Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of theEarth's shape as aplane ordisk. Many ancient societies subscribed to a flat-Earthcosmography. The model has undergone arecent resurgence as aconspiracy theory in the 21st century.[1]
The idea of aspherical Earth appeared inancient Greek philosophy withPythagoras (6th century BC). However, theearly Greek cosmological view of a flat Earth persisted among mostpre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC). In the early 4th century BC,Plato wrote about a spherical Earth. By about 330 BC, his former studentAristotle had provided strongempirical evidence for a spherical Earth. Knowledge of the Earth's global shape gradually began to spread beyond theHellenistic world.[2][3][4][5] By the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view was widely held, with some notable exceptions. In contrast, ancient Chinese scholars consistently describe the Earth as flat, and this perception remained unchanged until their encounters withJesuit missionaries in the 17th century.[6] Muslim scholars in early Islam maintained that the Earth is flat. However, since the 9th century, Muslim scholars have tended to believe in a spherical Earth.[7]
It is ahistorical myth that medieval Europeans generally thought the Earth was flat.[8]This myth was created in the 17th century byProtestants to argue againstCatholic teachings, and gained currency in the 19th century.[9]
Despite thescientific facts andobvious effects of Earth's sphericity,pseudoscientific[10] flat-Earth conspiracy theories persist. Since the 2010s, belief in a flat Earth has increased, both as membership ofmodern flat Earth societies, and as unaffiliated individuals usingsocial media.[11][12] In a 2018 study reported on byScientific American, only 82% of 18- to 24-year-old American respondents agreed with the statement "I have always believed the world is round". However, a firm belief in a flat Earth is rare, with less than 2% acceptance in all age groups.[13]
In earlyEgyptian[14] andMesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in theHomeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."[15]
ThePyramid Texts andCoffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography;Nun (the Ocean) encirclednbwt ("dry lands" or "islands").[16][17][18][full citation needed]
The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an archedfirmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens.[19] The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it.[20]
BothHomer[21] andHesiod[22] described a disc cosmography on theShield of Achilles.[23][24] This poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling (gaiaokhos) sea (Oceanus) and a disc also appears inStasinus of Cyprus,[25]Mimnermus,[26]Aeschylus,[27] andApollonius Rhodius.[28]
Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later inQuintus Smyrnaeus'Posthomerica (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War.[29]
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Severalpre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat:Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources,[31] andLeucippus (c. 440 BC) andDemocritus (c. 460–370 BC) according to Aristotle.[32][33][34]
Thales thought that the Earth floated in water like a log.[35] It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a spherical Earth.[36][37]Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed that the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things.[38][39]Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the Earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the Sun and the Moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness".[40]Xenophanes (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit.[41]
Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC.Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat,[42] and his pupilArchelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.[43]
Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Earth was flat and surrounded by water.[44]Herodotus in hisHistories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world,[45] yet most classicists agree that he still believed Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth.[46]
The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat-Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with theaxis mundi, a world tree (Yggdrasil), or pillar (Irminsul) in the centre.[47][48] In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake calledJormungandr.[49] The Norse creation account preserved inGylfaginning (VIII) states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it:[50]
And Jafnhárr said: "Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the Earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round. about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it."
The late NorseKonungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, explains Earth's shape as a sphere:[51]
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. 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.
Inancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round,[52] an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century.[53][54][55] The Englishsinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:[6]
Chinese thought on the form of the Earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium ofJesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. While the heavens were variously described as being like an umbrella covering the Earth (the Kai Tian theory), or like a sphere surrounding it (the Hun Tian theory), or as being without substance while the heavenly bodies float freely (the Hsüan yeh theory), the Earth was at all times flat, although perhaps bulging up slightly.
