Talk:Spherical Earth

message: Epicurus and his school did not believe other Greeks that the Earth was a sphere, since, being extreme empiricists, they objected to "dialectic" used to establish this fact while clearly not seeing any roundness. This view conforms to their physics where the natural movement of atoms is from up to down and the whole universe is a random assemblage of atoms caused by their "swerve."  So, Epicureans were the only clearly identifiable group of educated Europeans who did not agree that the Earth was a sphere after this fact was discovered.  Hopefully, someone can add a section on Epicureans to the main text with proper references. Pernambuco1 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 18:56, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you referring to Atoms and flat-Earth ethics by James Hannam? The claim made by this essay that Epicureans thought the world was flat is disputed. This probably isn't worth mentioning unless there's some more direct scholarship or evidence other expert authors have the same opinion? -- Beland (talk) 09:11, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epicureans 

message: With this edit, Nightscream adds Ibn Hazm back in, this time with his name actually mentioned in the now-grammatical edit. However, the section it is in (Islamic astronomy) describes Arabic mensuration of the earth, the spherical nature of the earth long having been long ago accepted. What is the context of Ibn Hazm's observation? Why is it any more relevant than saying the same thing today as one in a list of many evidences for the spherical earth? Since Muslim scholars already knew the earth was spherical by then, and had developed mathematical techniques around that knowledge, this mention is superfluous. I intend to remove it after a period of commentary. Also, is there something wrong with the translation or paraphrasing? Saying that “the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth” makes no sense and is not true. Strebe (talk) 18:44, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This claim is still in the article. It is true if you understand it as "at any given time, there is a point on the Earth where the Sun is directly overhead" and that this point changes throughout the day and year. It's an interesting and concise proof, despite the context of other Islamic scholars. I'll clarify the wording by paraphrasing instead of quoting. -- Beland (talk) 09:16, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Ibn Hazm

message: overlaps almost entirely with . It seems like it would be easier for readers and editors to have a single article that covers historical thinking about the shape of the Earth. I'm not sure what the best merge target would be, though, and whether the sections on Cause and Empirical confirmation and effects should go to the same place or not. I was thinking History of geodesy but editors there felt there wasn't enough overlap, since that's mostly about measurement (though it includes very early measurements). The next possibility is Figure of the Earth, but I think that may have similar problems of different focus and lack of sufficient overlap. So the best I can think of at the moment is History of the figure of the Earth but that doesn't sound all that great. Discovery of the shape of the Earth? Any thoughts? -- Beland (talk) 03:46, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I like History of the figure of the Earth. fgnievinski (talk) 04:57, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

text: That’s not the right approach. Figure of the earth is a term of art in geodesy; it is not the state of belief in the earth's shape for whatever culture at whatever time. Concerning , definitely the duplicative material needs to be mostly removed. The real problem with  is that it documents the transition into the spherical model, along with all kinds of details about that, which is not its job. Its job (with renamed section) should be to document the transition away from the flat-earth model. That’s not quite the same thing. The description of the transition could be drastically reduced by restricting it to listing the periods in which the various cultures abandoned the flat earth model. They all had the same reason for doing so, although supporting details for those reasons could be included. Strebe (talk) 16:38, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, we can give that a try.  I re-tagged the article for cleanup instead of merging. Thanks for pondering this question! -- Beland (talk) 19:49, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with [[Flat Earth]] 

message: * I think we should warn Flat Earth article readers on something.
The set of proofs (such as tidal lock etc.) is compiled in Shperical Earth article.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanished user 6292789 (talk • contribs) 21:12, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It has since moved, but I have added a link from the intro of Flat Earth. -- Beland (talk) 09:28, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Warning 

