Contrary to popular belief, a decent percentage
of the human population has known definitely
the Earth was roughly spherical for over two
thousand years.
Hardly impressive, as noted in our BrainFood
Show podcast, bees also use this fact in their
own absurdly fascinating navigation and in
communicating directions to other bees.
As for humans, we took a little longer to
realize this, with Pythagoras (6th century
B.C.) generally credited with being the first
known person to have suggested a spherical
Earth, though the idea didn't exactly catch
on at this point.
Aristotle (4th century B.C.) agreed and supported
the hypothesis with observations such as that
the southern constellations rise higher in
the sky when a person travels south.
He also noted that during a lunar eclipse
the Earth's shadow is round.
Much more definitively, the 3rd century BC
head librarian at the Library of Alexandria,
Eratosthenes, built on their ideas and managed
to calculate the circumference of the Earth
with remarkable accuracy.
How?
He simply used the knowledge that at noon
on the Summer Solstice there was a well in
Syene where the sun shown directly down to
the bottom, with no shadow.
Thus, at noon on Summer Soltice he used a
rod to measure the angle of the shadow made
in Alexandria and found it to be about 7 degrees
or about 1/50th of a circle.
With this information, he now just needed
to know the exact distance between Syene and
Alexandria to get the circumference of the
Earth (about 50 times the distance between
Syene and Alexandria).
He hired a survey crew, known as bematists,
to measure the distance, which they found
to be about 5,000 stadia.
He then concluded the Earth must be about
250,000 stadia around.
Depending on which stadion measurement he
was using, his figure was either just 1% too
small or 16% too large.
Many scholars think it likely that he was
using the Egyptian stadion (157.5 m), being
in Egypt at the time, which would make his
estimate roughly 1% too small.
Moving on to the so called Dark Ages in which
Christianity supposedly squashed such outlandish
ideas as a spherical Earth, the truth is actually
the opposite.
In Christian medieval Europe, 7th century
Catholic monk and scholar Bede produced an
influential treatise that included a discussion
of the spherical nature of the world.
This work, The Reckoning of Time, was copied
and distributed to clerics across the Carolingian
empire.
Later, in the 1300s, Dante Alighieri's Divine
Comedy also describes the Earth as a sphere
and again nobody seemed to have a problem
with this.
The Catholics and later other branches of
Christianity weren't the only religious sects
that seemed to have its clergy and scholars
almost universally think the world was spherical.
The Islamic world also concurred.
As historian Jeffrey Burton Russell sums up,
“With extraordinary few exceptions, no educated
person in the history of Western Civilization
from the third century B.C. onward believed
that the Earth was flat.”
Beyond the academics of the Western world,
even the most empty headed sailor knew the
Earth was spherical simply by the fact that
ships disappear over the horizon with the
bottom first and then the mast the last to
be sighted.
A similar effect is observed when spotting
land from a ship.
It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize
the sea's surface must curve continually.
Despite this, there really still is a tiny
percentage of the populace of the developed
world who believe the world is flat.
You might at this point be wondering just
how many?
While internet comment threads make it seem
as if the percentage is large, the reality
is probably drastically less.
(Comment trolls gonna troll.)
As for some numbers, according to a 2018 poll
run by the massive market research firm YouGov,
the 8,215 responses which were chosen to have
a high probability of accurately representing
the wider adult populace, showed,
• 84% of respondents said they have always
believed the world is round
• 5% stated "I always thought the world
is round, but more recently I am skeptical/have
doubts",
• 2% stated "I always thought the world
is flat, but more recently I am skeptical/have
doubts"
• and 2% went with "I have always believed
the world is flat".
• The remaining 7% stated "Other/not sure".
While the good people at YouGov certainly
know their stuff with respect to getting accurate
data that represents the wider populace, we
were curious as to what a larger sample of
our own audience would reveal, though with
the caveat that a general internet poll can
sometimes be notoriously inaccurate.
But for the curious and for whatever it's
worth, our poll asking more or less the same
questions received over 72,000 votes.
What were the results?
Approximately
• 96% of respondents stated they "firmly
believe the world is round",
• 1% went with "I used to firmly believe
the world is round, but now have doubts"
• 1% voted for "I firmly believe the world
is flat"
• 0% stated "I used to firmly believe the
world is flat, but now have doubts"
• 1% noted "I am not sure what I believe
on this issue."
These numbers seem surprisingly reasonable
for an online poll when compared to something
a little more rigorously implemented like
the YouGov poll.
While our numbers skew more towards Round
Earthers, this is perhaps to be expected given
we know definitively that our audience skews
towards being much more educated than the
general populace.
And just because we were curious about the
many, many online trolls who, as stated, it's
our pet hypothesis are actually making it
seem like there are a lot more Flat Earthers
than there actually are, we did a follow up
poll which got 54,000 votes.
