When science made the revelation that the sun was at the centre of our solar system and not the other way round ( the sun didn’t actually rise and set around earth but the earth rotated around it ). Why do we all continue to play along with the false notion of the sun rising and sun setting even today?
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While we do know that the sun doesn’t actually rise and set, it does still appear that way to us here on Earth. Unfortunately, to my knowledge we don’t have a better term to describe what actually happens.
What? Because the sun is literally rising and setting with respect to the horizon. It has nothing to do with heliocentrism. It’s just saying what we observe happening. It’s just an expression, and one that’s much easier and less cumbersome than saying “the Earth has rotated so that the sun is now visible at my location.”
Because from our perspective as humans it still does those things.
From the point of view of someone standing on Earth, the image of the sun rises and sets in the sky. Sunrise and sunset are perfectly scientifically valid as descriptions of lighting conditions at a point on Earth.
What does the sun do if not rise and set?
Everything we perceive is relative to our view. If we were on the Sun, the Earth would appear as a bright disc that has a slowly changing landscape, making a pattern that repeats 365 times as the Earth revolves around us in a circle. But viewed from a point on Earth, we see a much different view. A similar experience can be had by watching your friend ride an amusement ride from across the fairway as opposed to being on the ride yourself and watching your friend standing on the fairway.
You’re in a rotating reference frame, my guy. Sun moves ‘round these parts.
Because it’s used in the context of the horizon which is the line of visible vs invisible.
It’s not commonly used in relation to the earth as a whole so it doesn’t really matter that it’s the earth rotating that is the cause.
Even though we know scientifically the Earth is spinning, we see the Sun appearing in the east and disappearing in the west. So sunrise and sunset are just the natural way humans describe what they observe from their point of view. Saying the sun “rises” isn’t scientifically false, it’s just from a local frame of reference. It’s all about who’s watching and from where.
Maybe it has something to do with religion? It’s not just western thought, the sun was worshipped. The need to have a single god head / god figure? So persistent in our psyche that this is the one time that religion beats fact ( or maybe there’s more )
Language is never perfectly accurate. You’re gonna have a bad time if you question the accuracy of every idiom
good lord. go outside tomorrow and see what it looks like to you.
Well what else would you say. Aw what a nice earth rotation Westwards to expose the sun today