"Mimnermus, Aeschylus, and Apollonius Rhodius. Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later in Quintus Smyrnaeus' ""Posthomerica"" (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War. Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources, and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) according to Aristotle. Thales thought the Earth floated in water like a log. It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a round Earth. Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed the Earth was"
"all major astronomical traditions. In the West, the idea came to the Romans through the lengthy process of cross-fertilization with Hellenistic civilization. Many Roman authors such as Cicero and Pliny refer in their works to the rotundity of the earth as a matter of course. It has been suggested that seafarers probably provided the first observational evidence that the Earth was not flat, based on observations of the horizon. This argument was put forward by the geographer Strabo (c. 64 BC – 24 AD), who suggested that the spherical shape of the Earth was probably known to seafarers around the"
"a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that ""the Earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness."" Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit. Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed"
"wisdom. For example, take the following sentence: ""It is widely believed that prior to Christopher Columbus people thought the world was flat, but in actuality, scholars of that time had long accepted that the earth is a sphere."" The above sentence is true; people today often think that Columbus discovered the world to be round, when in fact the world's roundness was already widely known by Columbus' time. However, if enough people read and believe the above sentence, the above sentence will eventually supplant the old belief (the old belief in past belief in a flat earth). The above sentence"
"that the Earth was flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone. Hecataeus of Miletus believed the Earth was flat and surrounded by water. Herodotus in his ""Histories"" ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree he still believed the Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal ""ends"" or ""edges"" of the Earth. The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat Earth cosmography"
"out a couple of examples of White's poor scholarship, ""Let’s start with a simple and a notorious example: the idea that before Columbus people thought that the world was flat. Well, in fact, it is Draper and White, specifically, both of them, who bear most of the blame for popularizing this baseless view to the extent that nowadays, 80 percent of school teachers still foist this upon poor innocent school children. The fact is that of course the sphericity of the Earth was well established by the fifth century BC by the Greeks, and a good measure of its circumference"
"have been formulated in the Pythagorean school in the 5th century BC although some disagree. After the 5th century BC, no Greek writer of repute thought the world was anything but round. Plato (427–347 BC) travelled to southern Italy to study Pythagorean mathematics. When he returned to Athens and established his school, Plato also taught his students that Earth was a sphere, though he offered no justifications. ""My conviction is that the Earth is a round body in the centre of the heavens, and therefore has no need of air or of any similar force to be a support"". If"
"Myth of the flat Earth The myth of the flat Earth is a modern misconception that Earth was widely believed to be flat rather than spherical during the Middle Ages in Europe. During the Early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint, which had been first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among educated Europeans was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych ""The Garden of Earthly Delights"", in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent"
"19th century, a historical myth arose which held that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. An early proponent of this myth was the American writer Washington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis that there was a long lasting and essential conflict between science and religion. Subsequent studies of medieval science"
"their neighbors: ""How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?"" The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales (640–546 BC), dubbed the ""father of science"", was the first to postulate non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. For example, that land floats on water and that earthquakes are caused by the agitation of the water upon which the land floats, rather than the god Poseidon. Thales' student Pythagoras of Samos founded the Pythagorean school, which investigated mathematics for its own sake, and was the first to postulate that the Earth is spherical in shape. Leucippus (5th century BC) introduced atomism, the theory"
"theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water: A Hebrew language treatise on computational astronomy dated to AD 1378/79, alludes to the Atlantis myth in a discussion concerning the determination of zero points for the calculation of longitude: Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World. Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in"
"any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man."" Flat Earth The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle provided evidence for"
"A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Yuan-era Khanbaliq (i.e. Beijing) in 1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth. As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Ming-dynasty Chinese say: ""The Earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes."" The universal belief in a flat Earth is confirmed by a contemporary Chinese encyclopedia from 1609 illustrating a"
"Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth being square, not to it being flat. Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth, did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular. However, Needham disagrees, affirming that Li Ye believed the Earth to be spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but much smaller. This was preconceived by the 4th-century scholar Yu Xi, who argued for the infinity of outer space surrounding the Earth"
"330 BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported an estimate of its circumference. The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes. By the second century AD, Ptolemy had derived his maps from a globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His ""Almagest"" was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations. Lucretius (1st century BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy"
"later Islamic scholar Imam al-Suyuti (1445–1505 AD) also maintained that the Earth is flat. That the Earth must be spherical was known since at least the time of Pythagoras (570–495 BC), but this knowledge did not reach ancient folklore such as the ""Alexander romance"" where Alexander travels to the ends of a flat Earth. It is notable that, unlike the Babylonians, Greeks, and Indians, the pre-Islamic Arabs had no scientific astronomy. Their knowledge of astronomy was limited to measuring time based on empirical observations of the ""rising and setting"" of the sun, moon, and particular stars. This area of astronomical"
"flat Earth extending over the horizontal diametral plane of a spherical heaven. In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court. Matteo Ricci, in collaboration with Chinese cartographers and translator Li Zhizao, published the ""Kunyu Wanguo Quantu"" in 1602, the first Chinese world map based on European discoveries. The astronomical and geographical treatise ""Gezhicao"" (格致草) written in 1648 by Xiong Mingyu (熊明遇) explained that the Earth was spherical, not flat or square, and could be circumnavigated. Beginning in the"
