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objections to the roundness of Earth

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BH

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Hi.

I know the Greeks and Egyptians were the first to mathematically prove the Earth was round, even coming very close to determining its size.

Do any of you here know the history about the discovery and what objections were brought against what ever proofs were given for a round Earth?

If you do please let me know or give me some leads. The reason I ask is that it is possible some of the objections could have been very rational for the time but nevertheless were wrong. I could use them as illustrations of why you might could make a rational argument against a position but still be wrong when more information or facts are able to be discovered or shown to exist and apply this to some of the apologetic arguments used by the Christians.
 
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BH said:
Hi.

I know the Greeks and Egyptians were the first to mathematically prove the Earth was round, even coming very close to determining its size.

Do any of you here know the history about the discovery and what objections were brought against what ever proofs were given for a round Earth?

If you do please let me know or give me some leads. The reason I ask is that it is possible some of the objections could have been very rational for the time but nevertheless were wrong. I could use them as illustrations of why you might could make a rational argument against a position but still be wrong when more information or facts are able to be discovered or shown to exist.
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This is an example of theory underdetermination. Thee could be a potentially indefinite number of theories to explain a set of data, provided we adjust auxiliary hypotheses. I gave an example of in another thread of Einstein’s non-Euclidean spacetime being challenged by Poincaré, who came up with a scheme of temperature gradients and refraction to keep space Euclidean while only making it seem to be Riemannian. The Ptolemaic system was perfectly good for navigation for over a thousand years, though the solar system is Copernican. As to the roundness of the earth, it was known to the ancients for a variety of empirical reasons, though I’m sure there were rational objections to it.
 
I'm not aware of anyone ever really thinking the Earth was flat, without going way way back. In general, if one would be primitive enough to think the world was flat, probably wouldn't care about the shape of the world. It was the 19th century when a "flat earth" was potentially invented by common man.
 
Bible cosmology appears to suggest geocentrism, a dome above the sky, the sun, moon and stars just above the dome, and apparenty a flat, circular earth.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I'm not aware of anyone ever really thinking the Earth was flat, without going way way back. In general, if one would be primitive enough to think the world was flat, probably wouldn't care about the shape of the world. It was the 19th century when a "flat earth" was potentially invented by common man.
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I don't think it was ever a real theory but it would have been the default position for the average man.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I'm not aware of anyone ever really thinking the Earth was flat, without going way way back. In general, if one would be primitive enough to think the world was flat, probably wouldn't care about the shape of the world. It was the 19th century when a "flat earth" was potentially invented by common man.
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Yeah, this.

Worrying about the shape of the Earth was, until broad primary education of the masses, an activity left to a handful of 'thinkers', such as the authors of the parts of the Bible that describe the Earth and its physical relationship with the rest of creation. They were free to get it as wrong as they liked, because nobody cared. If they proscribed the eating of shellfish, there would be people who liked eating shellfish, and/or who had access to lots of shellfish but not much other nutrition, who would complain, maybe even get into a violent dispute over it. But in a pre-scientific era, nobody was going to bother to put their life on the line over the shape of the Earth. If you put them on the spot, they might say it was obviously flat, but with a large subtext of "who cares?"

Only when it became important for things like navigation, did the question really arise; And those who knew enough geometry and astronomy to have an informed opinion were mostly of the opinion that the Earth was roughly spherical, and had no time for silly disputes with clerics, who in turn had no time for silly disputes with mariners.

The whole idea of the Earth being flat as a widespread belief held to be of importance by those who believed it, is a modern phenomenon; And started life as an insult - a slightly hyperbolic and absurd accusation made against people we wanted to portray as ignorant savages.

That a certain element of ignorant savages within our own society has embraced that accusation, and now are vocal in defense of the Flat Earth hypothesis, just goes to show that people are nothing if not perverse.

I am surprised that there isn't a sizable Internet community vocally supporting the Selenotyroic Hypothesis too*.






* and rather disappointed by the lack of uptake by the wider English speaking community of my six year old neologism, for which there are still zero hits on Google
 
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An historical note. Watched a documentary on them,Hmong trivesman who word with s in the VN war.

It turned out when they flew over on planes they had no idea of the Earth as a globe. It was traumatic for some.


Why were so many Hmong refugee men in central California dying in their sleep in the early 1980s? They were experiencing fear-induced heart failure as a result of Nightmare/ sleep paralysis experiences.
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I watched a show on aborigines in the Amazon. Jungle dwellers they never went out onto ihe open spaces.

Someone walked them out onto a plain. As they were walking they progressively got agitated and at one point went to the ground terrorized.

When they started cattle in the distance were small and they thought they were bugs or something. As they got closer they appear to get larger. They interpreted it as they were physically getting larger.

Point being it is all about perspective which is learned as we grow up.

Without a telescope it obvious the stars and Dun revolve around the Earth

A short history of cosmology.


en.wikipedia.org

Spherical Earth - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of the figure of the Earth as a sphere. The earliest documented mention of the concept dates from around the 5th century BC, when it appears in the writings of Greek philosophers.[1][2] In the 3rd century BC, Hellenistic astronomy established the roughly spherical shape of Earth as a physical fact and calculated the Earth's circumference. This knowledge was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.[3][4][5][6] A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's circumnavigation (1519–1522).[7]

The concept of a spherical Earth displaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth: In early Mesopotamian mythology, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean with a hemispherical sky-dome above,[8] and this forms the premise for early world maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus. Other speculations on the shape of Earth include a seven-layered ziggurat or cosmic mountain, alluded to in the Avesta and ancient Persian writings (see seven climes).

