One is correct and one is not with or without "experimentation" or a proper set of observations.
I think Alastair was referring to what one can know without prior experience regardless of which is actually correct. It would be incorrect to believe one or the other perspective by simply looking, since it would look the same, either way. Unless, you believed, as Plato did, that all knowledge was a priori knowledge, fundamental to your perspective. Just as Socrates lead the slave boy to prove the Pythagorean Theorem, without any prior education, simply by asking him to answer questions made obvious by the previous answers to simpler questions, maybe we do have inherent understanding of the Universe and all its parts when we follow the logical conjunctions derived from previous and simpler questions until the first questions we use as our premises are self-evident (a priori). Descartes wasn't successful at following that thread very far. Still, it feels like the answers are there, just waiting for someone to ask the right questions.
A sailor, has a unique perspective to these problems because he uses the geometry of a spherical plane and its relationship to a larger sphere of celestial bodies (sailors experience the Universe and its natural principles by necessity) and he often has long hours of quiet observation and contemplation to dwell upon these things. Maybe modern sailors don't need to learn or think about the math or the relationships involved in getting from here to there on the globe, but attention is given to his travel, never the less. The answer to most physical and metaphysical questions lays in our ability to pay attention. As Parmenides suggests, we can only know the World (physical, phenomenal or idealistic) through our senses, so pay attention.
-Will (Dragonfly)
One is correct and one is not with or without "experimentation" or a proper set of observations.
