flat earth

Flat Earth

This article is about ancient cosmologies in which theEarth was regarded as at. For the modern misconcep-tion that belief in a at Earth was responsible for a majorsource of opposition to Christopher Columbus, see Mythof the at Earth. For other uses, see Flat Earth (disam-biguation).The at Earth model is an archaic conception of the

The Flammarion engraving (1888) depicts a traveler who ar-rives at the edge of a at Earth and sticks his head through thermament.

Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient culturessubscribed to a at Earth cosmography, including Greeceuntil the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Agecivilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period,India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) andChina until the 17th century. That paradigmwas also typ-ically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, andthe notion of a at Earth domed by the rmament in theshape of an inverted bowl was common in pre-scienticsocieties.[1]

The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philos-ophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although mostPre-Socratics retained the at Earth model. Aristotleaccepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empiricalgrounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the sphericalEarth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenisticworld from then on.[2][3][4][5]

1 Historical development

1.1 Ancient Near East

ImagoMundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6thcentury BC Babylonia

In early Egyptian[6] andMesopotamian thought the worldwas portrayed as a at disk oating in the ocean. A sim-ilar model is found in the Homeric account of the 8thcentury BC in which Okeanos, the personied body ofwater surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is thebegetter of all life and possibly of all gods.[7] The Is-raelites likely had a similar cosmology, with the earth asa at disc oating on water beneath an arced rmamentseparating it from the heavens.[8]

The Pyramid Texts and Con Texts reveal that the an-cient Egyptians believed Nun (the Ocean) was a circu-lar body surrounding nbwt (a term meaning dry landsor Islands), and therefore believed in a similar AncientNear Eastern circular earth cosmography surrounded bywater.[9][10][11]

1.2 Ancient Mediterranean

1

2 1 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

1.2.1 Poets

Both Homer[12] and Hesiod[13] described a at disccosmography on the Shield of Achilles.[14][15] Thispoetic tradition of an earth-encircling (gaiaokhos)sea (Oceanus) and a at disc also appears in Stasinusof Cyprus,[16] Mimnermus,[17] Aeschylus,[18] andApollonius Rhodius.[19]

Homers description of the at disc cosmography on theshield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated farlater in Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica (4th centuryAD), which continues the narration of the TrojanWar.[20]

1.2.2 Philosophers

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Possible rendering of Anaximanders world map[21]

Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the worldwas at: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to severalsources,[22] and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus(c. 460 370 BC) according to Aristotle.[23][24][25]

Thales thought the earth oated in water like a log.[26] Ithas been argued, however, that Thales actually believedin a round Earth.[27][28] Anaximander (c. 550 BC) be-lieved the Earth was a short cylinder with a at, circulartop that remained stable because it was the same distancefrom all things.[29][30] Anaximenes of Miletus believedthat the earth is at and rides on air; in the same way thesun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, whichare all ery, ride the air because of their atness.[31]Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC) thought that theEarth was at, with its upper side touching the air, andthe lower side extending without limit.[32]

Belief in a at Earth continued into the 5th century BC.Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was at,[33]and his pupil Archelaus believed that the at Earth wasdepressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact

that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time foreveryone.[34]

1.2.3 Historians

Hecataeus of Miletus believed the earth was at and sur-rounded by water.[35] Herodotus in his Histories ridiculedthe belief that water encircled the world,[36] yet most clas-sicists agree he still believed the earth was at becauseof his descriptions of literal ends or edges of theearth.[37]

1.3 Ancient IndiaAncient Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology heldthat the Earth is a disc consisting of four continentsgrouped around a central mountain (Mount Meru) likethe petals of a ower. An outer ocean surrounds thesecontinents.[38] This view of traditional Buddhist and Jaincosmology depicts the cosmos as a vast, oceanic disk(of the magnitude of a small planetary system), boundedby mountains, in which the continents are set as smallislands.[38]

1.4 Norse and GermanicThe ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in aat Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by anocean, with the axis mundi, a world tree (Yggdrasil),or pillar (Irminsul) in the centre.[39][40] The Norse be-lieved that in the world-encircling ocean sat a snake calledJormungandr.[41] In the Norse creation account preservedin Gylfaginning (VIII) it is stated that during the creationof the earth, an impassable sea was placed around theearth like a ring:

...And Jafnhrr said: Of the blood, whichran and welled forth freely out of his wounds,they made the sea, when they had formed andmade rm the earth together, and laid the sea ina ring round. about her; and it may well seema hard thing to most men to cross over it.[42]

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

...If you take a lighted candle and set it ina room, you may expect it to light up the en-tire interior, unless something should hinder,though the room be quite large. But if you takean apple and hang it close to the ame, so nearthat it is heated, the apple will darken nearlyhalf the room or even more. However, if youhang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot;the candle will light up the whole house; andthe shadow on the wall where the apple hangs

1.6 Declining support for the at Earth 3

will be scarcely half as large as the apple it-self. From this you may infer that the earth-circle is round like a ball and not equally nearthe sun at every point. But where the curvedsurface lies nearest the suns path, there will thegreatest heat be; and some of the lands that liecontinuously under the unbroken rays cannotbe inhabited.[43]

1.5 Ancient ChinaFurther information: Chinese astronomy

In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earthwas at and square, while the heavens were round,[44] anassumption virtually unquestioned until the introductionof European astronomy in the 17th century.[45][46][47] TheEnglish sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that therewas no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese as-tronomy:

Chinese thought on the form of the earthremained almost unchanged from early timesuntil the rst contacts with modern sciencethrough the medium of Jesuit missionaries inthe seventeenth century. While the heavenswere variously described as being like an um-brella covering the earth (the Kai Tian theory),or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tiantheory), or as being without substance whilethe heavenly bodies oat freely (the Hsan yehtheory), the earth was at all times at, althoughperhaps bulging up slightly.[48]

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese as-tronomers such as Zhang Heng (78139 AD) to describethe heavens as spherical:

The heavens are like a hens egg and asround as a crossbow bullet; the earth is like theyolk of the egg, and lies in the centre.[49]

This analogy with a curved egg led some modern histori-ans, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chineseastronomers were, after all, aware of the Earths spheric-ity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clar-ify the relative position of the at earth to the heavens:

In a passage of Zhang Hengs cosmogonynot translated by Needham, Zhang himselfsays: Heaven takes its body from the Yang,so it is round and in motion. Earth takes itsbody from the Yin, so it is at and quies-cent. The point of the egg analogy is sim-ply to stress that the earth is completely en-closed by heaven, rather than merely covered

from above as the Kai Tian describes. Chineseastronomers, many of them brilliant men byany standards, continued to think in at-earthterms until the seventeenth century; this sur-prising fact might be the starting-point for a re-examination of the apparent facility with whichthe idea of a spherical earth found acceptancein fth-century BC Greece.[50]

Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demon-strate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese con-sensus actually refer without exception to the Earth be-ing square, not to it being at.[51] Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements ofthe round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth,[44]did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edgeshould be rounded o so as to be circular.[52]

As noted in the bookHuainanzi,[53] in the 2nd century BCChinese astronomers eectively inverted Eratosthenescalculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate theheight of the sun above the earth. By assuming the earthwas at, they arrived at a distance of 100,000 li (approx-imately 200,000 km), which is a value far short of thecorrect distance of 150 million km.

