WHEN THE EARTH WAS FLAT: Remembering Leonard Cohen, Alden Nowlan, the Flat Earth Society, the King J

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Product details File Size: August 8, Sold by: Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales thought the Earth floated in water like a log. Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Hecataeus of Miletus believed the Earth was flat and surrounded by water.

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi , a world tree Yggdrasil , or pillar Irminsul in the centre. 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.

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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. 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. 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.

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers such as Zhang Heng 78— 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. 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: 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.

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. As noted in the book Huainanzi , [58] 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. The Zhoubi Suanjing also discusses how to determine the distance of the Sun by measuring the length of noontime shadows at different latitudes, a method similar to Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the Earth, but the Zhoubi Suanjing assumes that the Earth is flat.

Pythagoras in the 6th century BC and Parmenides in the 5th century stated that the Earth is spherical , [60] and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 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. His Almagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.

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. This took a strong hold on the medieval mind. Lucretius 1st century 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. Pliny also considered the possibility of an imperfect sphere "shaped like a pinecone ".

In late antiquity, such widely read encyclopedists as Macrobius and Martianus Capella both 5th century AD 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.

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The Vedic texts depict the cosmos in many ways. In the Vedic texts, Dyaus heaven and Prithvi Earth are compared to wheels on an axle , yielding a flat model.

They are also described as bowls or leather bags, yielding a concave model. But it was naturally regarded as circular, being compared with a wheel By about the 5th century CE, the siddhanta astronomy texts of South Asia, particularly of Aryabhata , assume a spherical Earth as they develop mathematical methods for quantitative astronomy for calendar and time keeping. The medieval Indian texts called the Puranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents. For example, the fifth canto of the Bhagavata Purana , includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.

It has long been debated how and when the spherical conception arose in Indian astronomical models. Detailed records, particularly about the observational practices have not survived. The cosmographic theories and assumptions in ancient India likely developed independently and in parallel, but these were influenced by some unknown quantitative Greek astronomy text in the medieval era. During the early Church period, the spherical view continued to be widely held, with some notable exceptions. Early Christian beliefs mention a number of ideas about the shape of the Earth.

Athenagoras , an eastern Christian writing around the year CE said, "The world, being made spherical, is confined within the circles of heaven. They say that the circumference of the universe is likened to the turnings of a well-rounded globe, the Earth being a central point. They say that since its outline is spherical, They also thought that heaven revolves in accordance with the motion of the heavenly bodies.

For that reason, they constructed brass globes, as though after the figure of the universe. I am at a loss as to what to say concerning those who, once they have erred, continue in their folly, defending one vain thing by another vain thing. It has neither upper nor lower regions, nor front nor back.

For whatever is round and bounded on every side by the circumference of a solid sphere, has no beginning or end The influential theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine , one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Western Church , similarly objected to the "fable" of an inhabited 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: 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.

For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and 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. The view generally accepted by scholars of Augustine's work [ who?

Apparently Augustine saw this picture as more useful for scriptural exegesis than the global Earth at the centre of an immense universe. Yet other historians, however, do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model. Diodorus of Tarsus , a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom , may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism.

Christian Topography by the Alexandrian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes , who had travelled as far as Sri Lanka and the source of the Blue Nile , is now widely considered the most valuable geographical document of the early medieval age, although it received relatively little attention from contemporaries. In it, the author repeatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, the Earth below the firmament and heaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments from scripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, days' journey long by wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament.

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The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dismissed as "pagan". Severian , Bishop of Gabala d. 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 and Aristotle, relying more on Pliny. With the end of the Western Roman Empire , 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. In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire did not fall, and it preserved the learning. 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.

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:. 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.

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 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". Hermannus Contractus — was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes ' method.

Thomas Aquinas — , 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. In Summa Theologiae he wrote: 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.

Flat Earth

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". Portuguese navigation down and around the coast of Africa in the latter half of the s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity.

In these explorations, the sun's position moved more northward the further south the explorers travel. Its position directly overhead at noon gave evidence for crossing the equator. These apparent solar motions in detail were more consistent with north-south curvature and a distant sun, than with any flat-Earth explanation.

The ultimate demonstration came when Ferdinand Magellan's expedition completed the first global circumnavigation in Antonio Pigafetta , one of the few survivors of the voyage, recorded the loss of a day in the course of the voyage, giving evidence for east-west curvature. No flat-Earth theory could reconcile the daily apparent motions of the sun with the ability to sail around the world, and the loss of a day could make no sense, either. The Abbasid Caliphate saw a great flowering of astronomy and mathematics in the 9th century AD.

Modern flat Earth societies - Wikipedia

Muslim scholars of the past believed in a spherical Earth. Now, they're being persecuted". Retrieved 19 August The New York Times. Retrieved 2 November Can You Speak Venusian? The Earth is not only flat—it's motionless, too". Retrieved 15 February — via Newspapers. Readable clippings in four parts: National Center for Science Education. Retrieved 24 April Retrieved 26 December Retrieved 27 December International Flat Earth Research Society. Retrieved 1 January Annual Review of Anthropology.

Archived from the original PDF on 5 June Retrieved 8 December Retrieved 15 June Retrieved 21 July Retrieved 24 July What planet is he on?

Modern flat Earth societies

Retrieved 23 July Retrieved 14 July New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16 March Retrieved 8 May Retrieved 7 February McGill Journal of Education. In search of the edge: Twin Planets, book 1 by Richard A Lupoff". Retrieved 28 June No time for 'flat-earth society' on climate change".

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