Flat Earth

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For other uses, see Flat Earth (disambiguation).
The Flammarion engraving (1888) depicts a traveler who arrives at the edge of a flat Earth and sticks his head through the firmament.

The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. That paradigm was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and the notion of a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies.[1]

The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.[2][3][4][5]

The mistaken notion that medieval Christians thought the earth is flat has been referred to as the myth of the flat Earth, or "the Flat Error". [6] Since the 20th century the consensus among historians of science has been that medieval Europeans, with rare exception, put little confidence in a flat earth model.[6]

Historical development[edit]

Ancient Near East[edit]

Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia.

In early Egyptian[7] and Mesopotamian thought the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account of the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."[8] The Israelites likely had a similar cosmology, with the earth as a flat disc floating on water beneath an arced firmament separating it from the heavens.[9]

The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts reveal that the ancient Egyptians believed Nun (the Ocean) was a circular body surrounding nbwt (a term meaning "dry lands" or "Islands"), and therefore believed in a similar Ancient Near Eastern circular earth cosmography surrounded by water.[10][11][12]

Ancient Mediterranean[edit]

Poets[edit]

Both Homer[13] and Hesiod[14] described a flat disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles.[15][16] This poetic tradition of an earth-encircling (gaiaokhos) sea (Oceanus) and a flat disc also appears in Stasinus of Cyprus,[17] Mimnermus,[18] Aeschylus,[19] and Apollonius Rhodius.[20]

Homer's description of the flat disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later in Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War.[21]

Philosophers[edit]

Possible rendering of Anaximander's world map[22]

Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources,[23] and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460 – 370 BC) according to Aristotle.[24][25][26]

Thales thought the earth floated in water like a log.[27] It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a round Earth.[28][29] Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things.[30][31] Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness."[32] Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit.[33]

Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat,[34] and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.[35]

Historians[edit]

Hecataeus of Miletus believed the earth was flat and surrounded by water.[36] Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world,[37] yet most classicists agree he still believed the earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the earth.[38]

Ancient India[edit]

Ancient Jain[39] and Buddhist cosmology held that the Earth is a disc consisting of four continents grouped around a central mountain (Mount Meru) like the petals of a flower. An outer ocean surrounds these continents.[40] This view of traditional Buddhist and Jain cosmology depicts the cosmos as a vast, oceanic disk (of the magnitude of a small planetary system), bounded by mountains, in which the continents are set as small islands.[40]

Norse and Germanic[edit]

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat earth cosmography of the earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi (a world-tree: Yggdrasil, or pillar: Irminsul) in the centre.[41][42] The Norse believed that in the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr.[43] In the Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning (VIII) it is stated that during the creation of the earth, an impassable sea was placed around the earth like a ring:

...And Jafnhárr said: "Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round. about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it."[44]

The late Norse Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, states that:

...If you take a lighted candle and set it in a room, you may expect it to light up the entire interior, unless something should hinder, though the room be quite large. But if you take an apple and hang it close to the flame, so near that it is heated, the apple will darken nearly half the room or even more. However, if you hang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot; the candle will light up the whole house; and the shadow on the wall where the apple hangs will be scarcely half as large as the apple itself. From this you may infer that the earth-circle is round like a ball and not equally near the sun at every point. But where the curved surface lies nearest the sun's path, there will the greatest heat be; and some of the lands that lie continuously under the unbroken rays cannot be inhabited."[45]

Ancient China[edit]

Further information: Chinese astronomy

In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round,[46] an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century.[47][48][49] The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:

Chinese thought on the form of the earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heavens were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the earth (the Kai Tian theory), or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tian theory), or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float freely (the Hsüan yeh theory), the earth was at all times flat, although perhaps bulging up slightly.[50]

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers like Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) to describe the heavens as spherical:

The heavens are like a hen's egg and as round as a crossbow bullet; the earth is like the yolk of the egg, and lies in the centre.[51]

This analogy with a curved egg led some modern historians, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chinese astronomers were, after all, aware of the Earth's sphericity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clarify the relative position of the flat earth to the heavens:

In a passage of Zhang Heng's cosmogony not translated by Needham, Zhang himself says: "Heaven takes its body from the Yang, so it is round and in motion. Earth takes its body from the Yin, so it is flat and quiescent". The point of the egg analogy is simply to stress that the earth is completely enclosed by heaven, rather than merely covered from above as the Kai Tian describes. Chinese astronomers, many of them brilliant men by any standards, continued to think in flat-earth terms until the seventeenth century; this surprising fact might be the starting-point for a re-examination of the apparent facility with which the idea of a spherical earth found acceptance in fifth-century BC Greece.[52]

Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demonstrate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth being square, not to it being flat.[53] Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth,[46] did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular.[54]

As noted in the book Huainanzi,[55] in the 2nd century BC Chinese astronomers effectively inverted Eratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the sun above the earth. By assuming the earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of 100,000 li (approximately 200,000 km), a value far short of the correct distance of 150 million km.

Declining support for the flat earth[edit]

Further information: Spherical Earth and History of geodesy

Ancient Mediterranean[edit]

When a ship is at the horizon, its lower part is obscured due to the curvature of the Earth.
Semi-circular shadow of Earth on the Moon during the phases of a lunar eclipse

In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the sun observed shining from the north. He stated that the phenomenon was observed during a circumnavigation of Africa undertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II c. 610–595 BC (The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the sun on their right when circumnavigating in a clockwise direction. To modern historians aware of a spherical Earth, these details confirm the truth of the Phoenicians’ report.

After the Greek philosophers Pythagoras, in the 6th century BC, and Parmenides, in the 5th, recognized that the Earth is spherical,[56] the spherical view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 330 BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported on an estimate on the circumference.[57] The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes.[58] By the second century CE, Ptolemy had derived his maps from a curved globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His Almagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.

The Terrestrial Sphere of Crates of Mallus (c. 150 BC).

In the 2nd century BC, Crates of Mallus devised a terrestrial sphere that divided the Earth into four continents, separated by great rivers or oceans, with people presumed living in each of the four regions.[59] Opposite the oikumene, the inhabited world, were the antipodes, considered unreachable both because of an intervening torrid zone (equator) and the ocean. This took a strong hold on the medieval mind.