1.6 Declining support for the at Earth

Further information: Spherical Earth and History ofgeodesy

1.6.1 Ancient Mediterranean

When a ship is at the horizon, its lower part is obscured due tothe curvature of the Earth.

In The Histories, written in the mid-5th century BC,Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the sun observedshining from the north. He stated that the phenomenonwas observed during a circumnavigation of Africa un-dertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptianpharaoh Necho II c. 610595 BC (The Histories, 4.42)who claimed to have had the sun on their right when cir-cumnavigating in a clockwise direction. To modern his-


Semi-circular shadow of Earth on the Moon during the phases ofa lunar eclipse

torians aware of a spherical Earth, these details conrmthe truth of the Phoenicians report.After the Greek philosophers Pythagoras, in the 6th cen-tury BC, and Parmenides, in the 5th, recognized that theEarth is spherical,[54] the spherical view spread rapidly inthe Greek world. Around 330 BC, Aristotle maintainedon the basis of physical theory and observational evidencethat the Earth was spherical, and reported on an esti-mate on the circumference.[55] The Earths circumferencewas rst determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes.[56]By the second century CE, Ptolemy had derived hismaps from a globe and developed the system of latitude,longitude, and climes. His Almagest was written in Greekand only translated into Latin in the 11th century fromArabic translations.

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

In the 2nd century BC, Crates of Mallus devised a terres-trial sphere that divided the Earth into four continents,separated by great rivers or oceans, with people pre-sumed living in each of the four regions.[57] Opposite theoikumene, the inhabited world, were the antipodes, con-sidered unreachable both because of an intervening torridzone (equator) and the ocean. This took a strong hold onthe medieval mind.Lucretius (1st. c. BC) opposed the concept of a spheri-cal Earth, because he considered that an innite universehad no center towards which heavy bodies would tend.Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking aroundtopsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd.[58][59] By the 1stcentury AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claimthat everyone agrees on the spherical shape of Earth,[60]though disputes continued regarding the nature of the an-tipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in acurved shape. Pliny also considered the possibility of animperfect sphere, "...shaped like a pinecone.[60]

In late antiquity such widely read encyclopedists asMacrobius (5th century) and Martianus Capella (5th cen-tury) discussed the circumference of the sphere of theEarth, its central position in the universe, the dierenceof the seasons in northern and southern hemispheres, andmany other geographical details.[61] In his commentaryon Cicero's Dream of Scipio, Macrobius described theEarth as a globe of insignicant size in comparison tothe remainder of the cosmos.[61]

1.6.2 Early Christian Church

During the early Church period, the spherical viewcontinued to be widely held, with some notableexceptions.[62]

Lactantius, Christian writer and advisor to the rst Chris-tian Roman Emperor, Constantine, ridiculed the notionof the Antipodes, inhabited by people whose footstepsare higher than their heads. After presenting some ar-guments he attributes to advocates for a spherical heavenand Earth, he writes:

But if you inquire from those who defendthese marvellous ctions, why all things do notfall into that lower part of the heaven, they replythat such is the nature of things, that heavy bod-ies are borne to the middle, and that they are alljoined together towards the middle, as we seespokes in a wheel; but that the bodies that arelight, as mist, smoke, and re, are borne awayfrom the middle, so as to seek the heaven. Iam at a loss what to say respecting those who,when they have once erred, consistently perse-vere in their folly, and defend one vain thing byanother.[63]

The inuential theologian and philosopher Saint Augus-tine, one of the four Great Church Fathers of theWestern


Church, similarly objected to the fable of an inhabitedAntipodes:

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes,that is to say, men on the opposite side of theearth, where the sun rises when it sets to us,men who walk with their feet opposite ours thatis on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is notarmed that this has been learned by histori-cal knowledge, but by scientic conjecture, onthe ground that the earth is suspended withinthe concavity of the sky, and that it has as muchroom on the one side of it as on the other: hencethey say that the part that is beneath must alsobe inhabited. But they do not remark that, al-though it be supposed or scientically demon-strated that the world is of a round and spheri-cal form, yet it does not follow that the otherside of the earth is bare of water; nor even,though it be bare, does it immediately followthat it is peopled. For Scripture, which provesthe truth of its historical statements by the ac-complishment of its prophecies, gives no falseinformation; and it is too absurd to say, thatsome men might have taken ship and traversedthe whole wide ocean, and crossed from thisside of the world to the other, and that thuseven the inhabitants of that distant region aredescended from that one rst man.[64]

The view generally accepted by scholars of Augustineswork is that he shared the common view of his contem-poraries that the Earth is spherical,[65] in line with his en-dorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram.[66] Thatview was challenged by noted Augustine scholar Leo Fer-rari, who concluded that

he was familiar with the Greek theory of aspherical earth, nevertheless, (following in thefootsteps of his fellow North African, Lactan-tius), he was rmly convinced that the earthwas at, was one of the two biggest bodies inexistence and that it lay at the bottom of theuniverse. Apparently Augustine saw this pic-ture as more useful for scriptural exegesis thanthe global earth at the centre of an immenseuniverse.[67]

Ferraris interpretation was questioned by the historian ofscience, Phillip Nothaft, who considers that in his scrip-tural commentaries Augustine was not endorsing any par-ticular cosmological model.[68]

Diodorus of Tarsus, a leading gure in the School of An-tioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have arguedfor a at Earth; however, Diodorus opinion on the matteris known only from a later criticism.[69] Chrysostom, oneof the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church

Cosmas Indicopleustes world view at earth in a Tabernacle

and Archbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espousedthe idea, based on scripture, that the Earth oats miracu-lously on the water beneath the rmament.[70] Athanasiusthe Great, Church Father and Patriarch of Alexandria, ex-pressed a similar view in Against the Heathen.[71]

