this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
-26 points (21.7% liked)
Asklemmy
43340 readers
2067 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The terms for "clockwise" and "Counterclockwise" originated long before clocks. Clockwise was originally called "Sunwise" and followed the movement of the shadow around a sundial.
Counterclockwise was "widdershins", from a Middle Low German phrase meaning "against the way."
We don't use "earthwise" because from our perspective, the earth doesn't rotate.
Thank you for an actual answer. I really do appreciate it.
You know after thinking about this for a while, it actually just makes me want to call it earthwise more.
And maybe I just have a diffent perspective, but I look up a lot and notice the stars moving while out on walk woth my dogs. Not in real time for anyone trying to start lol. But It's continously in my mind that we're on a spinning rock. And I've played enough NMS to realize that a planet can take perspective from space, but compasses go north and south. And if we're going to debate on which way I would consider which to be right or wrong its moot, because whatever clockwise is earthwise will be opposite. So I just don't get how I'm so wrong.
That's eurocentric. For someone in the south hemisphere the earth actually rotates clockwise.
Yes and people in Australia live upside down