Lucretius (1st. c. BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy bodies would tend. Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking around topsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd.[60][61] By the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claim that everyone agrees on the spherical shape of Earth,[62] though disputes continued regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape. Pliny also considered the possibility of an imperfect sphere, "...shaped like a pinecone."[62]

In late antiquity such widely read encyclopedists as Macrobius (5th century) and Martianus Capella (5th century) discussed the circumference of the sphere of the Earth, its central position in the universe, the difference of the seasons in northern and southern hemispheres, and many other geographical details.[63] In his commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio, Macrobius described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos.[63]

Early Christian Church[edit]

During the early Church period, with some exceptions, most held a spherical view, for instance, Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose to name a few.[64]

In Book III of The Divine Institutes[65] Lactantius ridicules the notion that there could be inhabitants of the antipodes "whose footsteps are higher than their heads." After presenting some arguments he attributes to advocates for a spherical heaven and Earth, he writes:

But if you inquire from those who defend these marvellous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne to the middle, and that they are all joined together towards the middle, as we see spokes in a wheel; but that the bodies that are light, as mist, smoke, and fire, are borne away from the middle, so as to seek the heaven. I am at a loss what to say respecting those who, when they have once erred, consistently persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another.

Saint Augustine (354–430) took a more cautious approach in arguing against assuming that people inhabited the antipodes:

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.[66]

Since these people would have to be descended from Adam, they would have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point; Augustine continues:

It is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.

Scholars of Augustine's work have traditionally understood him to have shared the common view of his educated contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with the quotation above, and with Augustine's famous endorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram.[67] That tradition has, however, recently been challenged by Leo Ferrari, who concluded that many of Augustine's passing references to the physical universe imply a belief in an essentially flat Earth "at the bottom of the universe".[68][69]

Cosmas Indicopleustes' world picture - flat earth in a Tabernacle.

Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) may have argued for a flat Earth based on scriptures; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known to us only by a criticism of it by Photius.[70] Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall".[71] The Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes (547) in his Topographia Christiana, where the Covenant Ark was meant to represent the whole universe, argued on theological grounds that the Earth was flat, a parallelogram enclosed by four oceans.

In his Homilies Concerning the Statutes[72] St. John Chrysostom (344–408) explicitly espoused the idea, based on his reading of Scripture, that the Earth floated on the waters gathered below the firmament, and St. Athanasius (c. 293 – 373) expressed similar views in Against the Heathen.[73]

At least one early Christian writer, Basil of Caesarea (329–379), believed that the matter was theologically irrelevant.[74]

Early Middle Ages[edit]

Early medieval Christian writers in the early Middle Ages felt little urge to assume flatness of the earth, though they had fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and relied more on Pliny.[75]

9th-century Macrobian cosmic diagram showing the sphere of the Earth at the center, (globus terrae)

With the end of Roman civilization, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth. For example: some early medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.[76] Further examples of such medieval diagrams can be found in medieval manuscripts of the Dream of Scipio. In the Carolingian era, scholars discussed Macrobius's view of the antipodes. One of them, the Irish monk Dungal, asserted that the tropical gap between our habitable region and the other habitable region to the south was smaller than Macrobius had believed.[77]

12th-century T and O map representing the inhabited world as described by Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae. (chapter 14, de terra et partibus).

Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:

  • Boethius (c. 480 – 524), who also wrote a theological treatise On the Trinity, repeated the Macrobian model of the Earth in the center of a spherical cosmos in his influential, and widely translated, Consolation of Philosophy.[78]
  • Bishop Isidore of Seville (560 – 636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, the Etymologies diverse views such as that the Earth "resembles a wheel"[79] resembling Anaximander in language and the map that he provided. This was widely interpreted as referring to a flat disc-shaped Earth.[80][81] An illustration from Isidore's De Natura Rerum shows the five zones of the earth as adjacent circles. Some have concluded that he thought the Arctic and Antarctic zones were adjacent to each other.[82] He did not admit the possibility of antipodes, which he took to mean people dwelling on the opposite side of the Earth, considering them legendary [83] and noting that there was no evidence for their existence.[84] Isidore's T and O map, which was seen as representing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued to be used by authors through the Middle Ages, e.g. the 9th-century bishop Rabanus Maurus who compared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel. At the same time, Isidore's works also gave the views of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 of De Natura Rerum, Isidore claims that the sun orbits the earth and illuminates the other side when it is night on this side. See French translation of De Natura Rerum.[85] In his other work Etymologies, there are also affirmations that the sphere of the sky has earth in its center and the sky being equally distant on all sides.[86][87] Other researchers have argued these points as well.[75][88][89] "The work remained unsurpassed until the thirteenth century and was regarded as the summit of all knowledge. It became an essential part of European medieval culture. Soon after the invention of typography it appeared many times in print."[90] However, "The Scholastics - later medieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists - were helped by the Arabic translators and commentaries, but they hardly needed to struggle against a flat-earth legacy from the early middle ages (500-1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with one exception), little urge to assume flatness." [75]
Isidore's portrayal of the five zones of the earth
  • The monk Bede (c. 672 – 735) wrote in his influential treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time, that the Earth was round ('not merely circular like a shield [or] spread out like a wheel, but resembl[ing] more a ball'), explaining the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on the pages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature. It is, in fact, set like a sphere in the middle of the whole universe." (De temporum ratione, 32). The large number of surviving manuscripts of The Reckoning of Time, copied to meet the Carolingian requirement that all priests should study the computus, indicates that many, if not most, priests were exposed to the idea of the sphericity of the Earth.[91] Ælfric of Eynsham paraphrased Bede into Old English, saying "Now the Earth's roundness and the Sun's orbit constitute the obstacle to the day's being equally long in every land."[92]
  • St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700 – 784), in the middle of the 8th century, discussed or taught some geographical or cosmographical ideas that St Boniface found sufficiently objectionable that he complained about them to Pope Zachary. The only surviving record of the incident is contained in Zachary's reply, dated 748, where he wrote:

"As for the perverse and sinful doctrine which he (Virgil) against God and his own soul has uttered—if it shall be clearly established that he professes belief in another world and other men existing beneath the earth, or in (another) sun and moon there, thou art to hold a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the Church."[93]

Some authorities have suggested that the sphericity of the Earth was among the aspects of Vergilius's teachings that Boniface and Zachary considered objectionable.[94][95] Others have considered this unlikely, and take the wording of Zachary's response to indicate at most an objection to belief in the existence of humans living in the antipodes.[96][97][98][99][100] In any case, there is no record of any further action having been taken against Vergilius. He was later appointed bishop of Salzburg, and was canonised in the 13th century.[101]
12th-century depiction of a spherical Earth with the four seasons (book "Liber Divinorum Operum" by Hildegard of Bingen)

A possible non-literary but graphic indication that people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth (or perhaps the world) was a sphere, is the use of the orb (globus cruciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the Holy Roman Empire. It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperor Theodosius II (423) throughout the Middle Ages; the Reichsapfel was used in 1191 at the coronation of emperor Henry VI. However the word 'orbis' means 'circle' and there is no record of a globe as a representation of the Earth since ancient times in the west till that of Martin Behaim in 1492. Additionally it could well be a representation of the entire 'world' or cosmos.