Christian Topography (547) by the Alexandrian monkCosmas Indicopleustes, who had travelled as far as SriLanka and the source of the Blue Nile, is now widelyconsidered the most valuable geographical document ofthe early medieval age, although it received relatively lit-tle attention from contemporaries. In it, the author re-peatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consistsof only two places, the Earth below the rmament andheaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments fromscripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, 400 daysjourney long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans andenclosed by four massive walls which support the rma-ment. The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dis-missed as pagan.[72][73][74]

Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earthis at and the sun does not pass under it in the night,but travels through the northern parts as if hidden bya wall.[75] Basil of Caesarea (329379) argued that thematter was theologically irrelevant.[76]

1.6.3 Early Middle Ages

Early medieval Christian writers in the early Middle Agesfelt little urge to assume atness of the earth, though theyhad fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy, Aris-totle, and relied more on Pliny.[77]

With the end of Roman civilization, Western Europeentered the Middle Ages with great diculties that af-fected the continents intellectual production. Most sci-entic treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were un-available, leaving only simplied summaries and compi-lations. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages


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

supported the sphericity of the Earth. For example: someearly medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include mapsof the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps show-ing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of aspherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeledas globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the centerof the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.[78] Fur-ther examples of such medieval diagrams can be foundin medieval manuscripts of the Dream of Scipio. In theCarolingian era, scholars discussed Macrobiuss view ofthe antipodes. One of them, the Irish monk Dungal, as-serted that the tropical gap between our habitable regionand the other habitable region to the south was smallerthan Macrobius had believed.[79]

Europes view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquityand the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by thewritings of early Christian scholars:

Boethius (c. 480524), who also wrote a theo-logical treatise On the Trinity, repeated the Macro-bian model of the Earth in the center of a spheri-cal cosmos in his inuential, and widely translated,Consolation of Philosophy.[80]

Bishop Isidore of Seville (560636) taught in hiswidely read encyclopedia, the Etymologies diverseviews such as that the Earth resembles a wheel[81]resembling Anaximander in language and the mapthat he provided. This was widely interpreted as re-ferring to a at disc-shaped Earth.[82][83] An illustra-tion from Isidores De Natura Rerum shows the vezones of the earth as adjacent circles. Some haveconcluded that he thought the Arctic and Antarcticzones were adjacent to each other.[84] He did notadmit the possibility of antipodes, which he tookto mean people dwelling on the opposite side of

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

the Earth, considering them legendary[85] and not-ing that there was no evidence for their existence.[86]Isidores T and O map, which was seen as represent-ing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued tobe used by authors through the Middle Ages, e.g.the 9th-century bishop Rabanus Maurus who com-pared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere(Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel.At the same time, Isidores works also gave theviews of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 ofDeNatura Rerum, Isidore claims that the sun orbits theearth and illuminates the other side when it is nighton this side. See French translation of De NaturaRerum.[87] In his other work Etymologies, there arealso armations that the sphere of the sky has earthin its center and the sky being equally distant onall sides.[88][89] Other researchers have argued thesepoints as well.[77][90][91] The work remained unsur-passed until the thirteenth century and was regardedas the summit of all knowledge. It became an es-sential part of European medieval culture. Soon af-ter the invention of typography it appeared manytimes in print.[92] However, The Scholastics - latermedieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists -were helped by the Arabic translators and commen-taries, but they hardly needed to struggle against aat-earth legacy from the early middle ages (500-1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy andimprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristo-tle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with oneexception), little urge to assume atness.[77]


Isidores portrayal of the ve zones of the earth

The monk Bede (c. 672735) wrote in his inuen-tial treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time,that the Earth was round ('not merely circular like ashield [or] spread out like a wheel, but resembl[ing]more a ball'), explaining the unequal length of day-light from the roundness of the Earth, for not with-out reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on thepages of Holy Scripture and of ordinary literature.It is, in fact, set like a sphere in the middle of thewhole universe. (De temporum ratione, 32). Thelarge number of surviving manuscripts of The Reck-oning of Time, copied to meet the Carolingian re-quirement that all priests should study the compu-tus, indicates that many, if not most, priests wereexposed to the idea of the sphericity of the Earth.[93]lfric of Eynsham paraphrased Bede into Old En-glish, saying Now the Earths roundness and theSuns orbit constitute the obstacle to the days beingequally long in every land.[94]

St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700784), in the middleof the 8th century, discussed or taught some geo-graphical or cosmographical ideas that St Bonifacefound suciently objectionable that he complainedabout them to Pope Zachary. The only survivingrecord of the incident is contained in Zacharys re-ply, dated 748, where he wrote:

As for the perverse and sinful doctrinewhich he (Virgil) against God and his own soulhas utteredif it shall be clearly establishedthat he professes belief in another world andother men existing beneath the earth, or in (an-other) sun and moon there, thou art to holda council, deprive him of his sacerdotal rank,and expel him from the Church.[95]

Some authorities have suggested that the

sphericity of the Earth was among the as-pects of Vergiliuss teachings that Bonifaceand Zachary considered objectionable.[96][97]Others have considered this unlikely, andtake the wording of Zacharys response toindicate at most an objection to beliefin the existence of humans living in theantipodes.[98][99][100][101][102] In any case, thereis no record of any further action having beentaken against Vergilius. He was later appointedbishop of Salzburg, and was canonised in the13th century.[103]

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 peoplein the Middle Ages believed that the Earth (or perhapsthe world) was a sphere is the use of the orb (globus cru-ciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the HolyRoman Empire. It is attested from the time of the Chris-tian late-Roman emperor Theodosius II (423) throughoutthe Middle Ages; the Reichsapfel was used in 1191 at thecoronation of emperor Henry VI. However the word 'or-bis means 'circle' and there is no record of a globe as arepresentation of the Earth since ancient times in the westtill that of Martin Behaim in 1492. Additionally it couldwell be a representation of the entire 'world' or cosmos.A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity ofthe Earth noted that since the eighth century, no cosmog-rapher worthy of note has called into question the spheric-ity of the Earth.[104] However, the work of these intel-lectuals may not have had signicant inuence on publicopinion, and it is dicult to tell what the wider popula-tion may have thought of the shape of the Earth, if theyconsidered the question at all.


