History of Flat Earth

''This text was moved from [[Flat_Earth|Flat Earth]] article to make it more lightweight. It needs '''your''' help to become a proper article.'' 


[[File:Gossuin de Metz - L'image du monde - BNF Fr. 574 fo42 - miniature.jpg|thumb|right|200px|14th-century copy of L'Image du monde (ca. 1246) depicting a spherical or cylindrical Earth.]]
On certain length scales, the earth certainly is flat — the ground on what we like to call [[Kansas|flatland]] certainly doesn't look like it has any significant curvature in everyday life. In a mountainous (or even just hilly) region, the local geography is so variable that discerning a curve would be even more difficult. As a result of this, a [[common sense]] interpretation of a flat Earth can be reached pretty quickly.

A Mathematician might explain this appearance with the statement that "the earth is 'locally' flat". This may be the reason that Cockney Mathematians coined the term 'local yokels' as rhyming slang for platygeists.

Oddly enough, a flat-Earth model is useful in some circumstances, even today.  You would assume a flat surface when drawing a city map, for instance; accounting for the curvature of the Earth at such a small scale would complicate things without giving you any real benefit.  Mapping continents is another story of course, at least if you're showing them in relation to other continents, surrounding oceans, etc.

==Ancient history==
[[File:Eratosthenes measure of Earth circumference.svg|thumb|left|250px|Illustration of the method used by Eratosthenes to calculate the circumference of the Earth]]

''Very'' early [[Egypt]]ian and other Middle-Eastern civilisations portrayed the earth as flat land suspended in an ocean, and with a "[[Firmament|roof]]" of some kind over it. This is particularly reflected in some of the prose that made its way into the Bible and has been used to justify flat-Earth beliefs today.

Ancient [[Chinese]] astronomy makes no mention of any roundness of the earth; indeed some depictions even made it square. In Siam (now [[Thailand]]), the flat-Earth idea was part of [[Buddhist]] scripture until the 1800s, as part of the ''Traiphum cosmography''.<ref>{{wpl|Thongchai Winichakul}}, [http://books.google.dk/books/about/Siam_Mapped.html?id=TJEK4sHPlUsC&redir_esc=y ''Siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation''] (1995), pp. 20-43</ref> However, most religious scholars considered it as a metaphorical description. It's unlikely that this was ever taken painfully literally in Siam, even before King Mongkut (the one of ''The King and I'' fame) officially introduced more modern geography during his reforms and westernization of the country.

In Western science and theology, the notion that the entire world ''really was flat'' was discredited the moment it was properly considered and looked at, and it had faded by the time of classical [[Greece|Greek]] [[philosophy]]. Pythagoras suggested that the earth was round, and [[Aristotle]] provided convincing evidence for it in Ancient Greece, although the main source to suggest that Greeks before Aristotle thought the world was flat is Aristotle himself. Around 240 BCE, {{wpl|Eratosthenes|Eratosthenes}}calculated the circumference of the earth to an impressive degree of accuracy. By the Roman Empire the sphericity of Earth was not in serious dispute (however some rejected it, like the [[Epicurus|epicurean]] poet [[Lucretius]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0131:book=1:card=1052|title=Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, BOOK I, line 1052}}</ref> and the [[Christian apologetics|christian apologist]] {{wpl|Lactantius|Lactantius}}<ref>Lactantius, The Epitome of the Divine Institutes, Chapter XXXIX - Of Various Philosophers, and of the Antipodes.</ref>, which they both used the [[Flat_Earth#So why don't people on the Southern Hemisphere fall off?|"upside down people" argument]]). By the [[Middle Ages]], [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic Church]]'s most beloved of scientific theologians, [[Thomas Aquinas]], was advancing the earth's roundness as a fundamental of [[logic]].<ref>''Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians'' by Jeffrey Burton Russell (1991) Praeger. ISBN 0275939561.</ref>{{rp|19,45}}

===Ancient pseudohistory===
{{main|Pseudohistory}}
[[File:Roman Globe Fresco Pompeii.jpg|220px|thumb|left|Circa 50 CE Roman fresco of a globe found in the Boscoreale villa near Pompeii (and there are more samples of globes in Roman art).]]
[[File:Imperial_Orb_of_the_Holy_Roman_Empire.jpg|175px|thumb|right|alt=A smooth gold sphere wrapped in raised bands along the equator and two perpendicular longitudinal rings. A cross, taller than the orb's diameter is mounted on top. The bands and cross are garishly embossed with a curly vine pattern and studded with gems.|The Imperial Orb of the [[Holy Roman Empire]] (12<sup>th</sup> century) is an example of {{wpl|globus cruciger}}, a medieval Christian symbol of authority and world domination dating back to the 2<sup>nd</sup> century.]]
[[File:Lapida comenciolo.jpg|thumb|Byzantine stonegrave (6th century). At the end of the text, the Earth is referred to as an "orb" (ORBEM).]]