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth."[102] However, the work of these intellectuals may not have had significant influence on public opinion, and it is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth, if they considered the question at all.

High and Late Middle Ages[edit]

Further information: Spherical Earth § Medieval Europe
Picture from a 1550 edition of On the Sphere of the World, the most influential astronomy textbook of 13th-century Europe.

By the 11th century Europe had learned of Islamic astronomy. The Renaissance of the 12th century from about 1070 started an intellectual revitalization of Europe with strong philosophical and scientific roots, and increased interest in natural philosophy.

Illustration of the spherical Earth in a 14th-century copy of L'Image du monde (c. 1246).

Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes' method. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most important and widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth; and he even took for granted his readers also knew the Earth is round.[nb 1] Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.[103] Also, "On the Sphere of the World", the most influential astronomy textbook of the 13th century and required reading by students in all Western European universities, described the world as a sphere. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, wrote, "The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth."[104]

The shape of the Earth was not only discussed in scholarly works written in Latin; it was also treated in works written in vernacular languages or dialects and intended for wider audiences. The Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, states clearly that the Earth is round—and that there is night on the opposite side of the Earth when there is daytime in Norway. The author also discusses the existence of antipodes—and he notes that (if they exist) they see the Sun in the north of the middle of the day, and that they experience seasons opposite those of people in the Northern Hemisphere.

However Tattersall shows that in many vernacular works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". "In virtually all the examples quoted...from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere, though notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.[105]

As late as 1674, Robert Hooke could argue "To one who has been conversant only with illiterate persons, or such as understand not the principles of Astronomy and Geometry,...who can scarce imagine the Earth is globous, but...imagine it to be a round plain covered with the Sky as with a Hemisphere", suggesting that the opinion was not uncommon even then.[106]

Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia, Columbus's voyage to the Americas (1492) and finally Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the Earth (1519–21) provided the final, practical proofs for the global shape of the Earth.

Islamic world[edit]

Further information: Spherical Earth § Medieval Islamic scholars

The Abbasid Caliphate saw a great flowering of astronomy and mathematics in the 9th century CE. in which Muslim scholars translated Ptolemy's work, which become the Almagest, and extended and updated his work based on spherical ideas, and these have generally been respected since. However after the decline of the Golden Age in the 13th century more traditional views were increasingly heard.[citation needed]

The Quran mentions that the world was "laid out". To this a classic Sunni commentary, the Tafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi) written in the late 12th century says "If it is said: Do the words “And the earth We spread out” indicate that it is flat? We would respond: Yes, because the earth, even though it is round, is an enormous sphere, and each little part of this enormous sphere, when it is looked at, appears to be flat. As that is the case, this will dispel what they mentioned of confusion. The evidence for that is the verse in which Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): “And the mountains as pegs” [an-Naba’ 78:7]. He called them awtaad (pegs) even though these mountains may have large flat surfaces. And the same is true in this case."[107]

A later classic Sunni commentary, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn written in the early 16th century says "As for His words sutihat, ‘laid out flat’, this on a literal reading suggests that the earth is flat, which is the opinion of most of the scholars of the [revealed] Law, and not a sphere as astronomers (ahl al-hay’a) have it, even if this [latter] does not contradict any of the pillars of the Law."[108] Other translations render "made flat" as "spread out".[109]

Ming China[edit]

As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Chinese say: "The earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes."[54][110] The universal belief in a flat Earth is confirmed by a contemporary Chinese encyclopedia from 1609 illustrating a flat Earth extending over the horizontal diametral plane of a spherical heaven.[54]

In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court.[111]

Modern period[edit]

"Myth of the Flat Earth" in modern historiography[edit]

Main article: Myth of the Flat Earth
Martin Behaim's Erdapfel, the oldest surviving terrestrial globe and finished before the news of the discovery of the Americas had reached Europe (1492), demonstrates that knowledge of the round Earth was common on the continent before.

During the 19th century, the Romantic conception of a European "Dark Age" gave much more prominence to Flat Earth beliefs than was historically warranted.

In 1945 the Historical Association listed "Columbus and the Flat Earth Conception" second of twenty in its first-published pamphlet on common errors in history.[112] This belief is even repeated in some widely read textbooks. Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors [of Columbus' crew]  ... grew increasingly mutinous...because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known.[113] Actually, sailors were probably among the first to know of the curvature of Earth from everyday observations, for example seeing how mountains vanish below the horizon on sailing far from shore.

Some historians consider that the early advocates who projected flat Earth upon Christians of the Middle Ages were highly influential (19th-century view typified by Andrew Dickson White); current historians (late 20th-century view typified by historian and religious studies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell)[6] have asserted that White's and other writings projecting flat Earth belief upon Christians are inaccurate, citing centuries of theological writings, and suggested the motivations for the promotion of such inaccuracies.

According to Russell,[114] the common misconception that people before the age of exploration believed that Earth was flat entered the popular imagination after Washington Irving's publication of A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828.[115] Although some of the arguments attributed by Irving to Columbus's opponents had been recorded not long after the latter's death, here are only hints that any argued that the Earth was flat, in the argument that the ocean might be infinite in extent, repeated by later historians.[116] Other arguments were based on the impossibility of the antipodes, the vast size of the Earth, the impossibility of going from one hemisphere to the others, and other arguments based on the sphericity of the Earth.[117] Modern historians have dismissed the claim that they maintained the earth was flat as a fabrication of Irving's.[118][119][120][121]

The only denial published at the time came from Zacharia Lilio, a canon of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome in 1496. In a section entitled "That the earth is not round" he argues that "when they assert that the earth is round, Ptolemy and Pliny do not add to the evidence, collected on the spot, they simply make a conjecture based solely on reasoning".[122] Copernicus, writing only twenty years after Columbus in 1514, dismisses the idea of a flat Earth in two sentences and cites supporters only from antiquity, though he expends more effort on showing that other current ideas were fallacious and demonstrating the sphericity of the earth.[123] In reality, the issue in the 1490s was not the shape but the size of the Earth, as well as the position of the east coast of Asia.