1.6.4 High and Late Middle Ages

Further information: Spherical Earth Medieval EuropeBy the 11th century Europe had learned of Islamic as-

Picture from a 1550 edition of On the Sphere of the World, themost inuential astronomy textbook of 13th-century Europe

tronomy. The Renaissance of the 12th century fromabout 1070 started an intellectual revitalization of Eu-rope with strong philosophical and scientic roots, andincreased interest in natural philosophy.Hermannus Contractus (10131054) was among the ear-liest Christian scholars to estimate the circumferenceof Earth with Eratosthenes' method. Thomas Aquinas(12251274), the most important and widely taught the-ologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth;and he even took for granted his readers also knew theEarth is round.[nb 1] Lectures in the medieval universi-ties commonly advanced evidence in favor of the ideathat the Earth was a sphere.[105] Also, "On the Sphereof the World", the most inuential astronomy textbookof the 13th century and required reading by students inall Western European universities, described the worldas a sphere. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theolog-ica, wrote, The physicist proves the earth to be roundby one means, the astronomer by another: for the latterproves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapesof eclipses, or something of the sort; while the formerproves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement ofheavy bodies towards the center, and so forth.[106]

The shape of the Earth was not only discussed in scholarlyworks written in Latin; it was also treated in works writtenin vernacular languages or dialects and intended for wideraudiences. TheNorwegian bookKonungs Skuggsj, fromaround 1250, states clearly that the Earth is roundandthat there is night on the opposite side of the Earth whenthere is daytime in Norway. The author also discusses theexistence of antipodesand he notes that (if they exist)they see the Sun in the north of the middle of the day, andthat they experience seasons opposite those of people in

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

the Northern Hemisphere.However Tattersall shows that in many vernacular worksin 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was con-sidered round like a table rather than round like an ap-ple. In virtually all the examples quoted...from epicsand from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of aless learned character) the actual form of words used sug-gests strongly a circle rather than a sphere, though notesthat even in these works the language is ambiguous.[107]

As late as 1674, Robert Hooke could argue To one whohas been conversant only with illiterate persons, or suchas understand not the principles of Astronomy and Ge-ometry,...who can scarce imagine the Earth is globous,but...imagine it to be a round plain covered with the Skyas with a Hemisphere, suggesting that the opinion wasnot uncommon even then.[108]

Portuguese exploration of Africa and Asia, Columbussvoyage to the Americas (1492) and nally Ferdinand

9Magellan's circumnavigation of the Earth (151921) pro-vided the nal, practical proofs for the global shape of theEarth.

1.6.5 Islamic world

Further information: Spherical Earth Medieval Islamicscholars

The Abbasid Caliphate saw a great owering ofastronomy and mathematics in the 9th century CE. inwhich Muslim scholars translated Ptolemys work, whichbecome the Almagest, and extended and updated hiswork based on spherical ideas, and these have generallybeen respected since. However, after the decline of theGolden Age in the 13th century more traditional viewswere increasingly heard.The Quranmentions that the world was laid out. To thisa classic Sunni commentary, the Tafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi)written in the late 12th century says If it is said: Do thewords And the earth We spread out indicate that it isat? We would respond: Yes, because the earth, eventhough it is round, is an enormous sphere, and each littlepart of this enormous sphere, when it is looked at, ap-pears to be at. As that is the case, this will dispel whatthey mentioned of confusion. The evidence for that isthe verse in which Allah says (interpretation of the mean-ing): And the mountains as pegs [an-Naba 78:7]. Hecalled them awtaad (pegs) even though these mountainsmay have large at surfaces. And the same is true in thiscase.[109]

A later classic Sunni commentary, the Tafsir al-Jalalaynwritten in the early 16th century says As for His wordssutihat, laid out at, this on a literal reading suggests thatthe earth is at, which is the opinion of most of the schol-ars of the [revealed] Law, and not a sphere as astronomers(ahl al-haya) have it, even if this [latter] does not contra-dict any of the pillars of the Law.[110] Other translationsrender made at as spread out.[111]

1.6.6 Ming China

As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China,Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Chinese say: The earthis at and square, and the sky is a round canopy; theydid not succeed in conceiving the possibility of theantipodes.[52][112] The universal belief in a at Earth isconrmed by a contemporary Chinese encyclopedia from1609 illustrating a at Earth extending over the horizontaldiametral plane of a spherical heaven.[52]

In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spreadin China due to the inuence of the Jesuits, who held highpositions as astronomers at the imperial court.[113]

2 Modern period

2.1 The Myth of the Flat Earth in modernhistoriography

Main article: Myth of the Flat Earth

Beginning in the 19th century, a historical myth arosewhich held that the predominant cosmological doctrineduring the Middle Ages was that the Earth was at. Anearly proponent of this myth was the American writer,Washington Irving, who maintained that ChristopherColumbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmento gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Latersignicant advocates of this view were John WilliamDraper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as amajor element in their advocacy of the thesis[114] thatthere was a long lasting and essential conict betweenscience and religion.[115] Subsequent historical researchhas demonstrated two aws in this approach. First, stud-ies of medieval science have shown that the preponder-ance of scholars in the Middle Ages, including those readby Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth wasspherical.[116] Second, studies of the relations betweenscience and religion over the course of time have demon-strated that the model of an essential conict is a vastoversimplication, which ignores the positive elements ofthe relations between them.[117][118]

2.2 Modern Flat-Earthers

Flat Earth map drawn by Orlando Ferguson in 1893. The mapcontains several references to biblical passages as well as variousjabs at the Globe Theory.

In the modern era, belief in a at Earth has been ex-pressed by isolated individuals and groups, but no scien-tists of note. English writer Samuel Rowbotham (18161885), writing under the pseudonym Parallax, pro-duced a pamphlet called Zetetic Astronomy in 1849 ar-guing for a at Earth and published results of many ex-periments that tested the curvatures of water over a longdrainage ditch, followed by another called The inconsis-

10 2 MODERN PERIOD

tency ofModern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scrip-ture. One of his supporters, John Hampden, lost a bet toAlfred Russel Wallace in the famous Bedford Level Ex-periment, which attempted to prove it. In 1877 Ham-pden produced a book called A New Manual of Bibli-cal Cosmography.[119] Rowbotham also produced stud-ies that purported to show that the eects of ships disap-pearing below the horizon could be explained by the lawsof perspective in relation to the human eye.[120] In 1883he founded Zetetic Societies in England andNewYork, towhich he shipped a thousand copies of Zetetic Astronomy.Challenges were issued in the New York Daily Graphicoering $10,000 to charity to anyone proving the Earthrevolved on an axis.William Carpenter, a printer originally from Greenwich,England, was a supporter of Rowbotham and publishedTheoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed Prov-ing the Earth not a Globe in eight parts from 1864 un-der the name Common Sense.[121] He later emigrated toBaltimore where he published A hundred proofs the Earthis not a Globe in 1885.[122] He said:

There are rivers that ow for hundreds of miles to-wards the level of the sea without falling more thana few feet notably, the Nile, which, in a thousandmiles, falls but a foot. A level expanse of this ex-tent is quite incompatible with the idea of the Earthsconvexity. It is, therefore, a reasonable proof thatEarth is not a globe.