The model of anegg was often used by Chinese astronomers such asZhang Heng (78–139 AD) to describethe heavens as spherical:[56]
The heavens are like a hen's egg and as round as acrossbow 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, notablyJoseph 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:[54]
In a passage of Zhang Heng's cosmogony not translated by Needham, Zhang himself says: "Heaven takes its body from the Yang, so it is round and in motion. 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.[6] Accordingly, the 13th-century scholarLi Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth,[52] did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular.[6] However, Needham disagrees, affirming that Li Ye believed the Earth to be spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but much smaller.[57] This was preconceived by the 4th-century scholarYu Xi, who argued forthe infinity ofouter space surrounding the Earth and that the latter could be either square or round, in accordance to the shape of the heavens.[58] When Chinese geographers of the 17th century, influenced by European cartography and astronomy, showed the Earth as a sphere that could becircumnavigated by sailing around the globe, they did so with formulaic terminology previously used by Zhang Heng to describe the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon (i.e. that they were as round as a crossbow bullet).[59]
As noted in the bookHuainanzi,[60] in the 2nd century BC, Chinese astronomers effectively invertedEratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the Sun above the Earth. By assuming the Earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of100000 li (approximately200000 km). TheZhoubi 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 theZhoubi Suanjing assumes that the Earth is flat.[61]
Although Mesopotamian cosmology is usually depicted as a flat disc of land floating in water, some texts describe a complex structure composed of vertical layers. For instance, KAR 307, a cuneiform text, depicts three layered earths. The "Upper Earth" is the land inhabited by mankind, the "Middle Earth" are subterranean Apsu waters ruled byEnki, and the "Lower Earth" is the underworld which has 600Anunnaki.[62] While none of the ancient Mesopotamian models were spherical, ProfessorWayne Horowitz documents "significant variety" in different Mesopotamian cosmological texts, noting "disagreement between texts from different periods, of different genres, and even among texts from the same period and genre."[62]
Pythagoras in the 6th century BC andParmenides in the 5th century BC stated that theEarth is spherical,[63] and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 330 BC,Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported an estimate ofits circumference.[64] The Earth'scircumference was first determined around 240 BC byEratosthenes.[65] By the 2nd century AD,Ptolemy had derivedhis maps from a globe and developed the system oflatitude,longitude, andclimes. HisAlmagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.
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.[66][67] By the 1st century AD,Pliny the Elder was in a position to say that everyone agreed on the spherical shape of Earth,[68] though disputes continued regarding the nature of theantipodes, and how it is possible to keep theocean in a curved shape.
TheVedic texts depict the cosmos in many ways.[69][70] One of the earliest Indian cosmological texts pictures the Earth as one of a stack of flat disks.[71]
In the Vedic texts,Dyaus (heaven) andPrithvi (Earth) are compared to wheels on anaxle, yielding a flat model. They are also described as bowls or leather bags, yielding a concave model.[72] According to Macdonell: "the conception of the Earth being a disc surrounded by an ocean does not appear in theSamhitas. But it was naturally regarded as circular, being compared with a wheel (10.89) and expressly called circular (parimandala) in theShatapatha Brahmana."[73]
By about the 5th century AD, thesiddhanta astronomy texts of South Asia, particularly ofAryabhata, assume a spherical Earth as they develop mathematical methods for quantitative astronomy for calendar and time keeping.[74]
The medieval Indian texts called thePuranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents.[72][75] This general scheme is present not only in the Hindu cosmologies, but also inBuddhist andJain cosmologies of South Asia.[72] However, some Puranas include other models. For example, the fifth canto of theBhagavata Purana, composed between 500 CE - 1000 CE, includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.[76][77]
During the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view continued to be widely held, with some notable exceptions.[78]
Until the mid-fourth century AD, virtually all Christian authors held that the Earth was round.Athenagoras, an eastern Christian writing around the year 175 AD, said that the Earth was spherical.[79]Methodius (c. 290 AD), an eastern Christian writing against "the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians" said: "Let us first lay bare ... the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. 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, ... the Earth should be the center of the universe, around which the heaven is whirling."[79]Arnobius, another eastern Christian writing sometime around 305 AD, described the round Earth: "In the first place, indeed, the world itself is neither right nor left. 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 ..."[79] Other advocates of a round Earth includedEusebius,Hilary of Poitiers,Irenaeus,Hippolytus of Rome,Firmicus Maternus,Ambrose,Jerome,Prudentius, Favonius Eulogius, and others.[80]
The only exceptions to this consensus up until the mid-fourth century wereTheophilus of Antioch andLactantius, both of whom held anti-Hellenistic views and associated the round-Earth view with pagan cosmology.[81] Lactantius, a western Christian writer and advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor,Constantine, writing sometime between 304 and 313 AD, ridiculed the notion ofantipodes and the philosophers who fancied that "the universe is round like a ball. 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."[82][79]
The influential theologian and philosopherSaint Augustine, one of the fourGreat Church Fathers of theWestern Church, similarly objected to the "fable" of antipodes:[83]
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: hence they say that the part that is beneath must also be inhabited. 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.