Modern Flat-Earthers[edit]

Flat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893. The map contains several references to biblical passages as well as various jabs at the "Globe Theory".

In the modern era, belief in a flat Earth has been expressed by isolated individuals and groups, but no scientists of note.

English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1885), writing under the pseudonym "Parallax," produced a pamphlet called Zetetic Astronomy in 1849 arguing for a flat Earth and published results of many experiments that tested the curvatures of water over a long drainage ditch, followed by another called The inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scripture. One of his supporters, John Hampden, lost a bet to Alfred Russel Wallace in the famous Bedford Level Experiment, which attempted to prove it. In 1877 Hampden produced a book called "A New Manual of Biblical Cosmography".[124] Rowbotham also produced studies that purported to show that the effects of ships disappearing below the horizon could be explained by the laws of perspective in relation to the human eye.[125]

In 1883 he founded Zetetic Societies in England and New York, to which he shipped a thousand copies of Zetetic Astronomy. Challenges were issued in the New York Daily Graphic offering $10,000 to charity to anyone proving the Earth revolved on an axis.

William Carpenter, a printer originally from Greenwich, England, was a supporter of Rowbotham and published Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed – Proving the Earth not a Globe in eight parts from 1864 under the name Common Sense.[126] He later emigrated to Baltimore where he published A hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe in 1885.[127] He argues that:

  • "There are rivers that flow for hundreds of miles towards the level of the sea without falling more than a few feet — notably, the Nile, which, in a thousand miles, falls but a foot. A level expanse of this extent is quite incompatible with the idea of the Earth's convexity. It is, therefore, a reasonable proof that Earth is not a globe."
  • "If the Earth were a globe, a small model globe would be the very best — because the truest — thing for the navigator to take to sea with him. But such a thing as that is not known: with such a toy as a guide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a certainty!, This is a proof that Earth is not a globe."

John Jasper, the black ex-slave preacher said to have preached to more people than any Southern clergyman of his generation, echoed his friend Carpenter's sentiments in his most famous sermon "Der Sun do move and the Earth Am Square", preached over 250 times always by invitation.[128]

In Brockport, N.Y, in 1887, M.C. Flanders argued the case of a flat Earth for three nights against two scientific gentlemen defending sphericity. Five townsmen chosen as judges voted unanimously for a flat Earth at the end. The case was reported in the Brockport Democrat.[129]

"Professor" Joseph W. Holden of Maine, a former justice of the peace, gave numerous lectures in New England and lectured on flat Earth theory at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His fame stretched to North Carolina where the Statesville Semi-weekly Landmark recorded at his death in 1900: 'We hold to the doctrine that the earth is flat ourselves and we regret exceedingly to learn that one of our members is dead'.[130]

After Rowbotham's death, Lady Elizabeth Blount created the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893 in England and created a journal called Earth not a Globe Review, which sold for twopence, as well as one called Earth, which only lasted from 1901 to 1904. She held that the Bible was the unquestionable authority on the natural world and argued that one could not be a Christian and believe the Earth is a globe. Well-known members included E. W. Bullinger of the Trinitarian Bible Society, Edward Haughton, senior moderator in natural science in Trinity College, Dublin and an archbishop. She repeated Rowbotham's experiments, generating some interesting counter-experiments, but interest declined after the First World War.[130] The movement gave rise to several books that argued for a flat, stationary earth, including Terra Firma by David Wardlaw Scott.[131]

In 1898, during his solo circumnavigation of the world, Joshua Slocum encountered a group of flat-Earthers in Durban. Three Boers, one of them a clergyman, presented Slocum with a pamphlet in which they set out to prove that the world was flat. Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, advanced the same view: "You don't mean round the world, it is impossible! You mean in the world. Impossible!"[132]

Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who in 1906 took over the Christian Catholic Church, a Pentecostal sect that established a utopian community at Zion, Illinois, preached flat Earth doctrine from 1915 onwards and used a photograph of a twelve-mile stretch of the shoreline at Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin taken three feet above the waterline to prove his point. When the airship Italia disappeared on an expedition to the North Pole in 1928 he warned the world's press that it had sailed over the edge of the world. He offered a $5,000 award for proving the Earth is not flat, under his own conditions.[133] Teaching a globular Earth was banned in the Zion schools and the message was transmitted on his WCBD radio station.[130]

Mohammed Yusuf, founder of the Nigerian militant Islamist group Boko Haram, stated his belief in a flat Earth.[134]

Flat Earth Society[edit]

Main article: Modern Flat Earth societies
This flat Earth model depicts Antarctica as an ice wall[135][136] surrounding a disk-shaped Earth.

In 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS), better known as the Flat Earth Society from Dover, Britain, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society. This was just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik; he responded, "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites."

His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race eroded Shenton's support in Britain until 1967 when he started to become famous due to the Apollo program. His postbag was full but his health suffered as his operation remained essentially a one-man show until he died in 1971.[130]

In 1972 Shenton's role was taken over by one of his correspondents from California, Charles K. Johnson. He incorporated the IFERS and steadily built up the membership to about 3,000. He spent years examining the studies of flat and round Earth theories and proposed evidence of a conspiracy against flat-Earth: "The idea of a spinning globe is only a conspiracy of error that Moses, Columbus, and FDR all fought..." His article was published in the magazine Science Digest, 1980. It goes on to state, "If it is a sphere, the surface of a large body of water must be curved. The Johnsons have checked the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea without detecting any curvature."[137]

The Society declined in the 1990s following a fire at its headquarters in California and the death of Johnson in 2001.[138] It was revived as a website in 2004 by Daniel Shenton (no relation to Samuel Shenton). He believes that no one has provided proof that the world is not flat.[139]

Cultural references[edit]

The notion of a flat Earth survives in a wide range of contexts. Indirect references to the theory include the widely used idiom the four corners of the earth. The term "flat-Earther" is often used in a derogatory sense to mean anyone who holds ridiculously antiquated views.