If the Earth were a globe, a small model globewould be the very best because the truest thingfor the navigator to take to sea with him. But sucha thing as that is not known: with such a toy as aguide, the mariner would wreck his ship, of a cer-tainty!, This is a proof that Earth is not a globe.

John Jasper, the black ex-slave preacher said to havepreached to more people than any Southern clergyman ofhis generation, echoed his friend Carpenters sentimentsin his most famous sermon Der Sun do move and theEarth Am Square, preached over 250 times always byinvitation.[123]

In Brockport, New York, in 1887, M.C. Flanders arguedthe case of a at Earth for three nights against two sci-entic gentlemen defending sphericity. Five townsmenchosen as judges voted unanimously for a at Earth atthe end. The case was reported in the Brockport Demo-crat.[124]

Professor JosephW. Holden of Maine, a former justiceof the peace, gave numerous lectures in New England andlectured on at Earth theory at the Columbian Exposi-tion in Chicago. His fame stretched to North Carolinawhere the Statesville Semi-weekly Landmark recorded athis death in 1900: 'We hold to the doctrine that the earthis at ourselves and we regret exceedingly to learn thatone of our members is dead'.[125]

After Rowbothams death, Lady Elizabeth Blount createdthe Universal Zetetic Society in 1893 in England and cre-ated a journal called Earth not a Globe Review, whichsold for twopence, as well as one called Earth, which onlylasted from 1901 to 1904. She held that the Bible was theunquestionable authority on the natural world and arguedthat one could not be a Christian and believe the Earth is aglobe. Well-knownmembers included E.W. Bullinger ofthe Trinitarian Bible Society, Edward Haughton, seniormoderator in natural science in Trinity College, Dublinand an archbishop. She repeated Rowbothams experi-ments, generating some interesting counter-experiments,but interest declined after the First World War.[125] Themovement gave rise to several books that argued for a at,stationary earth, including Terra Firma by David Ward-law Scott.[126]

In 1898, during his solo circumnavigation of the world,Joshua Slocum encountered a group of at-Earthers inDurban. Three Boers, one of them a clergyman, pre-sented Slocum with a pamphlet in which they set out toprove that the world was at. Paul Kruger, President ofthe Transvaal Republic, advanced the same view: Youdon't mean round the world, it is impossible! You meanin the world. Impossible!"[127]

Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who in 1906 took over theChristian Catholic Church, a Pentecostal sect that estab-lished a utopian community at Zion, Illinois, preached atEarth doctrine from 1915 onwards and used a photographof a twelve-mile stretch of the shoreline at Lake Win-nebago, Wisconsin taken three feet above the waterlineto prove his point. When the airship Italia disappearedon an expedition to the North Pole in 1928 he warned theworlds press that it had sailed over the edge of the world.He oered a $5,000 award for proving the Earth is notat, under his own conditions.[128] Teaching a globularEarth was banned in the Zion schools and the messagewas transmitted on his WCBD radio station.[125]

Mohammed Yusuf, founder of the Nigerian militantIslamist group Boko Haram, stated his belief in a atEarth.[129]

In January 2016, rapper B.o.B tweeted that A lot of peo-ple are turned o by the phrase 'at earth' ... but theresno way u can see all the evidence and not know... growup,[130] and accused NASA of hiding the truth.[131] As-trophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson replied to B.o.B.'s argu-ments, commenting that Being ve centuries regressedin your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like yourmusic.[132]

2.2.1 Flat Earth Society

Main article: Modern Flat Earth societiesIn 1956, Samuel Shenton set up the International FlatEarth Research Society (IFERS), better known as the FlatEarth Society from Dover, UK, as a direct descendantof the Universal Zetetic Society. This was just before the

11

Azimuthal equidistant projections of the sphere like this one havealso been co-opted as images of the at Earth model depict-ing Antarctica as an ice wall[133][134] surrounding a disk-shapedEarth.

Soviet Union launched the rst articial satellite, Sputnik;he responded, Would sailing round the Isle of Wightprove that it were spherical? It is just the same for thosesatellites.His primary aim was to reach children before they wereconvinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of pub-licity, the space race eroded Shentons support in Britainuntil 1967 when he started to become famous due to theApollo program. His postbag was full but his health suf-fered as his operation remained essentially a one-manshow until he died in 1971.[125]

In 1972 Shentons role was taken over by Charles K. John-son, a correspondent from California, USA. He incorpo-rated the IFERS and steadily built up the membership toabout 3,000. He spent years examining the studies ofat and round Earth theories and proposed evidence ofa conspiracy against at-Earth: The idea of a spinningglobe is only a conspiracy of error that Moses, Colum-bus, and FDR all fought... His article was published inthe magazine Science Digest, 1980. It goes on to state,If it is a sphere, the surface of a large body of watermust be curved. The Johnsons have checked the surfacesof Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea without detecting anycurvature.[135]

The Society declined in the 1990s following a re at itsheadquarters in California and the death of Johnson in2001.[136] It was revived as a website in 2004 by DanielShenton (no relation to Samuel Shenton). He believes thatno one has provided proof that the world is not at.[137]

3 Cultural referencesThe term at-Earther is often used in a derogatorysense to mean anyone who holds ridiculously antiquatedviews. The rst use of the term at-earther recorded bytheOxford English Dictionary is in 1934 in Punch: With-out being a bigoted at-earther, he [sc. Mercator] per-ceived the nuisance..of ddling about with globes..in or-der to discover the South Seas.[138] The term at-earth-man was recorded in 1908: Fewer votes than one wouldhave thought possible for any human candidate, were heeven a at-earth-man.[139]

3.1 Scientic satireIn a satirical piece published 1996, Albert A. Bartlett usesarithmetic to show that sustainable growth on Earth is im-possible in a spherical Earth since its resources are neces-sarily nite. He explains that only a model of a at Earth,stretching innitely in the two horizontal dimensions andalso in the vertical downward direction, would be able toaccommodate the needs of a permanently growing popu-lation.Referring to Julian Simon's book The Ultimate Resource,Bartlett suggests So, let us think of the 'Were goingto grow the limits!' people as the 'New Flat EarthSociety.'"[140] The satiric nature of the piece is also madeclear by a comparison to Bartletts other publications,which mainly advocate the necessity of curbing popula-tion growth.[141]

