Footnote

a An honest reader will readily admit that a statement about the sun standing still in the sky is not meant as a scientific analysis but as a simple observation about how things appeared from the standpoint of human eyewitnesses. Astronomers, too, often speak of the rising and setting of the sun, planets, and stars. They do not mean that these heavenly bodies literally revolve around the earth but, rather, that they appear to move across our sky.