The realization that the figure of the Earth is more accurately described as an ellipsoid dates to the 17th century, as described by Isaac Newton in Principia. In the early 19th century, the flattening of the earth ellipsoid was determined to be of the order of 1/300 (Delambre, Everest). The modern value as determined by the US DoD World Geodetic System since the 1960s is close to 1/298.25.[9]
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The spherical shape of the Earth was known and measured by astronomers, mathematicians, and navigators from a variety of literate ancient cultures, including the Hellenic World, and Ancient India. Greek ethnographer Megasthenes, c. 300 BC, has been interpreted as stating that the contemporary Brahmans of India believed in a spherical Earth as the center of the universe.[11] The knowledge of the Greeks was inherited by Ancient Rome, and Christian and Islamic realms in the Middle Ages. Circumnavigation of the world in the Age of Discovery provided direct evidence. Improvements in transportation and other technologies refined estimations of the size of the Earth, and helped spread knowledge of it.
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I have heard about the cattle being thought of as growing as you walked closer.

I also read long ago that before gravity was discovered to exist. People thought things were stuck to the ground not because some force was pulling you down but because the Earth was moving up.

Speaking of gravity.....

If you lived before the discovery of gravity how do you explain that if Earth was a ball why doesn't all of the water fall off.


A flat earth fellow living before gravity was discovered--

"If you pour water onto a ball 10 to the zillion billionth times the water falls off . Therefore the earth cannot be a ball"


This is a warning about trusting strictly philosophical arguments.
 
Well, actually, the ball does exert a gravitational force. Just not enough to hold the water.

And the earth does move up toward you as you move down toward it.
 
BH said:
I have heard about the cattle being thought of as growing as you walked closer.

I also read long ago that before gravity was discovered to exist. People thought things were stuck to the ground not because some force was pulling you down but because the Earth was moving up.

Speaking of gravity.....

If you lived before the discovery of gravity how do you explain that if Earth was a ball why doesn't all of the water fall off.
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Why would you need to demonstrate that? Gravity is apparent, maybe not explained, but stuff settles down... for whatever reason. No one would live parallel to the surface of Earth.
BH said:
A flat earth fellow living before gravity was discovered--

"If you pour water onto a ball 10 to the zillion billionth times the water falls off . Therefore the earth cannot be a ball"
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This is way too scientific of an argument. A person that long ago is arguing the earth is flat, because the ground around them is as flat as the eye can see.
 
pood said:
Well, actually, the ball does exert a gravitational force. Just not enough to hold the water.

And the earth does move up toward you as you move down toward it.
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True, but they did not know about gravity much less how much you have to have of it to pull something towards and object.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
BH said:
I have heard about the cattle being thought of as growing as you walked closer.

I also read long ago that before gravity was discovered to exist. People thought things were stuck to the ground not because some force was pulling you down but because the Earth was moving up.

Speaking of gravity.....

If you lived before the discovery of gravity how do you explain that if Earth was a ball why doesn't all of the water fall off.
Click to expand...
Why would you need to demonstrate that? Gravity is apparent, maybe not explained, but stuff settles down... for whatever reason. No one would live parallel to the surface of Earth.
BH said:
A flat earth fellow living before gravity was discovered--

"If you pour water onto a ball 10 to the zillion billionth times the water falls off . Therefore the earth cannot be a ball"
Click to expand...
This is way too scientific of an argument. A person that long ago is arguing the earth is flat, because the ground around them is as flat as the eye can see.
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Where would one live to have the ground be flat all around them as far as the eye could see?
 
Well they knew when you toss things up they fall down. So they obviously knew gravity in that sense. They just didn’’t know what it was. Nor did Newton, for that matter. He described gravity mathematically, but said in a letter he could not comprehend what kind of force could stretch between bodies without mutual contact. Later Einstein described gravity as a fictitious force, the consequence of curved spacetime.
 
Shadowy Man said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
BH said:
I have heard about the cattle being thought of as growing as you walked closer.

I also read long ago that before gravity was discovered to exist. People thought things were stuck to the ground not because some force was pulling you down but because the Earth was moving up.

Speaking of gravity.....

If you lived before the discovery of gravity how do you explain that if Earth was a ball why doesn't all of the water fall off.
Click to expand...
Why would you need to demonstrate that? Gravity is apparent, maybe not explained, but stuff settles down... for whatever reason. No one would live parallel to the surface of Earth.
BH said:
A flat earth fellow living before gravity was discovered--

"If you pour water onto a ball 10 to the zillion billionth times the water falls off . Therefore the earth cannot be a ball"
Click to expand...
This is way too scientific of an argument. A person that long ago is arguing the earth is flat, because the ground around them is as flat as the eye can see.
Click to expand...
Where would one live to have the ground be flat all around them as far as the eye could see?
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Nepal.
 
Shadowy Man said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
BH said:
I have heard about the cattle being thought of as growing as you walked closer.

I also read long ago that before gravity was discovered to exist. People thought things were stuck to the ground not because some force was pulling you down but because the Earth was moving up.

Speaking of gravity.....

If you lived before the discovery of gravity how do you explain that if Earth was a ball why doesn't all of the water fall off.
Click to expand...
Why would you need to demonstrate that? Gravity is apparent, maybe not explained, but stuff settles down... for whatever reason. No one would live parallel to the surface of Earth.
BH said:
A flat earth fellow living before gravity was discovered--

"If you pour water onto a ball 10 to the zillion billionth times the water falls off . Therefore the earth cannot be a ball"
Click to expand...
This is way too scientific of an argument. A person that long ago is arguing the earth is flat, because the ground around them is as flat as the eye can see.
Click to expand...
Where would one live to have the ground be flat all around them as far as the eye could see?
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Kansas.

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200310/pancake-kansas.cfm
 
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