4 See also List of topics characterized as pseudoscience Biblical cosmology Denialism Earths rotation Geographical distance Hollow Earth Scientic mythology Skepticism

5 Notes[1] When Aquinas wrote his Summa, at the very beginning

(Summa Theologica Ia, q. 1, a. 1; see also Summa The-ologica IIa Iae, q. 54, a. 2), the idea of a round Earthwas the example used when he wanted to show that eldsof science are distinguished by their methods rather thantheir subject matter... Sciences are distinguished by the

12 6 REFERENCES

dierent methods they use. For the astronomer and thephysicist both may prove the same conclusion - that theearth, for instance, is round: the astronomer proves it bymeans of mathematics, but the physicist proves it by thenature of matter. History of Science: Shape of the Earth:Middle Ages: Aquinas

6 References[1] Their cosmography as far as we know anything about it

was practically of one type up til the time of the whitemans arrival upon the scene. That of the Borneo Dayaksmay furnish us with some idea of it. 'They consider theEarth to be a at surface, whilst the heavens are a dome, akind of glass shade which covers the Earth and comes incontact with it at the horizon.'" Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Prim-itive Mentality (repr. Boston: Beacon, 1966) 353; Theusual primitive conception of the worlds form ... [is] atand round below and surmounted above by a solid rma-ment 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] Continuation of Greek concept into Roman and medievalChristian thought: Reinhard Krger: Materialien undDokumente zur mittelalterlichen Erdkugeltheorie von derSptantike bis zur Kolumbusfahrt (1492)

[3] Direct adoption of the Greek concept by Islam: Ragep,F. Jamil: Astronomy, in: Krmer, Gudrun (ed.) et al.:Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Brill 2010, without pagenumbers

[4] Direct adoption by India: D. Pingree: History of Math-ematical Astronomy in India, Dictionary of Scientic Bi-ography, Vol. 15 (1978), pp. 533633 (554f.); Glick,Thomas F., Livesey, Steven John, Wallis, Faith (eds.):Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An En-cyclopedia, Routledge, New York 2005, ISBN 0-415-96930-1, p. 463

[5] Adoption by China via European science: Jean-ClaudeMartzlo, Space and Time in Chinese Texts of Astron-omy and of Mathematical Astronomy in the Seventeenthand Eighteenth Centuries, Chinese Science 11 (1993-94):66-92 (69) and Christopher Cullen, A Chinese Eratos-thenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cos-mology in Huai Nan tzu ", Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1976), pp.106-127 (107)

[6] H. and H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, and T. Jacobsen,Before Philosophy (Baltimore: Penguin, 1949) 54.

[7] Anthony Gottlieb (2000). The Dream of Reason. Pen-guin. p. 6. ISBN 0-393-04951-5.

[8] Berlin, Adele (2011). Cosmology and creation. InBerlin, Adele; Grossman, Maxine. The Oxford Dictionaryof the Jewish Religion. Oxford University Press.

[9] Pyramid Texts, Utterance 366, 629a-629c: Behold, thouart great and round like the Great Round; Behold, thou arebent around, and art round like the Circle which encircles

the nbwt; Behold, thou art round and great like the GreatCircle which sets.(Faulkner 1969, 120)

[10] Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Pritchard, 1969, p.374.

[11] Con Texts, Spell 714.

[12] Iliad, 28. 606.

[13] The Shield of Heracles, 314-316, transl. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914.

[14] The shield of Achilles and the poetics of ekphrasis, AndrewSprague Becker, Rowman & Littleeld, 1995, p.148.

[15] Professor of Classics (Emeritus) Mark W. Edwards inhis The Iliad. A commentary (1991, p.231) has notedof Homers usage of the at earth disc in the Iliad:Okeanos...surrounds the pictures on the shield and he sur-rounds the at disc of the earth on which men and womenwork out their lives. Quoted in The shield of Achilles andthe poetics of ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Becker, Row-man & Littleeld, 1995, p.148

[16] Stasinus of Cyprus wrote in his Cypria (lost, only pre-served in fragment) that Oceanus surrounded the entireearth: deep eddying Oceanus and that the earth was atwith furthest bounds, these quotes are found preserved inAthenaeus, Deipnosophistae, VIII. 334B.

[17] Mimnermus of Colophon (630BC) details a at earthmodel, with the sun (Helios) bathing at the edges ofOceanus that surround the earth (Mimnermus, frg. 11)

[18] Seven against Thebes, verse 305; Prometheus Bound, 1,136; 530; 665 (which also describe the 'edges of theearth).

[19] Apollonius Rhodius, in his Argonautica (3rd century BC)included numerous at earth references (IV. 590 ):Now that river, rising from the ends of the earth, whereare the portals and mansions of Nyx (Night), on one sidebursts forth upon the beach of Okeanos.

[20] Posthomerica (V. 14) - Here [on the shield of Achilles]Tethys all-embracing arms were wrought, and Okeanosfathomless ow. The outrushing ood of Rivers crying tothe echoing hills all round, to right, to left, rolled o'er theland. - Translation by Way. A. S, 1913.

[21] According to John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction toEarly Greek Philosophy, Houghton and Miin, 1968.

[22] The Physical World of the Greeks, Samuel Sambursky,Princeton University Press (August 1987), p. 12

[23] Burch, George Bosworth (1954). The Counter-Earth.Osirus (Saint Catherines Press) 11 (1): 267294.doi:10.1086/368583.

[24] De Fontaine, Didier (2002). Flat worlds: Today and inantiquity. Memorie della Societ Astronomica Italiana,special issue 1 (3): 25762. Retrieved August 3, 2007.

[25] Aristotle, De Caelo, 294b13-21

[26] Aristotle, De Caelo, II. 13. 3; 294a 28: Many others saythe earth rests upon water. This... is the oldest theory thathas been preserved, and is attributed to Thales ofMiletus

13

[27] O'Grady, Patricia F. (2002). Thales of Miletus : the be-ginnings of Western science and philosophy. Aldershot:Ashgate. pp. 87107. ISBN 9780754605331.

[28] Pseudo-Plutarch. Placita Philosophorum. Perseus DigitalLibrary. V.3, Ch.10. Retrieved December 24, 2014.

[29] Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 6

[30] Anaximander; Fairbanks (editor and translator), Arthur.Fragments and Commentary. The Hanover HistoricalTexts Project. (Plut., Strom. 2 ; Dox. 579).

[31] Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 7; Cf. Aristotle,De Caelo, 294b13-21

[32] Xenophanes DK 21B28, quoted in Achilles, Introductionto Aratus 4

[33] Diogenes Laertius, ii. 8

[34] Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, i. 9

[35] FGrH F 18a.