Some historians do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model, endorsing instead the view that Augustine shared the common view of his contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with his endorsement of science inDe Genesi ad litteram.[84][85] C. P. E. Nothaft, responding to writers like Leo Ferrari who described Augustine as endorsing a flat Earth, says that "...other recent writers on the subject treat Augustine's acceptance of the Earth's spherical shape as a well-established fact".[86][87]
While it always remained a minority view, from the mid-fourth to the seventh centuries AD, the flat-Earth view experienced a revival, around the time whenDiodorus of Tarsus founded the exegetical school known as theSchool of Antioch, which sought to counter what he saw as the pagan cosmology of the Greeks with a return to thetraditional cosmology. The writings of Diodorus did not survive, but are reconstructed from later criticism.[88] This revival primarily took place in the East Syriac world (with little influence on the Latin West) where it gained proponents such asEphrem the Syrian and in the popularhexaemeral homilies ofJacob of Serugh.[88][89] Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church Fathers of theEastern Church andArchbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath thefirmament.[90]
Christian Topography (547) by the Alexandrian monkCosmas Indicopleustes, who had traveled as far asSri Lanka and the source of theBlue 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, 400 days' journey long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament. The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dismissed as "pagan".[91][92][93]
Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the Sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall".[94]Basil of Caesarea (329–379) argued that the matter was theologically irrelevant.[95]
Early medieval Christian writers 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.[8]
With the end of theWestern Roman Empire,Western Europe entered theMiddle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises ofclassical antiquity (inGreek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. In contrast, theEastern Roman Empire did not fall, and it preserved the learning.[96] Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth in the western part of Europe.[97]
Europe's view of the shape of the Earth inLate Antiquity and theEarly Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:
Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, theEtymologies, diverse views such as that the Earth "resembles a wheel"[98] resembling Anaximander in language and the map that he provided. This was widely interpreted as referring to a disc-shaped Earth.[99][100] An illustration from Isidore'sDe Natura Rerum shows the five zones of the Earth as adjacent circles. Some have concluded that he thought theArctic andAntarctic zones were adjacent to each other.[101] He did not admit the possibility of antipodes, which he took to mean people dwelling on the opposite side of the Earth, considering them legendary[102] and noting that there was no evidence for their existence.[103] Isidore'sT and O map, which was seen as representing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued to be used by authors through the Middle Ages.[104][105] At the same time, Isidore's works also gave the views of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 ofDe Natura Rerum, Isidore claims that the Sun orbits the Earth and illuminates the other side when it is night on this side.[8] In his other workEtymologies, there are also affirmations that the sphere of the sky has Earth in its center and the sky being equally distant on all sides.[106][107] Other researchers have argued these points as well.[8][108][109] "The work remained unsurpassed until the thirteenth century and was regarded as the summit of all knowledge. It became an essential part of European medieval culture. Soon after the invention of typography it appeared many times in print."[110] However, "The Scholastics – later medieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists – were helped by the Arabic translators and commentaries, but they hardly needed to struggle against a flat-Earth legacy from the early middle ages (500–1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with one exception), little urge to assume flatness."[8]
St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700–784), in the middle of the 8th century, discussed or taught some geographical or cosmographical ideas thatSt Boniface found sufficiently objectionable that he complained about them toPope Zachary. The only surviving record of the incident is contained in Zachary's reply, dated 748, where he wrote:[111]
As for the perverse and sinful doctrine which he (Virgil) against God and his own soul has uttered – if it shall be clearly established that he professes belief in another world and other men existing beneath the Earth, or in (another) sun and moon there, thou art to hold a council, deprive him of his sacerdotal rank, and expel him from the Church.
Some authorities have suggested that the sphericity of the Earth was among the aspects of Vergilius's teachings that Boniface and Zachary considered objectionable.[112][113] Others have considered this unlikely, and take the wording of Zachary's response to indicate at most an objection to belief in the existence of humans living in the antipodes.[114][115][116][117][118] In any case, there is no record of any further action having been taken against Vergilius. He was later appointedbishop of Salzburg and wascanonised in the 13th century.[119]
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. It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperorTheodosius II (423) throughout the Middle Ages and in western Europe, the use of a physical orb is attested since at least the time ofEmperor Henry II (d. 1024). A contemporary chronicler describes the imperial orb given to Henry II byPope Benedict VIII as shaped like a golden apple surmounted by a cross and representing the earth with its rotundity.[120][121] Such aReichsapfel was likewise used in 1191 at the coronation ofemperor Henry VI. There is, however, no record of a cartographical globe in the Middle Ages before theErdapfel ofMartin Behaim from 1492. Additionally the imperial orb could also represent of the entire "world" orcosmos.[122]
A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "after the eighth century the Globe became part of the world picture of medieval Christians without much more debate."[123] From the ninth century, we likewise find discussion of Eratosthenes' method for calculating the sphericality of the earth in Carolingian commentaries onMartianus Capella.[124] By the turn of the eleventh century,Hermann of Reichenau (1013–1054) includes a new method for replicating Eratosthenes' measurement using an astrolabe.[125] For the wider population, however, it is difficult to say what they may have thought of the shape of the Earth if they considered the question at all.
