An interesting conversation from a friend’s newsfeed in which very careful thinking about the dangers implicit in ‘knowledge’ is exemplified. Note: I am not claiming anything here is ‘true’ but rather that these perspectives are very important to be able to entertain. Actual ‘truth’ is relatively bizarre and rare in the vast majority of domains of theory/knowledge. What we have, largely, are theories with truth value… :

Caleb Grayson: The Earth DOESN’T revolve around the Sun.

No one can have (scientific) knowledge of an event that only happened once and that has never been directly observed ((macro)evolution, big bang).

When asked to elaborate:

1. They revolve around each other. You have to preference the Sun based on mass to make this claim, but it’s an arbitrary one.

2. As evidence, the ☉’s position is altered by the Earth creating a third point – a Barycenter – which the Sun and all the planets ‘rotate around’ as center. Which moves.

3. if only considering 2 points of perspective, the Sun and Earth are opposites only changing in distance from each other. theoretically every point in the cosmos is the/a center of the cosmos, so making such claims of dominant position is relative. Particularly relative to a 3rd point which creates an infinite number of angular aspects besides conjunction and opposition.

People like to imagine seeing the cosmos from some aperspectival position, like God, but we’re always situated in a context that is relative.

The cosmos doesn’t just revolve around the Earth, it revolves around me. I am it’s center.
(and so are you.)