[36] Herodotus knew of the conventional view, according towhich the river Ocean runs around a circular at earth(4.8), and of the division of the world into three - Jacoby,RE Suppl. 2.352 yet rejected this personal belief (His-tories, 2. 21; 4. 8; 4. 36)

[37] The history of Herodotus, George Rawlinson, Appletonand company, 1889, p. 409

[38] D. Pingree: History of Mathematical Astronomy in In-dia, Dictionary of Scientic Biography, Vol. 15 (1978),pp. 533633 (554f.)

[39] The Sacred Tree in Religion and Myth, Mrs. J. H. Philpot,Courier Dover Publications, 2004, p.113.

[40] The world was a at disk, with the earth in the centerand the sea all around. Thus the serpent is about as faraway from the center, where men and gods lived (Norsemythology: a guide to the Gods, heroes, rituals, and beliefs,John Lindow Oxford University Press, 2002) p.253.

[41] One of the earliest literary references to the world encir-cling water snake comes from Bragi Boddason who livedin the 9th century, in his Ragnarsdrpa (XIV)

[42] Gylfaginning. Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved February 9,2013.

[43] The Kings Mirror. mediumaevum.com. RetrievedNovember 6, 2013.

[44] Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization inChina: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. pp. 498.

[45] Martzlo, Jean-Claude (199394). Space and Time inChinese Texts of Astronomy and ofMathematical Astron-omy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (PDF).Chinese Science 11: 6692 [p. 69].

[46] Cullen, Christopher (1980). Joseph Needham on Chi-nese Astronomy. Past & Present 87: 3953 [pp. 42 &49]. doi:10.1093/past/87.1.39. JSTOR 650565.

[47] Cullen, Christopher (1976). A Chinese Eratosthenes ofthe Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology inHuai Nan tzu ". Bulletin of the School of Orien-tal and African Studies 39 (1): 106127 [pp. 107109].doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137.

[48] Cullen, Christopher (1976). A Chinese Eratosthenesof the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmol-ogy in Huai Nan tzu ". Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies 39 (1): 106127 [p. 107].doi:10.1017/S0041977X00052137.

[49] Needham, Joseph (1959), Science and Civilisation inChina 3, C.U.P., p. 219, ISBN 0-521-63262-5

[50] Cullen, Christopher (1980). Joseph Needham on Chi-nese Astronomy. Past & Present 87: 3953 [p. 42].doi:10.1093/past/87.1.39. JSTOR 650565.



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[56] Van Helden, Albert (1985). Measuring the Universe: Cos-mic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley. University ofChicago Press. pp. 45. ISBN 0-226-84882-5.

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[59] Lucretius, De rerum natura, 1.1052-82.

[60] Natural History, 2.64

[61] Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, V.9-VI.7, XX. pp. 1824., translated in Stahl, W. H. (1952).Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Philology and Mer-cury. Columbia University Press.

[62] Cormack, Lesley (2009). Myth 3: That Medieval Chris-tians Taught that he Earth was Flat. In Ronald Numbers.Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science andReligion. Harvard University Press. pp. 3031. ISBN9780674057418.

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[64] De Civitate Dei, Book XVI, Chapter 9 Whether Weare to Believe in the Antipodes, translated by Rev. MarcusDods, D.D.; from the Christian Classics Ethereal Libraryat Calvin College

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[69] J. L. E. Dreyer, A History of Planetary Systems fromThales to Kepler. (1906); unabridged republication as AHistory of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler (New York:Dover Publications, 1953).

[70] St. John Chrysostom, Homilies Concerning the Statutes,Homily IX, paras.7-8, in A SELECT LIBRARY OF THENICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS OF THE CHRIS-TIAN CHURCH, Series I, Vol IX, ed. Philip Scha,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 asmall pebble, but the whole earth borne upon the wa-ters, and not submerged, admire the power of Him whowrought these marvellous things in a supernatural man-ner! And whence does this appear, that the earth is borneupon the waters? The prophet declares this when he says,He hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it uponthe oods."1416 And again: To him who hath foundedthe earth upon the waters."1417 What sayest thou? Thewater 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; andit is not submerged!"

[71] St.Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Ch.27 , Ch 36 , in ASELECT LIBRARY OF THE NICENE AND POST-NICENEFATHERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Series II, VolIV, ed. Philip Scha, D.D.,LL.D., American reprint ofthe Edinburgh edition (1978), W.B. Eerdmans PublishingCo.,Grand Rapids, MI.

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[87] Fontaine, Jacques (1960). Isidore de Seville: Trait de laNature. Bordeaux.

[88] Isidore, Etymologiae, III. XXXII .

[89] Isidore, Etymologiae, XIV. I .

[90] Wesley M. Stevens, The Figure of the Earth in IsidoresDe natura rerum, Isis, 71(1980): 268-277.Stevens,Wesley M. (1980). The Figure of the Earth inIsidores De natura rerum"". Isis 71 (2): 26877.doi:10.1086/352464. JSTOR 230175, page 274

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[95] English translation by Laistner, M.L.W. (1966) [1931].Thought and Letters in Western Europe: A.D. 500 to900 (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press:1845. The original Latin reads: De perversa autem etiniqua doctrina, quae contra Deum et animam suam lo-cutus est, si claricatum fuerit ita eum conteri, quod al-ius mundus et alii homines sub terra seu sol et luna, hunchabito concilio ab cclesia pelle sacerdotii honore priva-tum. (MGH, 1, 80, pp.1789)

[96] Laistner, (1966, p.184)

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[105] Grant, Edward (1994), Planets. Stars, & Orbs: The Me-dieval Cosmos, 1200-1687, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, pp. 626630, ISBN 0-521-56509-X

[106] "Summa Theologica IIa Iae, q. 54, a. 2.

[107] Jill Tattersall (1981). The Earth, Sphere or Disc?". Mod-ern Language Review 76: 3146. doi:10.2307/3727009.

[108] Hooke, Robert (1674). An Attempt to prove the Motion ofthe Earth from Observations. London. p. 2.

[109] Imam Al-Razi. 19/131. https://archive.org/details/altafsiralkabir19rzfauoft. Retrieved February 13, 2013.Missing or empty |title= (help)

[110] Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli; Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti. from Juza'20 to Juza '30. Tafsir al-Jalalayn (PDF). Translated byFeras Hamza. Retrieved August 8, 2013.

[111] Surat Al-Ghshiyah. Retrieved December 3, 2010.

