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Message: <blockquote data-quote="orsal" data-source="post: 1780673" data-attributes="member: 16016">That's correct if you're using a frame of reference in which the sun is fixed. But you yourself provide the best counterargument to that a few lines down, when you sayThere is a reason why, for most of human history in (to the best of my knowledge) every society the standard worldview has been geocentric: the frame of reference in which the earth is fixed is the one that describes our experience.The reasons the heliocentric worldview was eventually adopted are all scientific. It allows a simpler description of the motions of other heavenly bodies; it allows an explanation for the observed motion of the planets (Kepler's Laws, as derived from Newton's law of gravitation); it allows for the application of the law of inertia at an astronomical level (the geocentric worldview does not, since the frame of reference in which the earth is fixed is not an inertial frame).But none of these have anything to do with the establishment of the cardinal directions as the standard co-ordinate axes, a convention which every culture independently managed long before anybody understood Kepler's Laws or inertial frames of reference. The cardinal directions are recognized as a convenient standard because they are rooted in a regular phenomenon observable on a daily basis. In the geocentric worldview, that phenomenon is the daily motion of the sun through the sky; in the heliocentric worldview, the rotation of the earth on its axis.Notice that you yourself referred to "the rising and setting of the sun". In other words, you use the geocentric worldview even today, when you're talking about everyday phenomena. So do I. I'll switch to the scientific worldview when I want to discuss scientific ideas, but when I want to discuss the origins of a particular co-ordinate system for our geography, I'll use the language of the naive worldview.As a side note, the earth's movement around the sun is irrelevant to the current discussion -- it explains seasonal change, not daily change.But is there any reason my torus should spin? Also, if it did spin, why would the residents think of it spinning? For most of human history people did not think of this planet spinning, they thought about the astronomical phenomena which result from that spin.I agree completely, and part of developing the idea for a torus-world is figuring out what phenomena would yield a natural co-ordinate system. I'm thinking of the sun going around the world in a constant east-to-west direction, but equally above every "latitude line". Note that if north and south are relative directions, then latitude lines are as arbitrary as longitude lines.One way to visualize this: the world is the *inside* of a donut, and the sun moves through the dough, circumnavigating the hole. Technically speaking there is no donut hole, that's a notion that comes from trying to embed the torus in Euclidean 3-space, and the inhabitants of torusworld wouldn't do that. But if you like to picture your toruses as donuts, this will work. The motion of the sun establishes east and west, and the perpendicular axis is north-south. Maybe I could have a moon that moves north to south.If you really are wedded to the idea of a fixed sun, you may prefer to think of the donut rotating around the hole, which would have the same effect. I prefer to let the world be fixed and move the heavenly bodies. There's a mythic quality to much of D&D. The gods, much like gods humans have posited to explain the inexplicable, are very real and their magic tangible, their answers to petitioners' prayers unmistakeable. Many monsters that have existed in legends of various cultures on earth are real in D&D. In keeping with that, why not make the naive worldview the literally correct one? Regardless of the shape of the world, I'd always be inclined to have the sun move across the sky as guided by the appropriate god, because I think that fits the flavour of D&D as I see it better than trying to incorporate Copernican astronomy.</blockquote>

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