For whatever it's worth, in this one, approximately
• 9% of respondents stated "I believe the
world is round, but sometimes say online it's
flat"
• 2% stated "I believe the world is flat
and advocate this position online"
• The remaining 89% stated "Neither applies
to me."
(And, yes, we know those numbers don't add
up to exactly 100% in either case, but YouTube's
polling system rounds to the whole number,
so here we are.)
Those numbers out of the way, this finally
brings us to who started the relatively modern
Flat Earth movement and how on God's oblate
spheroid Earth this movement is actually growing
in an era where nearly all human knowledge
is almost literally at everyone's fingertips?
The genesis of the modern Flat Earth Society
started in the mid-19th century thanks to
one Samuel Rowbotham of London, England.
Dropping out of school at the tender age of
9, Rowbotham would eventually become convinced,
or at least claimed he was, that not only
was the Earth flat, but that everything we
see in the heavens is actually only a few
thousand miles from the Earth- stars and all.
While his ideas were absurd for an incredible
number of reasons, even given the technology
and scientific knowledge of his era, what
Rowbatham had going for him was he was reportedly
incredibly quick on his feet in debates and
an extremely charismatic speaker, able to
twist the words of even the best academics.
It didn't matter if he was actually right
or not, only that he was better at convincing
laypeople than the academics he regularly
debated, or at least good at creating reasonable
doubt.
As noted by a contemporary article published
in the Leeds Times,
“One thing he did demonstrate was that scientific
dabblers unused to platform advocacy are unable
to cope with a man, a charlatan if you will
(but clever and thoroughly up in his theory),
thoroughly alive to the weakness of his opponents.”
Besides making a small fortune public speaking,
he also wrote various works including a book
aptly titled Earth Not a Globe.
Rowbotham ultimately created the Zetetic Society,
which, besides advocating for a flat Earth,
also advocated that only facts one could prove
themselves could be accepted as true.
On the side, Rowbotham also began going by
"Dr. Samuel Birley" and making money selling
people on cure-alls and life extenders of
his own invention, among other such activities.
While by the early 20th century the society
he started had gradually faded into even more
obscurity than it already was at its peak
during Rowbotham's lifetime, all was not lost.
The truth cannot be killed so easily!
In 1956 when mankind was on the verge of putting
a satellite in orbit, Samuel Shenton of Dover,
UK, came across the former works of the Universal
Zetetic Society, the successor to Rowbotham's,
and was hooked.
He then established the International Flat
Earth Research Society (IFERS) which adopted
some of the ideas of the Zetetic Society before
it, most notably, as you might have guessed
from their new name, that the Earth is flat.
Of course, his timing wasn't exactly ideal
given the launch of Sputnik in 1957 which,
beyond being in orbit, put out a signal that
anyone with a little know-how could track,
very clearly demonstrating the spherical nature
of the Earth.
This didn't phase him in the slightest, however.
He simply noted that satellites circled over
the disc of the world and that, "Would sailing
round the Isle of Wight prove that it were
spherical?
It is just the same for those satellites."
When pictures of the Earth were taken from
space clearly showing the planet's spherical
nature, the man who strongly advocated trusting
what you can see with your own eyes stated,
"It's easy to see how a photograph like that
could fool the untrained eye."
When astronauts came back still believing
the Earth wasn't flat, he went with the catch-all
explanation for any conspiracy theory when
no other suitable explanation can be thought
up- "It's a deception of the public and it
isn't right."
Despite the giant, roughly spherical mound
of evidence staring the members right in the
face, including the variety easily confirmed
by anyone with a modicum of knowledge in physics,
the society did not die completely, though
by 1972 had dropped from a peak of about 3,000
members down to around 100 spanning the globe.
That same year Shenton died and Californian
Charles Johnson more or less took over the
remnants, creating the International Flat
Earth Research Society of America.
Johnson also advocated that there was a global
conspiracy with regards to the very flat Earth,
not just today, but spanning millennia.
To quote him, this was a conspiracy that "Moses,
Columbus, and FDR all fought" against.
Beyond that Columbus most definitely thought
that the Earth was roughly spherical, simply
misjudging its circumference, we're guessing
Moses didn't have to fight anyone on this
one as the Ancient Egyptians firmly believed
in the concept of a flat Earth, as did seemingly
the Hebrews around the time he supposedly
lived.
So what exactly do the world's governments
and countless scientists and high school physics
students throughout human history have to
gain by convincing people the world is spherical
instead of flat?
Well, Johnson advocated that this is a tool
used by scientists to get rid of religion.
Of course, as noted, Christian scholars throughout
history on the whole advocated for the very
spherical Earth and we're not aware of any
major religious denomination the world over
today that goes with the flat Earth model,
so no apparent conflict...