The first use of the term flat-earther recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1934 in Punch: "Without being a bigoted flat-earther, he [sc. Mercator] perceived the nuisance..of fiddling about with globes..in order to discover the South Seas."[140] The term flat-earth-man was recorded in 1908: "Fewer votes than one would have thought possible for any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man."[141]

An early mention in literature was Ludvig Holberg's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723). Erasmus Montanus meets considerable opposition when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants believe it is flat. He is not allowed to marry his fiancée until he cries, "The earth is flat as a pancake." In Rudyard Kipling's The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, the protagonists spread the rumor that a Parish Council meeting had voted in favor of a flat Earth.

Scientific satire[edit]

In a satirical piece published 1996, Albert A. Bartlett uses arithmetic to show that sustainable growth on Earth is impossible in a spherical Earth since its resources are necessarily finite. He explains that only a model of a flat Earth, stretching infinitely in the two horizontal dimensions and also in the vertical downward direction, would be able to accommodate the needs of a permanently growing population.

Referring to Julian Simon's book The Ultimate Resource, Bartlett suggests "So, let us think of the “We’re going to grow the limits!” people as the “New Flat Earth Society.”"[142] The satiric nature of the piece is also made clear by a comparison to Bartlett's other publications, which mainly advocate the necessity of curbing population growth.[143]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. Jump up ^ When Aquinas wrote his Summa, at the very beginning (Summa Theologica Ia, q. 1, a. 1; see also Summa Theologica IIa Iae, q. 54, a. 2), the idea of a round Earth was the example used when he wanted to show that fields of science are distinguished by their methods rather than their subject matter... "Sciences are distinguished by the different methods they use. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion - that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer proves it by means of mathematics, but the physicist proves it by the nature of matter." History of Science: Shape of the Earth: Middle Ages: Aquinas

References[edit]

