if we actually discussed "surface" we might find that this is also a physically nebulous concept unless we define it as "boundary we can see".

I apologize for such an ostensibly supercilious response ! Wink

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@Banana Breath,

BTW The reason that two dimensional terminology may be deemed particularly appropriate here is that the solar system is more or less planar.

If you stay around you will discover many levels of dialogue are operating within a forum....questions of facticity...interpersonal animosities and styles...social stroking....intellectual one-up-manship ...and so on. It is interesting to reflect on what actually drives a response.

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@fresco,

I actually know quite a bit about spatial geometry and multi-body physics, and the difference between two dimensional and three dimensional geometries in terms of mass and volume is huge. And by the way, I'm not a stranger to Quine; I have a copy of Quine's Quiddities within arm's reach. Relative to the actual question at hand though, the word "perimeter" is actually useless to this, being a multi-body problem in space with variable densities of objects presumed. As I pointed out, there's no reason to think the center of mass of the system is within the surface of any one of the bodies, and nor does the surface, or if you prefer, the perimeter of the two-dimensional projection of either of the two bodies, come into play. Mass and distance do though, and the basic relationship is described in Newton's law of universal gravitation as stated in The Principia (1687).

"Every point mass attracts every single other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them"

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@Banana Breath,

threechez ! Wink

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

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