The idea that ''everyone'' used to believe that the earth was flat until only very recently, mostly due to the influence of religion, is essentially a complete [[scientific mythology|myth]]. A Greek Egyptian by the name of Eratosthenes not only proved the world was round, but calculated its circumference with an error of less than 2%, and even did it in the third century BCE. This is often brought up as an example of how [[secular]] [[enlightenment]] has [[conflict thesis|triumphed over unfounded religious dogma]]; indeed, some theories state that this is the ''reason'' the myth is so popular.<ref>Stephen Jay Gould. [http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/FlatEarth.pdf The Late Birth of a Flat Earth.] In ''Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History''</ref> Another possible reason for the myth may be the existence of various Flat Earth Societies in the 19<sup>th</sup> century.

[[File:Behaims Erdapfel.jpg|220px|thumb|left|{{wpl|Erdapfel}}, the world's oldest surviving globe was made in [[Germany]] and completed in 1492. This was independent of Columbus's voyage and finished just before his return.]]
In the Anglophone world, the myth is believed to originate with the novel ''The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus'' by Washington Irving, which perpetuated the false idea that Columbus sailed around the globe to prove that it was round and not flat. In reality, all that was at stake with Columbus' journey and those of his contemporaries was the ''size'' of the earth — it was Columbus' egregious ''underestimation'' of the earth's size in combination with an ''overestimation'' of the length of [[Asia]] by 5,000 miles (8,046.72 km) by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli in 1474<ref>"Point of View" ''The Day the Universe Changed''</ref> that led him to theorize that reaching the Indies from the west was feasible. The [[Spanish]] Court's reluctance to fund his voyage was based on an estimate of the earth's circumference that much more closely agreed with modern measurements,  but was substantially larger than the figure Columbus had come up with.  In other words, it was the King and Queen who were right, and Columbus who was wrong.  

To be fair to Columbus, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_dal_Pozzo_Toscanelli#/media/File:Atlantic_Ocean,_Toscanelli,_1474.jpg Toscanelli's map put Cippangu (Japan) near where the western part of Mexico was in the real world]; so even with the earth the correct size, Columbus was still working from erroneous data. It was only by a stroke of [[Luck|luck]] that Columbus found a "New World" where he had thought Cippangu was; otherwise, he and his crew would have died of starvation. {{wpl|Umberto Eco}} paradoxically summarized this point in his essay "The Force of Falsity": because Columbus's critics were right, they were wrong, and because Columbus was wrong, he was right — but only thanks to the serendipity of America. Or, put differently, he was right for the wrong reasons, and they were wrong for the right reasons.

It was widely known that it would be physically possible to get to Asia by going west (disregarding the then unknown Americas), if you could carry sufficient supplies. What prevented anyone before Columbus from trying to go around the world was uncertainty regarding the circumference of the earth and Toscanelli's measurement of Asia.  If either of those calculations were off in the wrong direction, the ships were not large enough or fast enough to get from Europe to Asia by traveling west before the food and fresh water supplies on board ran out.  Furthermore, with Bartolomeu Dias sailing around the tip of Africa in 1488 the Europeans already had passage to Asia—albeit a long and tedious one in a region known for fearsome storms.

==Modern history==
[[File:Flat_Earth_Society_Logo.png|thumb|Logo of the modern Flat Earth Society. Note their apparent lack of belief in [[Alaska]], the [[British Isles]], [[Cuba]], [[Florida]], [[Italy]], [[Japan]], [[New Zealand]], [[Panama]], and the [[Philippines]].]]

[[File:Orlando-Ferguson-flat-earth-map edit.jpg|thumb|right|Map of the Square and Stationary Earth by Orlando Ferguson (1893).<ref>Natalie Wolchover, [http://www.livescience.com/14754-ingenious-flat-earth-theory-revealed-map.html Ingenious 'Flat Earth' Theory Revealed In Old Map.] ''LiveScience,'' 23 June 2011.</ref> He did not specify what prevents water sinking into the equator or keeps Canadians from seeing Argentina.]]

[[File:The romance of polar exploration; interesting descriptions of Arctic and Antarctic adventure from the earliest time to the voyage of the "Discovery," BHL46232967.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Drawing and description of Aurora Australis from 1909. Clearly they actually saw a hologram projected by NASA or whatever.]]

Given this history, it should come as a surprise to anyone that any human being existing in the developed world right now should still consider the idea of a flat Earth probable. Since the mid-1800s, notably via the Flat Earth Society, modern [[Pseudoscience|pseudoscientists]] have been trying to prove that the earth is flat. As evidence continues to mount, even in modern times, against the flat Earth (such as the fact that we can now orbit the planet and view it from a distance or circumnavigate the globe ourselves in an aircraft), the idea is beginning to take a turn for the silly.<ref>[http://wiki.tfes.org/FAQ Flat Earth Society FAQ]</ref><ref>"John1992" (2011). "[http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/people-still-think-the-earth-is-flat-506775/ People still think the earth is flat?]". ''Giant Bomb'' website.</ref>

English inventor {{wpl|Samuel Rowbotham}} (1816–1884), under the pseudonym Parallax, published a 16-page pamphlet, which he later expanded into a 430-page book, ''Earth Not a Globe'', expounding his views based on his [[Biblical literalism|literal interpretation of several Biblical passages]]. Under the model proposed by this book, the earth is a flat disc with the North Pole at its center and the south "pole" extending all the way around the outer edge (in other words, there was no true south "pole"). However, the alternate theory that the North [[Arctic]] is the surrounding ice wall is a similar idea. This outer edge is also guarded by a 150-foot-tall wall of ice. (Remember, at the time this was written, no expedition to Antarctica had yet reached the South Pole.)  After his death, his followers founded the [[Zetetic|Universal Zetetic Society]] which published a magazine ''Earth Not A Globe''; however, the society slowly declined after [[World War I]].