  1. Jump up ^ "Their cosmography as far as we know anything about it was practically of one type up til the time of the white man's arrival upon the scene. That of the Borneo Dayaks may furnish us with some idea of it. 'They consider the Earth to be a flat surface, whilst the heavens are a dome, a kind of glass shade which covers the Earth and comes in contact with it at the horizon.'" Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality (repr. Boston: Beacon, 1966) 353; "The usual primitive conception of the world's form ... [is] flat and round below and surmounted above by a solid firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl." H. B. Alexander, The Mythology of All Races 10: North American (repr. New York: Cooper Square, 1964) 249.
  2. Jump up ^ Continuation of Greek concept into Roman and medieval Christian thought: Reinhard Krüger: Materialien und Dokumente zur mittelalterlichen Erdkugeltheorie von der Spätantike bis zur Kolumbusfahrt (1492)
  3. Jump up ^ Direct adoption of the Greek concept by Islam: Ragep, F. Jamil: "Astronomy", in: Krämer, Gudrun (ed.) et al.: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Brill 2010, without page numbers
  4. Jump up ^ Direct adoption by India: D. Pingree: "History of Mathematical Astronomy in India", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 533−633 (554f.); Glick, Thomas F., Livesey, Steven John, Wallis, Faith (eds.): "Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia", Routledge, New York 2005, ISBN 0-415-96930-1, p. 463
  5. Jump up ^ Adoption by China via European science: Jean-Claude Martzloff, "Space and Time in Chinese Texts of Astronomy and of Mathematical Astronomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", Chinese Science 11 (1993-94): 66-92 (69) and Christopher Cullen, "A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1976), pp. 106-127 (107)
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Russell, Jeffrey B. "The Myth of the Flat Earth". American Scientific Affiliation. Retrieved March 14, 2007. 
  7. Jump up ^ H. and H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, and T. Jacobsen, Before Philosophy (Baltimore: Penguin, 1949) 54.
  8. Jump up ^ Anthony Gottlieb (2000). The Dream of Reason. Penguin. p. 6. ISBN 0-393-04951-5. 
  9. Jump up ^ Berlin, Adele (2011). "Cosmology and creation". In Berlin, Adele; Grossman, Maxine. The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion. Oxford University Press. 
  10. Jump up ^ Pyramid Texts, Utterance 366, 629a-629c: "Behold, thou art great and round like the Great Round; Behold, thou are bent around, and art round like the Circle which encircles the nbwt; Behold, thou art round and great like the Great Circle which sets."(Faulkner 1969, 120)
  11. Jump up ^ Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Pritchard, 1969, p.374.
  12. Jump up ^ Coffin Texts, Spell 714.
  13. Jump up ^ Iliad, 28. 606.
  14. Jump up ^ The Shield of Heracles, 314-316, transl. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914.
  15. Jump up ^ The shield of Achilles and the poetics of ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, p.148.
  16. Jump up ^ Professor of Classics (Emeritus) Mark W. Edwards in his The Iliad. A commentary (1991, p.231) has noted of Homer's usage of the flat earth disc in the Iliad: "Okeanos...surrounds the pictures on the shield and he surrounds the flat disc of the earth on which men and women work out their lives". Quoted in The shield of Achilles and the poetics of ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Rowman & Littlefield, 1995, p.148
  17. Jump up ^ Stasinus of Cyprus wrote in his Cypria (lost, only preserved in fragment) that Oceanus surrounded the entire earth: deep eddying Oceanus and that the earth was flat with furthest bounds', these quotes are found preserved in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, VIII. 334B.
  18. Jump up ^ Mimnermus of Colophon (630BC) details a flat earth model, with the sun (Helios) bathing at the edges of Oceanus that surround the earth (Mimnermus, frg. 11)
  19. Jump up ^ Seven against Thebes, verse 305; Prometheus Bound, 1, 136; 530; 665 (which also describe the 'edges' of the earth).
  20. Jump up ^ Apollonius Rhodius, in his Argonautica (3rd century BC) included numerous flat earth references (IV. 590 ff): "Now that river, rising from the ends of the earth, where are the portals and mansions of Nyx (Night), on one side bursts forth upon the beach of Okeanos."
  21. Jump up ^ Posthomerica (V. 14) - "Here [on the shield of Achilles] Tethys' all-embracing arms were wrought, and Okeanos fathomless flow. The outrushing flood of Rivers crying to the echoing hills all round, to right, to left, rolled o'er the land." - Translation by Way. A. S, 1913.
  22. Jump up ^ According to John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, Houghton and Mifflin, 1968.
  23. Jump up ^ The Physical World of the Greeks, Samuel Sambursky, Princeton University Press (August 1987), p. 12
  24. Jump up ^ Burch, George Bosworth (1954). "The Counter-Earth". Osirus (Saint Catherines Press) 11 (1): 267–294. doi:10.1086/368583. 
  25. Jump up ^ De Fontaine, Didier (2002). "Flat worlds: Today and in antiquity". Memorie della Società Astronomica Italiana, special issue 1 (3): 257–62. Retrieved August 3, 2007. 
  26. Jump up ^ Aristotle, De Caelo, 294b13-21
  27. Jump up ^ Aristotle, De Caelo, II. 13. 3; 294a 28: "Many others say the earth rests upon water. This... is the oldest theory that has been preserved, and is attributed to Thales of Miletus"
  28. Jump up ^ O'Grady, Patricia F. (2002). Thales of Miletus : the beginnings of Western science and philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 87–107. ISBN 9780754605331. 
  29. Jump up ^ Pseudo-Plutarch. Placita Philosophorum. Perseus Digital Library. V.3, Ch.10. Retrieved December 24, 2014. 
  30. Jump up ^ Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 6
  31. Jump up ^ Anaximander; Fairbanks (editor and translator), Arthur. "Fragments and Commentary". The Hanover Historical Texts Project.  (Plut., Strom. 2 ; Dox. 579).
  32. Jump up ^ Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 7; Cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, 294b13-21
  33. Jump up ^ Xenophanes DK 21B28, quoted in Achilles, Introduction to Aratus 4
  34. Jump up ^ Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8
  35. Jump up ^ Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 9
  36. Jump up ^ FGrH F 18a.
  37. Jump up ^ Herodotus knew of the conventional view, according to which the river Ocean runs around a circular flat earth (4.8), and of the division of the world into three - Jacoby, RE Suppl. 2.352 ff yet rejected this personal belief (Histories, 2. 21; 4. 8; 4. 36)
  38. Jump up ^ The history of Herodotus, George Rawlinson, Appleton and company, 1889, p. 409
  39. Jump up ^ Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Contexts, page 174, David Gordon White, University of Chicago Press
  40. ^ Jump up to: a b D. Pingree: "History of Mathematical Astronomy in India", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 533−633 (554f.)
  41. Jump up ^ The Sacred Tree in Religion and Myth, Mrs. J. H. Philpot, Courier Dover Publications, 2004, p.113.
  42. Jump up ^ "The world was a flat disk, with the earth in the center and the sea all around. Thus the serpent is about as far away from the center, where men and gods lived" (Norse mythology: a guide to the Gods, heroes, rituals, and beliefs, John Lindow Oxford University Press, 2002) p.253.
  43. Jump up ^ One of the earliest literary references to the world encircling water snake comes from Bragi Boddason who lived in the 9th century, in his Ragnarsdrápa (XIV)
  44. Jump up ^ "Gylfaginning". Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  45. Jump up ^ "The King's Mirror". mediumaevum.com. Retrieved November 6, 2013. 
  46. ^ Jump up to: a b Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. pp. 498.
  47. Jump up ^ Martzloff, Jean-Claude (1993–94). "Space and Time in Chinese Texts of Astronomy and of Mathematical Astronomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" (PDF). Chinese Science 11: 66–92 [p. 69]. 