message: This series of edits goes further into the unfortunate territory we discuss just above in Talk:Spherical Earth#Merge with Flat Earth. This article is not a refutation of flat earth theories or even a comparison of spherical to flat earth. The evidences should be (cited) descriptions of how and why we know the earth to be spherical. Flat is not the only alternative model, so the article certainly should not be a blow-by-blow account of the strengths of spherical-versus-flat models. Ultimately, this series of edits (along with some material already there) give flat earth proponents WP:UNDUE prominence. Strebe (talk) 20:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Would some material be better on Modern flat Earth societies, where attention to flat-Earth theories is perhaps more justified? What's there now is mostly about the societies and not the ideas that they have. -- Beland (talk) 01:37, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: That does sound like a better home for it. Odd that the article doesn’t already go into details. Strebe (talk) 05:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Content moved. -- Beland (talk) 02:54, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hey! Nicd 3 years payse you had there! Something is wrong with my links now! I've been mentioning "spherical earth#effects and empirical evidence" header and now flatearthers may jab me with "Wikipedia says nothing, ballie" lines. Please put the header of the section back so tgere would be a small section leading to "the another place". 2A00:1370:812B:F479:6C53:3E1B:E24A:E896 (talk) 08:05, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hi, I'm not sure you'll get this message; you may want to sign up for an account to more easily communicate on talk pages. There's a link to Modern flat Earth beliefs#Effects of and empirical evidence for spherical shape in the "See also" section.  makes a good point about that being a better home for it, since the fact of the earth's spherical shape is not really in serious academic dispute. -- Beland (talk) 08:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Not about how the earth isn’t flat

message: The aforenamed section actually discusses the fact that the observable horizon drops as the observer gains altitude (at a predictable rate which is very different in the case of a sphere vs. any sort of flat surface).  This is only tangentially related to stars, in the sense that one could theoretically see more stars (near the horizon) at altitude.  But in practice, the drop of the horizon is so slight (about 0.5 degrees at 1,000 feet, and proportional to the square root of the observer's height), that no practical observation would reveal obviously more stars.  In fact, measurements like Al Biruni's are done during the daytime, when a clear view of the horizon is possible, so that its angle can be precisely compared against true horizontal.  Recommend changing the title of this section to: "Observation of the horizon at altitude".— Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.17.44.2 (talk • contribs) 14:42, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: This section is now on Modern flat Earth beliefs, but I have changed the title as requested. -- Beland (talk) 09:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Observation of the stars at altitude" section has nothing to do with observing stars. 

message: Not sure if implying causality if even necessary or relevant, but irregardless it should be cited if included as its own section Genetikbliss (talk) 22:17, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a request for citations in the "Cause" section. It's true they're needed; they could presumably be copied from the linked articles. -- Beland (talk) 09:41, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause 

message: Section Spherical Earth#History overlaps widely with Earth's circumference#History and Meridian arc#History, not to mention History of geodesy. Can we minimize the duplications? fgnievinski (talk) 17:59, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! fgnievinski (talk) 03:05, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split History section? 

message: Please return the "empirical" section.
It was rather... exquicite to learn, how roundness of Earth could be told in 1492-1493 before Columbus' discovery and Drake's around-the-world travel. 2A00:1FA0:45B:B66D:0:44:908C:3B01 (talk) 21:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I'm not sure if you are one person or two, or if you'll get this message; you may want to sign up for an account to more easily communicate on talk pages and keep your IP address private. There's a link to Modern flat Earth beliefs#Effects of and empirical evidence for spherical shape in the "See also" section.  makes a good point above about that being a better home for it, since the Earth's shape is not really in serious factual dispute. -- Beland (talk) 08:56, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  Could you pretty please at least tinker with "history" chapter and put Magellan's around-the-globe journey (as well as Francis Drake's one, if possible).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:1370:812B:F479:21E8:714B:613C:2231 (talk) 09:58, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I'm not sure if you're one of the above people or a third person? Those voyages are covered by the article Circumnavigation, which is already linked from the "History of concept and measurement" section. I don't see any particular reason to go into more detail, given that this section covers thousands of years in one paragraph. -- Beland (talk) 19:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bring back the empirical evidence, please 

message: The page preview of the term 'Earth's circumference' contains an error: it states the circumference of Earth is 400,075.017km, that should be 40,075.017km. (The miles should be fixed accordingly.) PManuel72 (talk) 22:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in page preview