The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-03-25

From the PittspufS blSpdtch.
 TIT IS amazing how ignorance is per
 petuated in regard to characteristics A and movements of this little earth of ours among a really numerous and 1airis intelligent people regardless or state ments of absolute scientific demonstra- ton, plain, untechnical, verbally simple' that have been made throughout several of Inc latest of the centuries. For ex- ample. a really bright and intelligent Pittsburg young man remarkea piaih- lively the other day to the wrlter ol these little articles: .I never nave pesii able to get it through my noodle that tne earth is round, that 1t revolVes rfoiii
 west to east or in any other direction once in abeut "A hours, for the reason that during part of that time we wouiu surely be compelled to stand on OUT heads; and I know many others Whn have the same trouble. l believe the earth is flat and that the sun passes around it in ebout "A hours
 The skeptic was asked what his head was resting on, if at any time of the A hours he tried the acrobatic ieat oi "standng'' on it, and why he didn't drop "down and out He couldn't answer, eN- cept to reiterate that the world IS riati and therefore we can walk on 1t upright anywhere; and it was just as possipie for the sun to revolve around the earth in 24 hours as for the earth 10 turn around in that period at the rate or about 1000 miles an hour, and thus make night and day
 t,,, 1.a aa1r school to explain this again after all these years, but the lamentable fact
 must be recognized that many persons in no way nearly related to the miss ing link,n yet believe that the earth IS flat, that the sun swings around it, and that if it were round and making a diurrAl revolution on it's axis all Of the estimated 2,OOO0O0,0o0 population of the world must at some hour of the A stand dizziy on their heads.
 Ages on ages of the growth of human reason lapsed before there was the least glimmerng among the wisest of man kind of the rotundity of earth. Other ages were submerged in the unneasured past before there came the crudest of scientific assertion of this rotundity The greatest of philosophers of antiquity not so far distant believed the earth was flat that it had this or that for foun- dation; that foundation having this or that monster animal for it's foundation, or that the whole rested on the sea.
 Then came fanciful doubts of the pos sbility of this, traditional theories sift- ing down from the days Of mystical
 Pythagerism, but nothing really scien-
 t--l. ~<.x,c1 nicus completed his 'sDe Revolutionibus
 Orbium Celestium'' in 15ao, which ex-
 haustihy argued that the sun was the central and governing bows and that earth and all of the other planets re- volved around the sun. The book con, sisted of six volumes, and was dedicateu to Pope Paul III, Coperneus being n canon of the church. Even with all us logic it was placed in the index oi [ prohibited books as being subversAve or long recognized truth until so late as 1757, Upon the Copernican theory s.,- ua,- ileo, Kepler and other astronomers puils : the whole incontrovertible system ol nov ements of the planets around the sun and revolutions on their axes anu then, in the latter part of the seven teenth century came Newtons "fTin7 cipia.'' with it's complete demontra- ton of the universal law ef gravita- ton.
 TllS law IL IS Iudt iACANc ~'. <>>-->eN 0-> ea rth pravitatinr toward earth's center with irresistible power, and explains in A word why on this almost round globe the feet of mankind. and all others of animal kind, and all else' must by q mighty force be held enthralled and painting toHsrds that center, Therefore no matter what the position of earth | in it's daily or yearly revolution nos body, no thing, stands on it's head" 1 As to the near rotundity of earth, that was finally made plain by simple obser- yation and various simple methods, and the only wonder is that it's form and motion were not discovered by earliest 1 astronomers and mariners, the latter, if l they had ordinary sense, surely observ- 1 ing the gradual appearance and disap- pearance of vessels on the surface of the 1 sea, proving infallibly earth's reundness. Yet even so recently as the latter years of the fifteenth century, when Columbus
 made .hls famous voyages, tbet ideas in