> That goes down the road of saying that every circular path is an orbit. That is a route I explicitly did not take, because arguments from dictionary definiti

> That goes down the road of saying that every circular path is an orbit. That is a route I explicitly did not take, because arguments from dictionary definitions, if the issue is not specifically lexical, are usually just pedantic ways of avoiding the issue. >...the dynamics are totally different. It was a very important scientific discovery that they are, in fact, very similar, explicable from a small set of universal premises. This is a pattern that is observed widely throughout the sciences. A universe in which just the things you have mentioned were totally (or just largely) different would be a universe with entirely different physics than ours! >...and/or a barycenter... You seem to be inconsistent here, as, just before, you rejected the notion that the sun orbits around the milky way. > I don't really consider that... I try to use "orbit" in relation to... Claiming that it is wrong to use 'orbit' for the motion of the JWST around Earth's L2 on the grounds that this usage is not in your personal dictionary is not much of an argument - it is very similar to, but even weaker than, the sort of argument that you wrongly insinuated I was making! (And you cannot say I am doing the same, as I am defending the common usage among those who work with this issue - most specifically, those who are controlling the JWST.) Even the metastability of the JWST orbit is not much of a basis for your position, given that the orbits of the planets in the solar system, and of satellites around the earth, are also ultimately unstable.