But, hey, we guess Eratosthenes must have
really had it in for those Ancient Egyptian
and Greek gods...
In any event, despite Johnson's less than
compelling arguments, over time this new society
actually gained followers up to a peak of
about 3,500 members under his leadership.
Disaster struck, however, when a fire at headquarters
destroyed some of the records of membership
in 1997.
Ultimately Johnson himself passed away in
2001 and the society was temporarily just
as dead.
All was not lost, however, as there is no
medium greater than the Internet at giving
humans ability to discover the truth in anything
for themselves... if we weren't all so lazy
and our monkey brains not so chock full of
cognitive biases.
And so it was that in 2004, one Daniel Shenton
created a discussion forum home for the mostly
dead Flat Earth Society and by 2009 a new
wiki website was created in its place, with
the society slowly growing from there to apparently
around 500 members to date.
There are also many Flat Earth pages and channels
on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
sometimes exceeding 100K members or subscribers
of a given page, channel, or profile, for
whatever that's worth.
In the latest incarnation of the society,
as with their forebears, the modern group
strongly advocates for only accepting that
which you can see with your own eyes and prove
with your own efforts.
As they note on their website,
“The simplest is by relying on ones own
senses to discern the true nature of the world
around us.
The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds
are flat, the movement of the Sun; these are
all examples of your senses telling you that
we do not live on a spherical heliocentric
world.
This is using what's called an empirical approach,
or an approach that relies on information
from your senses.
Alternatively, when using Descartes' method
of Cartesian doubt to skeptically view the
world around us, one quickly finds that the
notion of a spherical world is the theory
which has the burden of proof and not flat
earth theory.”
As for the model of the Earth they go with,
while there is some dissension among the ranks
over exact details, the current belief advocated
by the Flat Earth Society is that the the
Earth is disc shaped.
The North Pole lies at the center of this
disc and there is an ice wall surrounding
the outer most parts of the Earth that keeps
the oceans contained.
This wall is nearly impossible to reach owing
to the fact that NASA is closely guarding
it, ensuring no one ever gets close enough
to see it for themselves.
NASA also is extremely active in generating
satellite photos of the Earth and generating
other data all meant to keep people believing
in a spherical Earth.
Seemingly the Google Earth team must be in
on it too, clearly abandoning the company's
long held unofficial mantra of "Don't be evil."
As evidence of this conspiracy and how far
reaching it is, they also point out on their
website that the United Nations emblem strongly
resembles the Flat Earth Society's view of
what the Earth actually looks like.
(We guess clearly showing the logo design
team, led by industrial designer Oliver Lincoln
Lundquist, in 1945, didn't get the memo that
the true shape of the Earth was supposed to
be a secret.
You had one job Lundquist!!!
To be fair, however, when his team designed
it, it was originally just supposed to be
used on the badges at the United Nations Charter
signing conference, so only for people who
already knew the Earth was flat...
Fun fact, Lundquist did, however, make up
for the screw up by later designing the classic
blue and white Q-tip box.)
In any event, you might at this point be wondering
how the Flat Earth Society believes commercial
airlines and ships the world over continue
to seemingly travel in one direction and manage
to circle the globe.
Well, this is because these ships and planes
are literally circling.
They state, "circumnavigation is performed
by moving in a great circle around the North
Pole."
As for how the ship and plane captains don't
seem to be aware of this, in modern times
it's because GPS devices and autopilots are
designed in software to simply make it seem
like the craft is circling a globe and not
continually turning slightly.
Of course, it's not clear how they account
for people tricking themselves when navigating
before or without GPS, which has only been
ubiquitous for a couple decades or so.
(See: Who Invented GPS and How Does It Work?)
There's also the fact that fuel burn on these
ships and airplanes are carefully calculated,
particularly important for planes where weight
and balance is always an essential consideration
if one doesn't want to die a fiery death.
Thus, if they were really traveling in the
way the Flat Earthers claim, the fuel requirements
would be different, sometimes vastly so.
(No surprise here that Big Oil must be involved...)
As for, you know, the whole day and night
thing, this is explained on their website
"The sun moves in circles around the North
Pole.
When it is over your head, it's day.
When it's not, it's night.
The light of the sun is confined to a limited
area and its light acts like a spotlight upon
the earth...
The apparent effect of the sun rising and
setting is...a perspective effect."
How exactly the light from the Sun only works
as a spotlight isn't clear.
It's also not clear how the phases of the
Moon and lunar and solar eclipses work given
this spotlight model and given they believe
the Sun is always above the Earth...
