1.07.2007

A Matter of Perspective

From Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion:

"Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?" I sometimes quote this remark of Wittgenstein in lectures, expecting the audience to laugh. Instead, they seem stunned into silence.

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