Is it a choice where I place the seat of truth and validity? Can I decide for myself what is the cause of an effect? I.E. Yesterday I decided that the sun should rise again today (literally that the world should continue to turn while I slept). Lo and behold I woke up and the sun was on the other horizon. Can I then choose to believe that it did so on that particular occasion because of my choice? I may assume that every other day these atronomical happenings came about because of the laws of physics or perhaps the declaration of some other being. Today however the sunrise approached the east of my location because yesterday I told it to.
To the point: It seems to me that in this isolated circumstance I can grant as much validity to the belief that the cause of the sunrise was my declaration as I could to the scientific laws that I've grown to accept most of the time.
Would the commonly accepted explanation have less value than before? I think this brings the point home a little better. Do I just choose which explanation feels better? If so what makes one more intuitively correct than the other? It is sometimes seen as a fundamental truth that the sun should rise in the east. It has been explained scientifically that the east was not always east. (I am referring to the change in the position of the axis relative to the sun.) After the recent Earthquake/Tsunami near Japan it was reported that the earth's tilt had changed slightly. I realize this may support the scientific explanation in one way, but it also defeats it in that east is not always east.
Let me give you a scientific definition why you perceive the sun rising in the east. Your perceptions have absolutely nothing to do with it. These motions have been fixed since the birth of the Universe, about 14 billion years ago.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Earth rotates or spins toward the east, and that's why the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars all rise in the east and make their way westward across the sky. Suppose you are facing east - the planet carries you eastward as it turns, so whatever lies beyond that eastern horizon eventually comes up over the horizon and you see it!
For example, people at Earth's equator are moving at a speed of about 1,600 kilometers an hour -- about a thousand miles an hour -- thanks to Earth's rotation. That speed decreases as you go in either direction toward Earth's poles. In the state of Texas, you'd moving at about 1,400 kilometers an hour due to rotation. If you're in southern Canada, you're moving at only about a thousand kilometers an hour.
Now think about what would happen if you stood exactly at the North Pole. You'd still be moving, but you'd be turning in a circle as Earth spins on its axis. you don't feel this speed because human beings have no 'speed organs' which can sense absolute speed. You can only tell how fast you are going relative to something else, and you can sense changes in velocity as you either speed up or slow down. But we cannot really tell whether or not we are just moving at a constant speed unless something else tips us off! Speed is relative not absolute, as Einstein predicted.