For many centuries it was believed that the Earth we lived on was flat. The idea originated through religion, which was the precedent base of any belief in ancient times as science was not advanced at the time. The Hebrew bible carried forward the ideas of cosmology that the earth was flat, but circular:
"He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." [1]
The bible also had the constructs of the earth being surrounded by fire and water, thus heaven and hell was the prevailing surroundings of the earth before the discovery of the solar system:
"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."[2]
This image of the flat earth and the religious implications prevailed for hundreds of years, with scientists even taking the implications of religion into account. Anaximander (610 BC - 546 BC) made a model of the earth that was cylindrical, surrounded by air, clouds, the sun and moon and, lastly, a region of fire.
This shape also allowed the celestial bodies to pass beneath the earth. Although Anaximander was a well-regarded scientist he could also not ignore any religious bearings on the earth at this time. Another scientist, Anaxagoras still believed in a flat earth in the 5th century BC, but his pupil, Archelaus, made an interesting point of noticing that the sun rises and sets at different times depending on where people are in the world and so broadened the “flat world” theory into one that discussed the world being depressed, like a bowl, to allow for the natural occurrences in the world. It was thought, though, that the world was definitely considered circular by that time before scientific ‘proof’ because of seafarers and travellers that noted the different positions of the stars throughout the world and the fact that, when a ship is on the horizon, not all of it is visible.[3]
However, it was the Greek culture that first accepted the idea that the world was, in fact, not flat. Pythagoras is frequently associated with making this discovery in the 6th century BC, although it was not cemented as fact until the 4th century BC. Furthermore, there is no hard evidence that it was Pythagoras who made this discovery, and if he actually did there is also no evidence as to how he did so; it has been supposed that this is Greek culture taking credit for a discovery and putting it towards and already famous scientist.[4] We do know, though, that Pythagoras asked his student, Philolaus, to make a model of the earth that was based on the face of god – the central fire. Cultural implications are still precedent here, but, this was the first model of the earth and surroundings that took the ‘centre’ of the system away from the earth.
It was Aristotle in 4th century BC that was the first person to give reasons why the world was spherical. Ironically, a primary one was still very religious: the sphere was thought to be the perfect shape and, therefore, if God created the world than the world must take on the shape of a sphere.[5] However, he also made some scientific discoveries as to why the world was spherical. The weakest one was that matter is drawn to the centre of the earth by gravity and therefore this tends to compress the earth into a spherical shape and this is because rock is stiff and able to resist the tendency to be compressed into a spherical shape. His second argument expanded from the ideas and beliefs of the travellers of the time; he said that because new constellations are seen rising above the southern horizon as you move from north to south this proves the spherical shape of the earth, not that it is just circular. Finally, his strongest argument was that during a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth on the moon is always round and the only object whose shadow is always circular, no matter what its orientation, is a sphere.
The cultural differences between the earth’s shapes are vast, although their metaphorical and religious views of the earth were very similar. Many ancient religions personified the earth as a deity, or a mother earth. Although, the ancient Egyptians believed the earth was male. The Chinese were one of the last cultures to accept that the earth was spherical in the 17th century as their views of a flat, square earth prevailed for thousands of years. They had three theories for the Earth’s composition: the Kai Tian theory; the Hun Tian theory; Hsuan Yeh theory. Some of these theories were very similar to Ancient Greek beliefs at some point in history. The Kai Tian theory believed that the heavens covered the earth, their first basic view of the earth. The Hun Tian theory proposed that the heavens were a sphere surrounding the flat earth which is reminiscent of Anaximander’s theory, without the ring of fire. The Hsuan Yeh theory believed that the heavens were a boundless space in which angelic beings floated, that surrounded the earth. These beliefs remained in place until China was visited by western missionaries and they adopted the modern scientific view of the earth.
Science is ever changing and ever evolving, as Humphry Davy said:
“Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; that there are no new worlds to conquer.”
We believed in a flat world for hundreds of years, not just because we did not have the science to disprove this, but also because or religious and cultural implications. Even in this day and age science and religion still battle for precedence in today’s cultures; in the 20th century Indian children were quizzed on what they believed about cosmology and many of their views are still based on folklore and their religion, only a quarter believed the earth was a sphere in space, the next largest group believed that the earth was a disc in space.[6] Although religion and science can compliment each other we are still, as a whole society, struggling with what we should believe and what we are told to believe. It is possible that science will advance further in the future to discover something else about the earth’s shape that shakes our current views of the world and, undoubtedly, it will take a lot of convincing to bend the instilled beliefs of mankind – it is till remembered, thousands of years later, that the earth was once flat.
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth (16/02/2011)
[4] Ibid.
[6] Ala Samarapungavan, Stella Vosniadou, William F. Brewer, “Mental Models of the Earth, Sun, and Moon: Indian Children’s Cosmologies”, pp. 491-503, 1996.
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