Moving on- as for the many people who claim
to be able to see the curvature of the Earth
when on high altitude commercial flights,
well, the Flat Earth Society, who advocated
trusting your own senses over what anyone
tells you.
tells these people, to quote, "Quite simply
you cannot... the windows on commercial aircraft
are small and heavily curved.
Even if they flew high enough for a person
to see curvature, it would still not be visible
to passengers."
As for the issue of someone with even a half
way decent telescope being able to see the
spherical nature of other planets in the solar
system, including them spinning away, the
Flat Earth Society claims,
“Planets are orbiting astronomical objects.
The Earth is not a planet by definition, as
it sits at the center of our solar system
above which the planets and the Sun revolve.
The earths uniqueness, fundamental differences
and centrality makes any comparison to other
nearby celestial bodies insufficient - Like
comparing basketballs to the court on which
they bounce.”
As for how gravity works in the flat Earth
model, it turns out that, "The earth is constantly
accelerating up at a rate of 32 feet per second
squared (or 9.8 meters per second squared).
This constant acceleration causes what you
think of as gravity.
Imagine sitting in a car that never stops
speeding up.
You will be forever pushed into your seat.
The earth works much the same way.
It is constantly accelerating upwards being
pushed by a universal accelerator (UA) known
as dark energy or aetheric wind."
You may have spotted a problem with this explanation
given the whole issue of eventually exceeding
the speed of light.
In fact, if constant acceleration at 9.8 meters
per second squared, it would only take about
a year for the Earth to reach the speed of
light.
Well, they've got you covered, explaining:
"Due to special relativity, this is not the
case.
At this point, many readers will question
the validity of any answer which uses advanced,
intimidating-sounding physics terms to explain
a position.
However, it is true.
The relevant equation is v/c = tanh (at/c).
One will find that in this equation, tanh(at/c)
can never exceed or equal 1.
This means that velocity can never reach the
speed of light, regardless of how long one
accelerates for and the rate of the acceleration."
Anyway, as to what lies below the Earth, this
is heavily disputed among Flat Earthers.
But it doesn't really matter as you can't
get there anyway.
You see, to quote Flat Earther Robbie Davidson
in an interview with Forbes, "We don’t believe
anything can fall off the edge, because a
big portion of the flat earth community believes
that we’re in a dome, like a snow globe.
So the sun, moon and stars are all inside.
It’s very high but all contained inside.
So there’s no way to actually fall off of
the earth."
Given it only takes a modicum of effort to
disprove pretty much everything said on their
website and prove definitively for one's self
that the Earth is roughly spherical without
needing to trust any scientist or government,
you might think the Flat Earthers just aren't
trying.
Well, you're kind of right, but there are
exceptions!
Case in point- limo driver Mike Hughes who
managed to raise about $8,000 thanks to a
Flat Earth fundraiser.
Why?
To build a rocket to reach the heavens with
to once and for all prove the Earth was flat.
Reportedly the final hilariously fitting steam
powered rocket and launch platform cost around
$20,000 and took about ten years to build.
With it, Hughes managed to achieve an altitude
of almost 1,900 feet, which while kind of
impressive for an amateur built home made
rocket that could carry a human, was nonetheless
not able to achieve his objective of getting
him to space.
If only it was possible to build more powerful
rockets...
Or if there existed a balloon designed to
be able to soar into the heavens with some
sort of device on board that could capture
and store what it sees through an eye like
apparatus...
Or, stick with us here people, if a human
going along for the ride was a requirement
to show NASA hadn't tampered with this futuristic
visual capture device, some sort of bird-like
machine that could carry humans above 1,900
feet...
On that note, for a mere $12,000-$16,000 Hughes
could have purchase a charter flight ticket
to not only take him higher than altitudes
of 1,900 feet, but also take him to Antarctica
to see the massive ice wall for himself.
Or if the Flat Earth society wanted to pool
together their resources, for prices from
$25,000-$70,000 they could charter a flight
to the South Pole itself.
Though, a thing they don't tell you on the
vacation package brochure is that while you
can go visit the South Pole, NASA subjects
everyone that does to severe mental retraining
to ensure all memories of the ice wall have
been erased and replaced with pleasant, but
very wall free, recollections.
All joking and head scratching aside, it's
always important to note that many of the
core psychological quirks that see Flat Earthers
intractably convinced the Earth is flat in
the face of all evidence to the contrary exist
in all of us.
Monkey brain gonna monkey.
We further all have many beliefs we firmly
cling to just as tenuously supported by our
level of knowledge on a subject, though thankfully
for most of us the absurdity isn't quite so
easy to spot, allowing us to safely continue
to think of ourselves as superior to mere
mortals with alternate ideas...
In the end, we all firmly believe many things
that aren't true at all and no amount of evidence
could ever convince any of us to change our
minds on some of these things.
Food for thought.