  48. Jump up ^ Cullen, Christopher (1980). "Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy". Past & Present 87: 39–53 [pp. 42 & 49]. doi:10.1093/past/87.1.39. JSTOR 650565. 
  49. Jump up ^ Cullen, Christopher (1976). "A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1): 106–127 [pp. 107–109]. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137. 
  50. Jump up ^ Cullen, Christopher (1976). "A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1): 106–127 [p. 107]. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137. 
  51. Jump up ^ Needham, Joseph (1959), Science and Civilisation in China 3, C.U.P., p. 219, ISBN 0-521-63262-5 
  52. Jump up ^ Cullen, Christopher (1980). "Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy". Past & Present 87: 39–53 [p. 42]. doi:10.1093/past/87.1.39. JSTOR 650565. 
  53. Jump up ^ Cullen, Christopher (1976). "A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1): 106–127 [p. 108]. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137. 
  54. ^ Jump up to: a b c Cullen, Christopher (1976). "A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan tzu 淮 南 子". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 39 (1): 106–127 [p. 109]. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137. 
  55. Jump up ^ Joseph Needham, p.225
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  57. Jump up ^ On the Heavens, Book ii Chapter 14. Lloyd, G.E.R. (1968). Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought. Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 162–164. ISBN 0-521-07049-X. 
  58. Jump up ^ Van Helden, Albert (1985). Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley. University of Chicago Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 0-226-84882-5. 
  59. Jump up ^ Stevens, Wesley M. (1980). "The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's "De natura rerum"". Isis 71 (2): 268–77. doi:10.1086/352464. JSTOR 230175, page 269 
  60. Jump up ^ Sedley, David N. (2003). Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 78–82. ISBN 978-0-521-54214-2. 
  61. Jump up ^ Lucretius, De rerum natura, 1.1052-82.
  62. ^ Jump up to: a b Natural History, 2.64
  63. ^ Jump up to: a b Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, V.9-VI.7, XX. pp. 18–24. , translated in Stahl, W. H. (1952). Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. Columbia University Press. 
  64. Jump up ^ Cormack, Lesley (2009). "Myth 3: That Medieval Christians Taught that he Earth was Flat". In Ronald Numbers. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 9780674057418. 
  65. Jump up ^ Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book III, Chapter XXIV, THE ANTE-NICENE FATHERS, Vol VII, ed. Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., and James Donaldson, LL.D., American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (1979), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,Grand Rapids, MI, pp.94-95.
  66. Jump up ^ De Civitate Dei, Book XVI, Chapter 9 — Whether We are to Believe in the Antipodes, translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.; from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College
  67. Jump up ^ q:Augustine of Hippo
  68. Jump up ^ Leo Ferrari, Cosmography, in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids MI, 1999, p.246
  69. Jump up ^ Leo Ferrari, Augustine's Cosmography, Augustinian Studies, 27:2 (1996), 129-177.
  70. Jump up ^ J. L. E. Dreyer, A History of Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler. (1906); unabridged republication as A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler (New York: Dover Publications, 1953).
  71. Jump up ^ J.L.E. Dreyer, A History of Planetary Systems', (1906), p.211-12.
  72. Jump up ^ St. John Chrysostom, Homilies Concerning the Statutes, Homily IX, paras.7-8, in A SELECT LIBRARY OF THE NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Series I, Vol IX, ed. Philip Schaff, D.D.,LL.D., American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (1978), W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,Grand Rapids, MI, pp.403-404. "When therefore thou beholdest not a small pebble, but the whole earth borne upon the waters, and not submerged, admire the power of Him who wrought these marvellous things in a supernatural manner! And whence does this appear, that the earth is borne upon the waters? The prophet declares this when he says, "He hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods."1416 And again: "To him who hath founded the earth upon the waters."1417 What sayest thou? The water is not able to support a small pebble on its surface, and yet bears up the earth, great as it is; and mountains, and hills, and cities, and plants, and men, and brutes; and it is not submerged!"
  73. Jump up ^ St.Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Ch.27 [1], Ch 36 [2], in A SELECT LIBRARY OF THE NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Series II, Vol IV, ed. Philip Schaff, D.D.,LL.D., American reprint of the Edinburgh edition (1978), W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,Grand Rapids, MI.
  74. Jump up ^ "Saint Basil the Great, Hexaemeron 9 - HOMILY IX - "The creation of terrestrial animals" Holy Inocents Orthodox Church". Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  75. ^ Jump up to: a b c Russell, Jefrey Burton (1991). Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Praeger. pp. 86–87. ISBN 0-275-95904-X. 
  76. Jump up ^ B. Eastwood and G. Graßhoff, Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, ca. 800-1500, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 94, 3 (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 49-50.
  77. Jump up ^ Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 62-3.
  78. Jump up ^ S. C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998), pp. 114, 123.
  79. Jump up ^ Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof (translators) (2010). "XIV ii 1". The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83749-1. 
  80. Jump up ^ " In other passages of the Etymologies, he writes of anorbis" W.G.Randles (2000). Geography, Cartography and Nautical Science in the Renaissance. UK, Ashgate Variorum. p. 15. ISBN 0-86078-836-9.  also in Wolfgang Haase, Meyer Reinhold, ed. (1994). The Classical tradition and the Americas, vol 1. p. 15. ISBN 978-3-11-011572-7. Retrieved November 28, 2010. 
  81. Jump up ^ Lyons, Jonathan (2009). The House of Wisdom. Bloomsbury. pp. 34–35. ISBN 1-58574-036-5. 
  82. Jump up ^ Ernest Brehaut (1912). An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages. Columbia University. 
  83. Jump up ^ Isidore, Etymologiae, XIV.v.17 [3].
  84. Jump up ^ Isidore, Etymologiae, IX.ii.133 [4].
  85. Jump up ^ Fontaine, Jacques (1960). Isidore de Seville: Traité de la Nature. Bordeaux. 
  86. Jump up ^ Isidore, Etymologiae, III. XXXII [5].
  87. Jump up ^ Isidore, Etymologiae, XIV. I [6].
  88. Jump up ^ Wesley M. Stevens, "The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's De natura rerum", Isis, 71(1980): 268-277.Stevens, Wesley M. (1980). "The Figure of the Earth in Isidore's "De natura rerum"". Isis 71 (2): 268–77. doi:10.1086/352464. JSTOR 230175, page 274 
  89. Jump up ^ Grant, Edward (1974). A Sourcebook in Medieval Science (Source Books in the History of the Sciences). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-82360-0. 
  90. Jump up ^ Thomas Glick, Stephen John Livesley and Faith Wallis (2005). Medieval Science Technology and Medicine, an Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, NY. 
  91. Jump up ^ Faith Wallis, trans., Bede: The Reckoning of Time, (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ. Pr., 2004), pp. lxxxv-lxxxix.
  92. Jump up ^ Ælfric of Eynsham, On the Seasons of the Year, Peter Baker, trans[dead link]
  93. Jump up ^ English translation by Laistner, M.L.W. (1966) [1931]. "Thought and Letters in Western Europe: A.D. 500 to 900" (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 184–5.  The original Latin reads: "De perversa autem et iniqua doctrina, quae contra Deum et animam suam locutus est, si clarificatum fuerit ita eum confiteri, quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra seu sol et luna, hunc habito concilio ab ęcclesia pelle sacerdotii honore privatum." (MGH, 1, 80, pp.178–9)
  94. Jump up ^ Laistner, (1966, p.184)
