# Stoppard quote

*The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 26 Apr 2000*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2208>

> Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright
> in each message remains with the person who wrote it.
> Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original
> archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than
> retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.

---

### Jeremy Crampton
*26 Apr 2000, 16:53*

I've always liked this quote from Tom Stoppard ever since I read it in 1983:

"Meeting a friend in a corridor Wittgenstein said: 'Tell me, why do people
always say it was *natural* for men to assume that the sun went round the
earth, rather than that the earth was rotating?' His friend said, 'Well,
obviously, because it *looks* as if the sun is going round the earth.' To
which the philosopher replied, 'Well, what would it have looked like if it
had looked as if the earth was rotating?'

--T. Stoppard, _Jumpers_
__
Jeremy W. Crampton		         http://geog.gmu.edu    jcrampto at gmu.edu
Dept. of Geography & Earth Science
[MS 1E2]				’Tis true; there’s magic in the web of it.
George Mason University					--Othello (III.iv.69)
Fairfax, Va 22030

---