The center of gravitation is also just a simplification, or how scientists call it: "a model". Actually everything gravitates around everything else, as the article also explains.
Models, or simplifications, aren't bad though. Because what value can you get out of "everything gravitates around everything else"? Not much. But if you use a model, you can use the model to explain what happened in the past and use it to make an approximated assumption about the future. You can use it to guide decisions, and you can use it to focus on more details in other areas. E.g. if you don't use the actual trajectory of everything but a model, you can still calculate where Mars will be when you reach it if you start right now from point X on Earth. Of course the center of Mars will not be at exactly the same point, but it will be a good enough approximation that you can start planning resources required to get there, and it can help you decide if "now" and point X are good inputs to that travel plan.
Models are a good, helpful tool. They are just not explaining everything, and that on purpose, and as a human we always need to be aware of that models are just models and not reality.
> In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Indeed. As I learned from a link posted to HN the other day, apparently there is a name for this tension between the accuracy and comprehensibility of models: Bonini's paradox.
> Models are a good, helpful tool. They are just not explaining everything, and that on purpose, and as a human we always need to be aware of that models are just models and not reality.
> Actually everything gravitates around everything else, as the article also explains.
What helped me understand it the most was an answer to this question:
"Where does the Solar System end"
"When the dominant gravitational influence is not the Sun"
it seems like it is always a loaded question because it is relative to the body being talked about and not its own moons, but it really just comes down to gravitational influence.
Let’s say all the planets’ orbits decayed and ultimately spiraled into the sun. Wouldn’t that be a possible end to the solar system? I mean it’s just be a sun at that point. But I think the Sun would still be the dominant gravitation force.
Models, or simplifications, aren't bad though. Because what value can you get out of "everything gravitates around everything else"? Not much. But if you use a model, you can use the model to explain what happened in the past and use it to make an approximated assumption about the future. You can use it to guide decisions, and you can use it to focus on more details in other areas. E.g. if you don't use the actual trajectory of everything but a model, you can still calculate where Mars will be when you reach it if you start right now from point X on Earth. Of course the center of Mars will not be at exactly the same point, but it will be a good enough approximation that you can start planning resources required to get there, and it can help you decide if "now" and point X are good inputs to that travel plan.
Models are a good, helpful tool. They are just not explaining everything, and that on purpose, and as a human we always need to be aware of that models are just models and not reality.