The Rim at the End of the World

[cleanhippie]

Not only an interesting read, but an insightful look into the ability of humans to rationalize anything they want or need to believe.

As long as I have my copy of Christine Garwood’s excellent Flat Earth (2007) at hand, having retrieved it from the bookshelf to consult it for details about the flat-earther Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who hoped to be called to testify for the prosecution in the Scopes case (see “Voliva!”), I thought that I might take the opportunity to address a weighty question for flat-earthers: what keeps the ocean from cascading off the earth faster than it can be replaced by rain?

The standard answer was proposed by Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816–1884), who, under the nom de plume of “Parallax,” launched the modern flat-earth movement back in 1849, with his book Zetetic Astronomy: A Description of Several Experiments which Prove that the Surface of the Sea is a Perfect Plane and that the Earth is not a Globe! “Zetetic” means pertaining to inquiry or investigation; in contrast, the idea that the earth is spherical is, in Parallax’s view, based merely on speculation.

“If then we adopt the zetetic process to ascertain the true figure and condition of the Earth,” Parallax wrote in the second, expanded, edition of Zetetic Astronomy (1865), we discover that the earth is a flat disk with the North Pole at its center. Garwood suggests, “The South Pole was naturally non-existent in this scheme, and the circular plane was bordered with an immense barrier of ice,” although perhaps it would be fairer to say that the South Pole was identified with the barrier.

The main evidence Parallax cites for the flatness of the earth involves, as the subtitle indicates, experiments. Well, actually, observations, variously showing that the surface of standing water is not convex, that the horizon is always horizontal, that the surface of the earth appears concave to balloonists, and so on. The main evidence he cites for the existence of a barrier of ice at the world’s rim, however, involves the inability of mariners to circumnavigate the Antarctic circle:

That the south is an immense ring, or glacial boundary, is evident from the fact, that within the Antarctic circle the most experienced, scientific, and daring navigators have failed in their attempts to sail, in a direct manner, completely around it. … But if the southern region is a pole or center, like the north, there would be little difficulty in circumnavigating it, for the distance round would be comparatively small. When it is seen that the Earth is not a sphere, but a plane, having only one centre, the north; and that the south is the vast icy boundary of the world, the difficulties experienced by circumnavigators can be easily understood.

http://ncse.com/blog/2014/08/rim-at-end-world-0015777

[NeoGreen]

1. Any marine navigator...

... of that age could have refuted his claim with ease.

They had been using spherical trigonometry to navigate the globe for well over a century by 1865, because gasp the earth is round.

The delusion of today is nothing new.

[mr blur]

2. Effectively settled by the Discworld novels, I thought? See The Science of Discworld II: The Globe

[edhopper]

3. And then turtles

all the way down.

[sakabatou]

4. But are they ninja turtles?