An interesting map has recently been donated to the Library of Congress:
It’s a very well-executed piece of artwork, but as a map is of course dead wrong. Printed in 1890, it purports to show the “true” shape of the Earth, an odd mutant version of the “flat Earth” concept with the North Pole at the center. By the late 19th century, such concepts should have been astonishingly obviously wrong to any thinking person. Beyond all the other reasons, there’s the simple matter that if the world was truly shaped like this, sailing from South America to, say, Australia would be an incredibly long journey, with the shorter route being north past the Pole.
The Flat Earth notion seems to be linked with the Geocentric notion (the idea that the Earth is the fixed, unmoving center of the universe). Both beliefs in the age of science are based not on any real evidence, but generally on “scripture.”
Sadly, even in the late 19th century there were people who were willing to discount reason and evidence in favor of a firm belief in rubbish. Even MORE sadly, this holds true in the early 21st century. From Wiki:
Morris Berman quotes survey results that show currently some 20% of the USA population believe that the sun goes around the Earth (geocentricism) rather than the Earth goes around the sun (heliocentricism), while a further 9% claimed not to know.
This is tragic.
9 Responses to “Flat Earth”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
You think thats bad? Put these two links in your pipe and smoke em.
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
The Flat Earth Society bothers me less than the notion that 20% of the public believes the sun goes ’round the Earth. In any sufficiently large population, you are going to have some loons who believe the utterly insane… Flat Earth, Hollow Earth, 9/11 Conspiracies, Communists, etc. But those will typically be only a tiny fraction of the population at large. To have 20+% believe something as utter *wrong* as geocentrism indicates a serious design flaw.
I would agree on that point. But be it one person or 20% of people, its both scary and sad to think there are people that um.. Special? It’s truly mind boggling to rear the debates on their forums. Good way to kill braincells if you’re inclined to do that sort of thing.
Then of course there’s this:
http://www.thenewearth.org/InnerEarth.html
Which I’m sure more people buy than the Flat Earth.
It might be fun to create a role playing game set in such a world.
In a generic “Flat Earth?” I would assume there already are such. I know the “Diskworld” books are set on a flat world.
On a world shaped like this one, with a central “mound” and a concave ocean? One might have to go to some effort to explain away some things (like the horizon).
Or someone could dream up a world set on an Alderson Disk. For those unaware, an Alderson Disk is a hypothetical construct, on the lines of a Dyson shell, but somewhat more “magical.” Here you would build a disk hundreds of millions of miles in diameter and presumably a few thousand miles thick, with a hole right in the middle. The end result would look something like an old record or a CD. And if it’s made out of rock, the physics would mean that the force of gravity would be a relatively constant 1 G over the whole surface… and it would be normal (perpendicular) to the surface. The sun would go in the central hole. The general idea is that the sun, being substantially lower in mass than the disk, would be wobbled up and down through the hole on a 24 hour period, meaning that it would go several degrees above and below, providing illumination.
Of course, if you’ve got the tech to build and sustain a structure like this (which would want to collapse in on itself into a sphere, barring “force fields” or materials with strengths easily classifiable as “magical”), you’ve got the technology to either leave the sun in the central hole and hover a conical reflector above and below at higher elevations… or just forget about the central hole and hover whole stars above and below.
Maybe in next years NASA appropriations…
Many years ago (about the middle of the last century) I started working on a sci-fi story set in such a world. I was inspired by a magazine article about the coming “age of atomic-powered airships”, and was going to have a group of renegade scientists take one to Antarctica to find out why the government insisted on only allowing military-escorted expeditions to the South Pole.
In my story, the reason was to prevent the public from discovering the truth: the “world” is simply one of many warm areas in an apparently endless plain of ice on a flat universe. Believing that the Pandemic of 1918 was caused by an explorer from a neighboring warm area “discovering” our “world”, the world’s governments instituted a strict military blockade to prevent another plague.
When the US government learned of the renegade scientists plan, they dispatched a US Navy airship to stop them. However, the scientists had a head-start, and reached the next “world” before they could catch them (and were surprised as hell when they did). The Navy ship would be under orders to prevent them from returning by any means necessary, and conflict would of course ensue.
Although the idea greatly appealed to me, I discovered that I have no talent for characterization or dialog, and abandoned the project.
The human face on the Moon is a nice touch.
If you note how the Moon and Sun are attached by rotating sleeves on the rod that goes up to the North Star, this artwork is probably based on a model someone did of the concept.
From what I know of South Dakotans, this concept was probably current up till around 1955. 😉
I’m actually a bit skeptical of the 20% figure. It seems way high for that particular idiocy. I note that the scientist in question has published books with titles like “The Twilight of American Culture” & “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire”. The fellow sounds like he just doesn’t like Americans.
Sadly, I could buy the number for young earth creationists though.