The flat Earth

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> If all mariners years ago believed that the earth were flat and then
> someone came along and did an experiment that showed that the Earth is a
> spheroid, does that define the time when the Flat Earth ideas were
> invalid?   Were they not invalid all along?

Have we not had this discussion before? The Flat Earth was invented in
recent times, in the English speaking world by Washington Irving. No
mariner of ancient times thought the Earth to be flat. Indeed mariners
had the most direct and frequent access to evidence to the contrary of
all the trades.

The kindergarten myth that the ancients thought the Earth to be flat
is just plain wrong! The origin of the spherical Earth model is lost
in prehistory; it was sufficiently widespread by the time of Aristotle
that he gave numerous "proofs" of its correctness. How on Earth do you
suppose one could construct a Ptolemaic model of the universe with a
flat Earth at its center!

See the fine story in "Inventing the Flat Earth" by Jeffrey B. Russell
or, if libraries are too much trouble, see my friend Norman Swartz's
web page http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/flat_earth.htm for a
compilation of discussion by philosophers. (I'll inform Norman that
there is a problem with his page.)

Leigh