  95. Jump up ^ Simek, Rudolf (1996) [1993]. Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages. Angela Hall (English ed.). Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press. p. 53. ISBN 0-85115-608-8. 
  96. Jump up ^ Carey, John (1989). "Ireland and the Antipodes: The Heterodoxy of Virgil of Salzburg". Speculum 64 (1): 1–10. doi:10.2307/2852184. JSTOR 2852184. 
  97. Jump up ^ Kaiser, Christopher B. (1997). Creational Theology and the History of Physical Science: the Creationist Tradition from Basil to Bohr. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. p. 48. ISBN 90-04-10669-3. 
  98. Jump up ^ Hasse, Wolfgang; Reinhold, Meyer, eds. (1993). The Classical Tradition and the Americas. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-011572-7. 
  99. Jump up ^ Moretti, Gabriella (1993). The Other World and the 'Antipodes'. The Myth of Unknown Countries between Antiquity and the Renaissance. p. 265. ISBN 978-3-11-011572-7. In Hasse & Reinhold (1993, pp.241–84). 
  100. Jump up ^ *Wright, Charles Darwin (1993). The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 0-521-41909-3. 
  101. Jump up ^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Vergilius of Salzburg". Newadvent.org. October 1, 1912. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  102. Jump up ^ Vogel, Klaus Anselm (1995). Sphaera terrae - das mittelalterliche Bild der Erde und die kosmographische Revolution. PhD dissertation Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. p. 19. 
  103. Jump up ^ E. Grant, Planets. Stars, & Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1994), pp. 626-630.
  104. Jump up ^ "Summa Theologica IIa Iae, q. 54, a. 2". 
  105. Jump up ^ Jill Tattersall (1981). "The Earth, Sphere or Disc?". Modern Language Review 76: 31–46. doi:10.2307/3727009. 
  106. Jump up ^ Hooke, Robert (1674). An Attempt to prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations. London. p. 2. 
  107. Jump up ^ Imam Al-Razi. "19/131". https://archive.org/details/altafsiralkabir19rzfauoft. Retrieved February 13, 2013.  Missing or empty |title= (help)
  108. Jump up ^ Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli; Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti. "from Juza '20 to Juza '30". Tafsir al-Jalalayn͕ (PDF). Translated by Feras Hamza. Retrieved August 8, 2013. 
  109. Jump up ^ "Surat Al-Ghāshiyah". Retrieved December 3, 2010. 
  110. Jump up ^ A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Beijing in 1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth (cf. Joseph Needham et al.: "Heavenly clockwork: the great astronomical clocks of medieval China", Antiquarian Horological Society, 2nd. ed., Vol. 1, 1986, ISBN 0-521-32276-6, p. 138)
  111. Jump up ^ Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. pp. 499.
  112. Jump up ^ Members of the Historical Association (1945). Common errors in history. General Series, G.1. London: P.S. King & Staples for the Historical Association. , pp.4–5. The Historical Association published a second list of 17 other common errors in 1947.
  113. Jump up ^ James. W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, (Touchstone Books, 1996), p. 56
  114. Jump up ^ Russell, Jeffey Burton (1991). Inventing the Flat Earth—Columbus and Modern Historians. Westport, CT: Praeger. pp. 49–58. ISBN 0-275-95904-X. 
  115. Jump up ^ Washington, Irving (1828). The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. pp. 117–130. ISBN 0-559-56685-9. 
  116. Jump up ^ Robertson, William (1783). The history of America. p. 88. 
  117. Jump up ^ Columbus, Ferdinand (1571). A History of the Life and Actions of Adm. Christopher Columbus. p. 520.  in Churchill, Awnsham (1732). A Collection of voyages and travels 2. pp. 501–624. of this lower globe of earth and water, only a small compass was inhabited, which had remained in our hemisphere above water, and that all the rest was sea, and not navigable.... Others of them argued [that] ... he would not be able to return into Spain, because of the roundness of the globe,... affirming it would be like climbing a hill.... [All of them followed Augustine, who denies] that there should be Antipodes, or any going out of one hemisphere into the other. 
  118. Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1942). Admiral of the Ocean Sea. A Life of Christopher Columbus. Camden, NJ: Little, Brown and Co. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-4067-5027-0. 
  119. Jump up ^ Garwood, Christine (2008) [2007]. Flat Earth—The History of an Infamous Idea. London: Pan Books. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-330-43289-4. 
  120. Jump up ^ Love, Ronald S. (2006). Maritime Exploration in the Age of Discovery, 1415–1800. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0-313-32043-8. 
  121. Jump up ^ Sale, Kirkpatrick (2006) [1991]. Christopher Columbus and the Conquest of Paradise. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. p. 344. ISBN 1-84511-154-0. 
  122. Jump up ^ Zacharia Lilio (1496). Contra Antipodes. Florence.  cited by W.G.L.Randles (1980). De la terre plate au globe terrestre. Paris, Libraire Armand Colin. p. 31. 
  123. Jump up ^ "Therefore the earth is not flat, as Empedocles and Anaximenes thought" Nicholas Copernicus (1543). On the revolutions. ISBN 0-8018-2039-1. 
  124. Jump up ^ Fiske, John (1892). The Discovery of America. p. 267. 
  125. Jump up ^ Parallax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham) (1881). Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe (Third ed.). London:Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 
  126. Jump up ^ Theoretical astronomy examined and exposed, by 'Common sense'.
  127. Jump up ^ William Carpenter, One hundred proofs that the earth is not a globe, (Baltimore: The author, 1885).[7]
  128. Jump up ^ 'Low me ter ax ef de earth is roun', whar do it keep its corners? Er flat, squar thing has corners, but tell me where is de cornur uv er appul, ur a marbul, ur a cannun ball, ur a silver dollar.' William E. Hatcher (1908). John Jasper. Fleming Revell.  See also Garwood, p165
  129. Jump up ^ The Earth: Scripturally, Rationally, and Practically Described. A Geographical, Philosophical, and Educational Review, Nautical Guide, and General Student's Manual, n. 17 (November 1, 1887), p. 7. cited in Robert J. Schadewald (1981). "Scientific Creationism, Geocentricity, and the Flat Earth". Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved August 21, 2010. 
  130. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Christine Garwood (2007). Flat Earth. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-38208-1. 
  131. Jump up ^ David Wardlaw Scott (1901). Terra Firma. Retrieved December 13, 2010. 
  132. Jump up ^ Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World, (New York: The Century Company, 1900), chaps. 17-18.[8]
  133. Jump up ^ "$5,000 for Proving the Earth is a Globe | Modern Mechanix". Blog.modernmechanix.com. May 19, 2006. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  134. Jump up ^ "Nigeria's 'Taliban' enigma". BBC News. July 31, 2009. 
  135. Jump up ^ Schadewald, Robert J "The Flat-out Truth:Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet" Science Digest July 1980
  136. Jump up ^ Schick, Theodore; Lewis Vaughn How to think about weird things: critical thinking for a new age Houghton Mifflin (Mayfield) (October 31, 1995) ISBN 978-1-55934-254-4 p.197
  137. Jump up ^ Robert J. Schadewald. "The Flat-out Truth". Lhup.edu. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  138. Jump up ^ Donald E. Simanek. "The Flat Earth". Lhup.edu. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  139. Jump up ^ "Ingenious 'Flat Earth' Theory Revealed In Old Map". LiveScience. Retrieved February 9, 2013. 
  140. Jump up ^ "Flat-Earth". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved July 29, 2013. 
  141. Jump up ^ Shaw, George B. (1908). Fabian Essays on Socialism (new ed.). p. xviii. 
  142. Jump up ^ "The New Flat Earth Society". Jclahr.com. Retrieved June 15, 2009. 
  143. Jump up ^ "Albert Bartlett On Growth". Jclahr.com. November 28, 2006. Retrieved June 15, 2009. 

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External links[edit]

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