[112] A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Beijing in1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is notknown to have made an impact on the traditional Chineseconception of the shape of the Earth (cf. Joseph Need-ham et al.: Heavenly clockwork: the great astronomicalclocks of medieval China, Antiquarian Horological So-ciety, 2nd. ed., Vol. 1, 1986, ISBN 0-521-32276-6, p.138)

[113] Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization inChina: Volume 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. pp. 499.

[114] Russell, Jerey Burton (1991), Inventing the Flat Earth:Columbus and Modern Historians, New York: Praeger,pp. 3745, ISBN 0275939561

[115] Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L., eds. (1986),Introduction, God and Nature: Historical Essays on theEncounter between Christianity and Science, Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 13,ISBN 0-520-05692-2

[116] Grant, Edward (1994), Planets. Stars, & Orbs: TheMedieval Cosmos, 1200-1687, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, pp. 620622, 626630, ISBN 0-521-56509-X

[117] Lindberg, David C. (2000), Science and the Early Chris-tian Church, in Shank, Michael H., The Scientic Enter-prise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Readings from Isis,Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp.125146, ISBN 0-226-74951-7

[118] Ferngren, Gary, ed. (2002), Introduction, Science & Re-ligion: A Historical Introduction, Baltimore: Johns Hop-kins University Press, p. ix, ISBN 0-8018-7038-0

[119] Fiske, John (1892). The Discovery of America. p. 267.

[120] Parallax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham) (1881). ZeteticAstronomy: Earth Not a Globe (Third ed.). London:Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

[121] Theoretical astronomy examined and exposed, by 'Com-mon sense'.

[122] William Carpenter, One hundred proofs that the earth isnot a globe, (Baltimore: The author, 1885).

[123] 'Low me ter ax ef de earth is roun', whar do it keep itscorners? Er at, squar thing has corners, but tell me whereis de cornur uv er appul, ur a marbul, ur a cannun ball, ura silver dollar.' William E. Hatcher (1908). John Jasper.Fleming Revell. See also Garwood, p165

16 8 EXTERNAL LINKS

[124] The Earth: Scripturally, Rationally, and Practically De-scribed. A Geographical, Philosophical, and EducationalReview, Nautical Guide, and General Students Manual,n. 17 (November 1, 1887), p. 7. cited in Robert J.Schadewald (1981). Scientic Creationism, Geocentric-ity, and the Flat Earth. Skeptical Inquirer. RetrievedAugust 21, 2010.

[125] Christine Garwood (2007). Flat Earth. Macmillan. ISBN0-312-38208-1.

[126] DavidWardlaw Scott (1901). Terra Firma. RetrievedDe-cember 13, 2010.

[127] Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World, (NewYork: The Century Company, 1900), chaps. 17-18.

[128] "$5,000 for Proving the Earth is a Globe | ModernMechanix. Blog.modernmechanix.com. May 19, 2006.Retrieved February 9, 2013.

[129] Nigerias 'Taliban' enigma. BBC News. July 31, 2009.

[130] Brait, Ellen (26 Jan 2016). "'I didn't wanna believe it ei-ther': Rapper BoB insists the Earth is at. Guardian. Re-trieved 27 January 2016.

[131] Twitter. Twitter. 25 Jan 2016 https://twitter.com/bobatl/status/691420354699354113. Retrieved 27 Jan-uary 2016. Missing or empty |title= (help)

[132] Brait, Ellen (26 Jan 2016). Flat earth rapper BoB releasesNeil deGrasse Tyson diss track. Guardian. Retrieved 27January 2016.

[133] Schadewald, Robert J The Flat-out Truth:Earth Orbits?Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet ScienceDigest July 1980

[134] Schick, Theodore; Lewis Vaughn How to think aboutweird things: critical thinking for a new ageHoughtonMif-in (Mayeld) (October 31, 1995) ISBN 978-1-55934-254-4 p.197

[135] Robert J. Schadewald. The Flat-out Truth. Lhup.edu.Retrieved February 9, 2013.

[136] Donald E. Simanek. The Flat Earth. Lhup.edu. Re-trieved February 9, 2013.

[137] Ingenious 'Flat Earth' Theory Revealed In Old Map.LiveScience. Retrieved February 9, 2013.

[138] Flat-Earth. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved July29, 2013.

[139] Shaw, George B. (1908). Fabian Essays on Socialism (newed.). p. xviii.

[140] The New Flat Earth Society. Jclahr.com. RetrievedJune 15, 2009.

[141] Albert Bartlett On Growth. Jclahr.com. November 28,2006. Retrieved June 15, 2009.

7 Further reading Fraser, Raymond (2007). When The Earth Was

Flat: Remembering Leonard Cohen, Alden Nowlan,the Flat Earth Society, the King James monarchyhoax, the Montreal Story Tellers and other curiousmatters. Black Moss Press, ISBN 978-0-88753-439-3

Garwood, Christine (2007) Flat Earth: The Historyof an Infamous Idea, Pan Books, ISBN 1-4050-4702-X

Simek, Rudolf (1996). Heaven and Earth in theMiddle Ages: The Physical World Before Columbus.Angela Hall (trans.). The Boydell Press. RetrievedFebruary 9, 2013.

8 External links The Myth of the Flat Earth The Myth of the Flat Universe You say the earth is round? Prove it (from TheStraight Dope)

Flat Earth Fallacy Zetetic Astronomy, or Earth Not a Globe by Par-allax (Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884)) atsacred-texts.com

The Flat Earth Society ocial website

17

9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses9.1 Text

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18 9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

named user 3928195555, A4advowiki, Asdjklghty, Ryk72, Hajme, Jayakumar RG, Gronk Oz, Phoenix25782000, Cranberry Products,Signedzzz, Explorabledastronomy, Narky Blert, Uthman Ibn Sabeel, Michaelzacharybrown, Abihooper, Isambard Kingdom, 777AAA777,Coolschooldude2003, The Quixotic Potato, WeLiveOnAFlatEarth, PaulyWalnuts007, Otheroceans, ImHere2015, OmegaBuddy13, Yxis,Allthefoxes, RealMintyFresh, XXx-PaintChipper-xXx, Emotionalllama and Anonymous: 699

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svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work (original PNG version by User:Gwwfps is/was : en:Image:Anaximandermap.png,based on an image found in An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy by John Mansley Robinson, Houghton and Miin, 1968, ISBN0395053161). Original artist: User:Bibi Saint-Pol

File:Baylonianmaps.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Baylonianmaps.JPG License: Public domainContributors: ? Original artist: ?

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File:Flammarion.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Flammarion.jpg License: Public domain Contrib-utors: Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphere: Mtorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888), pp. 163 Original artist: Anonymous

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9.3 Content license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

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