Any drawing in three-dimensional perspective, however accurate, must represent some such view as the one I now see. But measurements do not give us a view at all, much less a canonical one. To understand a thing is to see how it presents itself under the most varied circumstances. Only then do we approach a full realization of what we are studying. Tom Stoppard once wrote a dialog that neatly punctured the idea of a single, canonical view of things.
Every object presents manifold possibilities of appearance, each of which is an aspect of the truth.
Our task is not only to distinguish among these possibilities, but also to hold them together, without prejudice. The more deeply we grasp a phenomenon, the more readily do all its appearances become a dynamic unity for us. I daresay that many of us today, watching the sun overhead, do see, in a very direct sense, the earth rotating on its axis and circling the sun. But if we can no longer also see the sun circling around us , then our understanding of the material world has been impoverished. The latter view, after all, yields a mathematically simpler description of certain twining, spiraling, and circling movements of plants.