On Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 1:25:15 PM UTC-7, Anders Eklöf wrote:

As far as I can tell all he does is to explain what we all already know,
in a way that none of us understands. Quite a feat, really,

Well, I wouldn't quite say that this is what he does.

It's true he is talking about subjects that we all understand quite well; that the
Earth orbits the Sun like all the other planets, as Copernicus said, contrary to
what the ancients believed.

But he isn't trying to tell us what we already know to be true. He is instead
trying to tell us things we know to be false.

He is trying to tell us that...

the Moon does not rotate, and

the Earth rotates once every 24 hours, not once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and
4 seconds.

That is because referencing the rotational motion of a planet or satellite to
the fixed stars, instead of that body's primary, is, for some reason,
illegitimate.

Perhaps because the normal solar day is far more important in daily life than
the sidereal day?

Because if one goes over the Sun's head, relating the Earth's rotation directly
to the stars, then one is implicitly denying Copernicus, because only if the
Earth did not orbit the Sun would it be in the privileged position of being
referenced to the stars as the Sun went around it?

I think that latter sentence comes as close to his real reason as I can come.

I try to explain to him that the "sidereal day" need not be viewed as doing any
such thing - and it's needed, because to describe the Earth's rotation in
physical terms, we can't envisage it slowing down and speeding up on a regular
annual basis to produce the effects seen in the Equation of Time.

But - and this is the other thing we know to be false that he seeks to convince
us of - he will have none of that, as in his opinion, astronomy, properly so
called, involves appreciating the heavens through an intuitive facility, and not
through crass materialistic empiricism or mathematical gobbledy-gook.

So he is not merely confusing, he is substantively mistaken.

John Savard