SUNSIGHT! 6:56 AM Hidden Lake, Eagle Cap Wilderness—Alpine Lake at ± 2200 meters (7173 feet).

. . . SUNSIGHT / SUNCLIPSE . . .


The great 20th century architect, poet-philosopher of
design and inventor of the geodesic dome, Buchminster
R. Fuller (1895-1983), introduced the complementary
concepts of sunsight and sunclipse to replace the traditional
words, sunrise and sunset. He argued—very convincingly
in my view—that our language should reflect the actual
turning or rotation of the spherical planet Earth on its axis,
instead of the ancient illusion of the Sun making an arch
over an essentially flat surface.

You can test your own intuitive perception of this movement
in the following two ways: (1) See if you can answer without
straining and quickly in which direction the Earth turns (My
experience is that most people cannot, although everyone
can tell you the Sun 'comes up' (is sighted) in the East, and
goes down in the West (is eclipsed by the Earth) ; (2) Make
with a hand the a rotating circle which corresponds in direction
to the Earth's rotation. These two little test ought to be enough
to convince most of us that we do indeed still live and think in
terms of these powerful illusions of Flatland.