All scientific theories are approximations, but some are better approximations than others.
For example: one of the reasons that the flat-earthers get as much traction as they do is that "the earth is flat" is actually a reasonable approximation in some circumstances. "Flat" is actually just a special case of "round" where the radius is infinite. If the distance scale that you are concerned with is small (e.g. the size of your own body) and you don't care about small errors, then infinity is a not-entirely-unreasonable approximation of the radius of the earth.
Of course, this all falls apart as soon as you start to care about anything that is more than a few thousand body-lengths away from you. But it's a mistake to say that the flat-earthers are wrong in any absolute sense. They aren't. They're just using a bad approximation for the realities of modern life.
Unless you're sending a spacecraft to another planet, "the earth orbits around the sun" is a perfectly fine approximation.
> But it's a mistake to say that the flat-earthers are wrong in any absolute sense. They aren't.
I'd say they're absolutely wrong in the sense that they make the flawed claim that people who assert that the Earth is an oblate spheroid are absolutely wrong, or worse, are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to hide the truth.
Fair enough. My point is just that the claim that the earth is flat is not entirely indefensible under the right circumstances, and so any proclamation that a particular position is wrong (e.g. "The earth does not orbit the sun") calls for a certain amount of humility and awareness of context.
For example: one of the reasons that the flat-earthers get as much traction as they do is that "the earth is flat" is actually a reasonable approximation in some circumstances. "Flat" is actually just a special case of "round" where the radius is infinite. If the distance scale that you are concerned with is small (e.g. the size of your own body) and you don't care about small errors, then infinity is a not-entirely-unreasonable approximation of the radius of the earth.
Of course, this all falls apart as soon as you start to care about anything that is more than a few thousand body-lengths away from you. But it's a mistake to say that the flat-earthers are wrong in any absolute sense. They aren't. They're just using a bad approximation for the realities of modern life.
Unless you're sending a spacecraft to another planet, "the earth orbits around the sun" is a perfectly fine approximation.