The Flat Earth Society (also known as the International Flat Earth Society or International Flat Earth Research Society) was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956.<ref>{{wayback|http://www.sfhub.ac.uk/flatearth.htm SF Hub &mdash; The Flat Earth Society Archive}}</ref> Shenton initially accepted the globe theory of the earth, and indeed suggested his own innovation on how to make use of the [[earth's rotation]].<ref>Garwood, Christine. "[https://www.amazon.com/Flat-Earth-History-Infamous-Idea/dp/0312382081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503493822&sr=8-1&keywords=flat+earth+the+history+of+an+infamous+idea Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea]". MacMillan (2007).</ref> This involved raising an airship into the sky and then holding it stationary. After a few hours of the earth's rotation, the airship would be over America. It could then be lowered, making transatlantic transport extremely fast and cheap, in one direction at least. He went as far as to write to the British government, urging them to use this method. The ridicule and indifference that he received persuaded him that perhaps the atmosphere might rotate with the planet, as suggested by the lack of constant thousand-mile-an-hour winds at the equator, or at any altitude above it.

No, only kidding. Actually, Shenton concluded that the earth could not be rotating, and that there was a [[conspiracy]] (for no defined reason) to hide this fact.

This conspiracy blossomed to include everyone in every government, civilian pilots (post-war) and/or GPS manufacturers (1960s), everyone in every telecommunications industry, everyone in the southern hemisphere (the difference between the currently-accepted globe and flat Earth map are so massive below the equator that they would be difficult to ignore) and anyone using an odometer on a trip between any four landmarks. Also included in the conspiracy are thousands of supersoldiers keeping ordinary citizens from witnessing the Ice Wall, which surrounds the flat Earth (one begins to wonder if Shenton felt that the best way to change a lightbulb was to hold it in place and get 300 other people to spin the building). As for what lies beyond the Ice Wall, the Flat Earth Society has this to say:

{{quotebox|Beyond the 150 foot Ice Wall is anyone's guess. How far the ice extends; how it terminates; and what exists beyond it, are questions to which no present human experience can reply. All we at present know is, that snow and hail, howling winds, and indescribable storms and [[hurricane]]s prevail; and that in every direction "human ingress is barred by unsealed escarpments of perpetual ice," extending farther than eye or telescope can penetrate, and becoming lost in gloom and darkness. Some hold that the tundra of ice and snow stretches forever eternally."<ref>[http://wiki.tfes.org/index.php?title=The_Ice_Wall The Ice Wall] ''Flat Earth Society''.</ref>}}

The FES is now defunct, but was still active in 1980 under the leadership of (the now deceased) [[Charles K. Johnson]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080331011543/http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet] by Robert J. Schadewald (1980) ''Donald Simanek's page, Lockhaven University'' (archived from March 31, 2008).</ref> There is another modern Flat Earth Society with [[Daniel Shenton]] as its president, mainly notable for having its first member be synthpop musician Thomas Dolby, whose only qualification for such is that he made a rather good album called ''The Flat Earth''. While much of Dolby's work is famously inspired by his love of science, this album's eponymous song uses the shape of the planet as a metaphor for how human decisions shape the world we create.<ref>[https://youtu.be/x5I48NTJq-E?t=35m26s Thomas Dolby interview 1984]. futsal1958, YouTube, 2013.</ref> After listening to this album, Daniel Shenton apparently failed to notice the metaphor and instead began to wonder whether the planet might actually be flat.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/global/2010/feb/23/flat-earth-society The Earth is flat? What planet is he on? text]</ref> Although he still accepts modern science such as [[evolution]] and [[global warming]], he somehow reconciles them with his flat earth beliefs.<ref>[http://www.theguardian.com/global/2010/feb/23/flat-earth-society/ The Earth is flat? What planet is he on?] at The Guardian</ref><ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc0trwHSRIA Flat Earth Society, interview with Daniel Shenton, President of the Flat Earth Society]</ref>
==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Anti-intellectualism]]
[[Category:Antisemitism]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:Silly "Earth" theories]]
[[Category:Flat Earth]]
[[Category:Fundamentalism]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]
[[Category:Pseudoastronomy]]
[[Category:Pseudohistory]]
[[Category:Unified conspiracy theory]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Categories: Anti-intellectualism, Antisemitism, Conspiracy theories, Denialism, Silly "Earth" theories, Flat Earth, Fundamentalism, Pseudoscience, Pseudoastronomy, Pseudohistory, Unified conspiracy theory, Creationism