On Jun 16, 10:16 pm, oriel36 wrote:

Your hypothetical question aside,the ability to believe that you can
reference axial rotation off celestial sphere geometry while
referencing orbital motion off the central Sun

Nah. Celestial sphere geometry is just a convenience for knowing where
to point things. If you're going to do any calculating, there's only
one geometry to use - Cartesian coordinates, x, y, and z.

Unless, of course, general relativistic effects are so strong that
they're nonlinear; then there's nothing for it but to go whole hog
with tensor calculus. Thankfully, while general relativistic effects
are strong enough to be *detectable* in the precession of Mercury,
they're still nowhere near strong enough to require THAT. (Depending
on the precision you need, of course.)

is truly a remarkable
belief in a simpleminded sort of way,the genuine belief among
empiricists that they actually can justify axial rotation in 23 hours
56 minutes 04 seconds because they can see a star returning back to a
observed location in that time.

Well, we have to start with the simple stuff.

Aaarrr, Jim lad, were it only that
simple.

Celestial motions *are* a whole lot simpler if you can untangle them,
and look at one motion at a time. Using the distant stars as an
approximation to a stationary coordinate system _is_ a great way to
get started. If you don't like it - that's your problem, not ours, I'm
afraid.

In this respect, there is some joy this week
in seeing ordinary people reject a European treaty even though the
treaty had the backing of every organisation with power,

Here's something I agree with you about. Most Europeans don't want a
less-responsive European Parliament and are happy with their own
national governments. However, with a free trade area, a common
currency - the Euro - _is_ needed to gain the full benefits, so a case
can be made for some additional integration over and above that of the
original European Economic Community.

And from what I've heard about the issue, you are also right that the
new treaty is much the same as the old one that was rejected in
referendums despite it being claimed that it is different enough so
that no referendums are appropriate this time.

But modern science is hard to understand *not* because scientists have
dressed it up in jargon, but because it genuinely *depends* on fancy
mathematics.

Oh that it existed in these forums where even those who towed an
anonymous empirical line realised the damage that was and is still
being done using terrestrial/celestial phenomena.

I can't even guess what damage you are referring to that we were aware
of. I wish I could usefully communicate with you to get information
about where we're supposed to be wrong that I could get a grip on.

John Savard