When The Earth Was Flat

When the Earth Was Flat tells the fascinating story behind scientific theories we once believed to be true, and shows how the way we view the world, and the way we think the world works, has changed completely throughout history.

Perfect for anyone with an interest in our scientific history, When the Earth Was Flat exposes the scientific theories that were once widely believed to be true but have since been disproved. Featuring ideas that now seem more crazy than credible, from the human body being made up of only four humours - black and yellow bile, blood and phlegm - to the discovery of the so-called 'missing link' in the evolutionary chain. When the Earth Was Flat tells the fascinating story behind those scientific theories we once believed to be true, and shows how the way we view the world, and the way we think the world works, has changed completely throughout history.

From pseudoscience to incorrect assumptions and unfounded belief, science hasn't always been right. Contrary to recent debate on the internet, nowadays we are fairly confident that the earth is not flat and that we are in fact inhabitants of a spherical planet. However, this was not always the case, with a widespread belief that if you reached the horizon, you would simply fall off into space. Along with assumptions about the health benefits of heroin, the advantages of injecting monkey glands into the human body and bumps on your head being indicators of personality and temperament, science has a colourful past. In this entertaining and informative look at a dubious history, Graeme Donald examines the origins of some of the most extraordinary and mind-boggling scientific theories of the past.

Contrary to popular belief, fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the world was round. The idea of the world as a sphere had been widely accepted in scientific, philosophical and even religious circles from as early as the fourth century bc. Bizarrely, it was not until the supposedly more rational nineteenth century that the notion that the world might actually be flat really took hold. Even more bizarrely, it persists to this day. Based on a range of original sources, Garwood's history of flat-earth beliefs - from the Babylonians to the present day - raises issues central to the history and philosophy of science, its relationship with religion and the making of human knowledge about the natural world. Flat Earth is the first definitive study of one of history's most notorious and persistent ideas, and evokes all the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual turmoil of the modern age. 'Highly entertaining and often hilarious ... an enjoyable romp through the dottier history of scientific and religious eccentricity' Sunday Times 'This entertaining history of the Flat Earth movement is full of crazy characters and fascinating details' Daily Telegraph 'Wonderful ... an intriguing chronicle of 150 years of self- delusion' Financial Times

Explores globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political.

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle’s proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.

Kay Burns and David Eso's edition of Leo Ferrari's The Earth Is Flat! introduces us to a long-forgotten satirical work, which, in an age of fake news, possesses renewed relevance. Ferrari, a philosopher by training, draws on his extensive knowledge of classical thought to present a history of ideas that is sometimes accurate, but more frequently speculative. He traces the conflict between "Globularist" and "Planoterrestrial" beliefs from antiquity to his contemporary moment of the early 1970s. He also charts the tongue-in-cheek activities of the Flat Earth Society of Canada, which he co-founded in 1970 with celebrated authors Alden Nowlan and Raymond Fraser. Other notable members included literary luminaries Al Pittman, Farley Mowat, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Patrick Lane. The author blurs the line between seriousness and humour in the interests of exploring philosophical concepts such as the nature of belief and the implications of technological modernity.

Shortly after accepting the flat earth as a model for the world, I decided to revisit the Book of the Courses of the Heavenly Luminaries to see if my new understanding would somehow mirror what Enoch was sharing as the motion of the sun and moon. As I began to read chapters 71-82, I found to my utter amazement that I was able to grasp those passages. I knew then that the vision that the angel Uriel had shown to Enoch could only be deciphered if one were to imagine Enoch's description of the revolution of the sun and the moon. As seen from above the flat circular plane of the earth as described by Isaiah; and that Enoch must have been taken up to perhaps where Polaris is, centered directly above the North Pole, and while looking down at the backdrop of the earth, was instructed on the motions of both the sun and moon. Without such conception, it is in my opinion impossible to apply these descriptions to the model of the earth as a spherical planet.