The ultimate theological question is: ‘Where does the Sun go at night?’.
The answer that so many civilisations agreed for so long was: ‘The Sun is driven by one of the gods, and at night it goes under the Earth to fight a battle. There is at least some risk that the god will lose this battle, and so the Sun may not rise tomorrow’. It’s something the human race understood was a cast iron fact before they knew how to cast iron. It survived as the working model twenty-five times longer than the four hundred years we’ve understood the Earth goes around the Sun.
This is less a rationality quote than a “yay science” quote, but I find that impressive beyond words. For millenia that was a huge and frightening question, and then we went and answered it, and now it’s too trivial to point out. We found out where the sun goes at night. I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain, entitled something in all caps along the lines of “HERE IS THE GLORY OF HUMANKIND”.
It survived as the working model twenty-five times longer than the four hundred years we’ve understood the Earth goes around the Sun.
Is it excessive nitpicking to point out that the daily disappearance and reappearance of the Sun has to do with the Earth’s rotation on its axis, not its rotation about the Sun? (Probably not, as the first comment on Parkin’s blog posting points out the same.)
Is it excessive nitpicking to note that not only did he misuse the word “ultimate”, he used it to mean basically the opposite of what it actually means?
Both. Cosmological content: “stuff goes around other stuff”; astronomical content: “this applies to the stuff we sit on”; philosophical content: “finding this out proves we are awesome”; gastronomical content: “here’s a recipe for cake to celebrate”.
Lance Parkin, Above us only sky
This is less a rationality quote than a “yay science” quote, but I find that impressive beyond words. For millenia that was a huge and frightening question, and then we went and answered it, and now it’s too trivial to point out. We found out where the sun goes at night. I want to carve a primer on cosmology in gold letters on a mountain, entitled something in all caps along the lines of “HERE IS THE GLORY OF HUMANKIND”.
Is it excessive nitpicking to point out that the daily disappearance and reappearance of the Sun has to do with the Earth’s rotation on its axis, not its rotation about the Sun? (Probably not, as the first comment on Parkin’s blog posting points out the same.)
Is it excessive nitpicking to note that not only did he misuse the word “ultimate”, he used it to mean basically the opposite of what it actually means?
No. Thank you for inspiring me to look up the word and learn its true meaning.
Do you mean cosmology or astronomy?
Both. Cosmological content: “stuff goes around other stuff”; astronomical content: “this applies to the stuff we sit on”; philosophical content: “finding this out proves we are awesome”; gastronomical content: “here’s a recipe for cake to celebrate”.
lolwut