The approximate sphericality of the Earth was universally accepted among scholastic authors of the High and Late Middle Ages. Evidence of its sphericality was discussed in standard university textbooks likeJohn of Sacrobosco'sOn the Sphere of the World and flat earth theories played no role in discussions of the Earth's shape at medieval universities.[126] The commonplace nature of this knowledge is illustrated by the highly influential theologianThomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who uses it as an example of a fact that can be proved by two different sciences.[127][78]
Jill Tattersall shows that in manyvernacular works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". She writes, "[I]n virtually all the examples quoted ... from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere", though she notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.[128]
Portuguese navigation down and around the coast ofAfrica in the latter half of the 1400s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity. In these explorations, the Sun's position moved more northward the further south the explorers travelled. 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 whenFerdinand Magellan's expedition completed the first global circumnavigation in 1521.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.
Prior to the introduction of Greek cosmology into the Islamic world, Muslims tended to view the Earth as flat, and Muslim traditionalists who rejected Greek philosophy continued to hold to this view later on while various theologians held opposing opinions.[7][129] Beginning in the 10th century onwards, some Muslim traditionalists began to adopt the notion of a spherical Earth with the influence of Greek and Ptolemaic cosmology.[130]
InQuranic cosmology, the Earth (al-arḍ) was "spread out."[131] Whether or not this implies a flat Earth was debated by Muslims.[7] Some modern historians believe the Quran saw the world as flat.[132][133] On the other hand, the 12th-centurycommentary, theTafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi) byFakhr al-Din al-Razi argues that though this verse does describe a flat surface, it is limited in its application to local regions of the Earth which are roughly flat as opposed to the Earth as a whole. Others who would support a ball-shaped Earth includedIbn Hazm.[7]
A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced toYuan-eraKhanbaliq (i.e.Beijing) in 1267 by the Persian astronomerJamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth.[134] As late as 1595, an earlyJesuit missionary to China,Matteo Ricci, recorded that theMing-dynasty Chinese say: "The Earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes."[6]
In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court.[135] Matteo Ricci, in collaboration withChinese cartographers and translatorLi Zhizao, published theKunyu Wanguo Quantu in 1602, the first Chineseworld map based onEuropean discoveries.[136] The astronomical and geographical treatiseGezhicao (格致草) written in 1648 by Xiong Mingyu (熊明遇) explained that the Earth was spherical, not flat or square, and could be circumnavigated.[135]
In the 17th century, a historical myth was created that asserted that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. The myth gained currency in the 19th century. An early proponent of this myth was the American writerWashington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view wereJohn William Draper andAndrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis[137] that there was a long-lasting and essentialconflict between science and religion.[138] Some studies of the historical connections between science and religion have demonstrated that theories of their mutual antagonism ignore examples of their mutual support.[139][140]
Subsequent studies of medieval science have shown that most scholars in the Middle Ages, including those read by Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth was spherical.[141]
In the modern era, thepseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth originated with the English writerSamuel Rowbotham with the 1849 pamphletZetetic Astronomy.Lady Elizabeth Blount established the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893, which published journals. In 1956,Samuel Shenton set up theInternational Flat Earth Research Society, better known as the "Flat Earth Society" in Dover, England, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society.
In theInternet era, the availability of communications technology andsocial media likeYouTube,Facebook[142] andTwitter have made it easy for individuals, famous[143] or not, to spread disinformation and attract others to erroneous ideas, including that of the flat Earth.[11][12][144]
Modern believers in a flat Earth face overwhelming publicly accessible evidence of Earth's sphericity. They also need to explain why governments, media outlets, schools, scientists, surveyors, airlines and other organizations accept that the world is spherical. To satisfy these tensions and maintain their beliefs, they generally embrace some form ofconspiracy theory. In addition, believers tend to not trust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust, disagree with or accuse each other of being in league with conspiracies.[145]
While learning from their social environment, a child's perception of their physical environment sometimes leads to a false concept about the shape of Earth and what happens beyond the horizon. Some young children think that Earth ends there and that one can fall off the edge. Education helps them gradually change their belief into a realist one of a spherical Earth.[146] On the other hand, many children do understand that the world is round, as confirmed by interviewing what the pictures they draw actually mean.[147]
To counter misinformation about the shape of the Earth and other scientific issues, theNational Center for Science Education has a site for supporting teachers.[148][149]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)The world was a flat disk, with the Earth in the center and the sea all around. Thus the serpent is about as far away from the center, where men and gods lived
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)The Vedic texts contain several depictions of the shape of the cosmos. The Rigveda alone contains two basic images of the cosmos: a bipartite cosmos, consisting of the two spheres of heavens and Earth, and a tripartite cosmos consisting of the three spheres of heavens and Earth (...)
The world, being made spherical, is confined within the circles of heaven.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)In other passages of theEtymologies, he writes of anorbis. Also in:Wolfgang Haase; Meyer Reinhold, eds. (1994).The Classical tradition and the Americas, vol. 1. Walter de Gruyter. p. 15.ISBN 978-3-11-011572-7. RetrievedNovember 28, 2010.
