Thomyum2 wrote: ↑February 23rd, 2022, 1:45 pm
Paradigmer, your response constitutes to an argumentum ad populum. Pattern-chaser's points are valid. I find the parable of the blind men and an elephant to be a very useful analogy here. That one of the blind men describes the elephant as like a thick snake is not an illusion - it's a valid perception, but just based on a limited perspective. Illusions (and delusions) are only such in relation to other points of view or other available information. The Wikipedia article you cite here I think makes this very clear in saying that the illusion
results from Earth observers being in a rotating reference frame.
That the sun 'rises' is not intrinsically an illusion, it's an illusion in the context of a particular model uses a specific reference frame to explain and understand the relative motion of objects in the solar system.
Perspectives can be strange things. They can be figurative, or even
metaphysical perspectives, but here we are considering the simplest case - literal perspectives, almost completely defined by the chosen origin of a 3D (or 4D) Cartesian graphical system, and by the co-ordinates of our chosen observation point (and that point's movement relative to the origin, which is 'stationary' by definition). The origin of our graphs is what we're varying here, and then we're considering the differing perspectives that result from these variations.
If we place the origin and our observation point in my garden, we clearly see the Sun rising and setting in the traditional manner, and this is not an illusion. The next step is to move the origin to the centre of our Earth, from which we gain another, different, perspective. After that, we can move the origin to the centre of the Sun, and then again to the 'centre' of the galaxy (if a moving structure like a galaxy even has a meaningful centre), and maybe even to the centre of the universe, if that centre can be defined meaningfully.
Our point of observation also shifts around. The final perspective, based on the centre of the universe, requires a typical thought-experiment 'God's-eye-view' from a point
outside the universe (!!!) which cannot (as far as we know) be reached. It's a theoretical-only observation point. This is a shame, because the progression we are following leads towards absolute, as opposed to relative, motion. Absolute motion is attractive because of the way it simplifies everything, by providing the ultimate physical reference point, by which all motion might be 'converted' from relative to absolute. So motion remains relative, as we really knew already, and so we must do without the certainty and precision of absolute motion. That's life!
Another thing about perspectives is that, while they
can be contradictory, they can be, and often are,
complementary. There is no reason to adopt a perspective as the One-and-Only perspective. For example, the perspective from my garden is useful, and wholly compatible with a heliocentric view, which is also useful, and not an illusion. And so on.
In my career as a software designer, I discovered the value of perspectives, and concluded that there are almost no perspectives that are without value, although some are more
useful, and therefore more valuable, than others. It took me decades to reach that realisation, but once I had, my designs improved accordingly. More, and wider, perspectives are almost always of value, IME.