"The view generally accepted by scholars of Augustine's work is that he shared the common view of his contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with his endorsement of science in ""De Genesi ad litteram"". That view has been challenged: Yet other historians, however, do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model. Diodorus of Tarsus, a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism. Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church"
"Greek philosophers, known as the pre-Socratics, provided competing answers to the question found in the myths of their neighbours: ""How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?"" The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales, dubbed the ""father of science"", was the first to postulate non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena such as lightning and earthquakes. Pythagoras of Samos founded the Pythagorean school, which investigated mathematics for its own sake, and was the first to postulate that the Earth is spherical in shape. Subsequently, Plato and Aristotle produced the first systematic discussions of natural philosophy, which did much to shape later"
"opposing authorities several centuries before the 19th. Another early mention in literature is Ludvig Holberg's comedy ""Erasmus Montanus"" (1723). Erasmus Montanus meets considerable opposition when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants hold it to be flat. He is not allowed to marry his fiancée until he cries ""The earth is flat as a pancake"". In Thomas Jefferson's book ""Notes on the State of Virginia"" (1784), framed as answers to a series of questions (queries), Jefferson uses the ""Query"" regarding religion to attack the idea of state-sponsored official religions. In the chapter, Jefferson relates a series of"
"sphere, the ancient Chinese believed that the earth was flat and square, while the heavens were spherical in shape, along with celestial bodies such as the sun and moon (described by 1st-century AD scholar Zhang Heng like a crossbow bullet and ball, respectively). However, the idea of a flat earth was criticized by Yu Xi (fl. 307-345 AD), who suggested a rounded shape as an alternative. In his ""Jingzhai gu zhin zhu"" (敬齋古今注), Li Ye advanced the idea that the Earth was spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but smaller in size, arguing that it could not be square"
"Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, itself a modern exposition of the claim that ""nothing comes from nothing"" attributed to Parmenides. Contemporary defenders of cosmological arguments include William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, Alexander Pruss, and William L. Rowe. Plato (c. 427–347 BC) and Aristotle (c. 384–322 BC) both posited first cause arguments, though each had certain notable caveats. In ""The Laws"" (Book X), Plato posited that all movement in the world and the Cosmos was ""imparted motion"". This required a ""self-originated motion"" to set it in motion and to maintain it. In ""Timaeus"", Plato posited a ""demiurge"" of supreme wisdom and intelligence"
"Flat Earth The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical"
"Boston College theology professor and ex-priest Thomas Groome erroneously stated that ""the Catholic Church never said the earth is round, but just stopped saying it was flat."" The 1937 popular song ""They All Laughed"" contains the couplet ""They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round"". In the Warner Bros. ""Merrie Melodies"" cartoon ""Hare We Go"" (1951) Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand the Catholic quarrel about the shape of the Earth; the king states the Earth is flat. In Walt Disney's 1963 animation ""The Sword in the Stone"", wizard Merlin (who has traveled into the future) explains to"
"1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over biological evolution. Russell claims ""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"", and ascribes popularization of the flat-Earth myth to histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving. In ""Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians"", Jeffrey Russell describes the Flat Earth theory as a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization and creationism. James Hannam wrote: French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac in chapter 5 of his"
"the notion that the Earth rotates is very old, dating at least to Philolaus (c. 450 BC), Heraclides Ponticus (c. 350 BC) and Ecphantus the Pythagorean. Roughly a century before Copernicus, the Christian scholar Nicholas of Cusa also proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis in his book, ""On Learned Ignorance"" (1440). Al-Sijzi also proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis. Empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation on its axis, using the phenomenon of comets, was given by Tusi (1201–1274) and Ali Qushji (1403–1474). This cosmology was accepted by Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens and later scientists. Edmund Halley"
"one of the coldest inhabited lands in the world. Similar to his predecessors, Herodotus also made mistakes. He accepted a clear distinction between the civilized Greeks in the centre of the earth and the barbarians on the world's edges. In his ""Histories"" we can see very clearly that he believed that the world became stranger and stranger when one traveled away from Greece, until one reached the ends of the earth, where humans behaved as savages. Whereas a number of previous Greek philosophers presumed the earth to be spherical, Aristotle (384–322 BC) is the one to be credited with proving"
"a young Arthur that ""man will discover in centuries to come"" that the Earth is round, and rotates. Historical writers have identified a number of historical circumstances that contributed to the origin and widespread acceptance of the flat-earth myth. American historian Jeffrey Burton Russell traced the nineteenth-century origins of what he called the Flat Error to a group of anticlerical French scholars, particularly to Antoine-Jean Letronne and, indirectly, to his teachers Jean-Baptiste Gail and Edme Mentelle. Mentelle had described the Middle Ages as twelve ignorant centuries of ""profound night"", a theme exemplified by the flat-earth myth in Letronne's ""On the"
"is flat, without curvature yet closed, running back on itself. Barthel considered this his most important theory, even ""the most significant thought of the century"", as he writes in his autobiography. While some of his academic colleagues stated that this theory is geometrically possible and consistent, others did not acknowledge that and resorted to ""the blight of personal calumny"", deriding him for allegedly ""teaching that the Earth is a disk"" or outright declaring him crazy, thus ruining his academic career. In November 1940 he was dismissed from the University of Cologne by the Nazi Reich Minister Rust because of religio-metaphysical"
"theory, which holds that the earth is not a globe, but a flat square which revolves on a central axis with the sun stationary over the centre. Carpenter, a printer originally from Greenwich, England, published ""Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed – Proving the Earth not a Globe"" in eight parts from 1864 under the name ""Common Sense"". He later emigrated to Baltimore where he published ""A hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe"" in 1885. Carpenter argued that: Carpenter was a proponent of English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1885), who produced a pamphlet, with Carpenter's assistance, called ""Zetetic Astronomy"" in"
"since that would hinder the movement of the heavens and celestial bodies. However, the idea of a spherical earth was not accepted in mainstream Chinese science and cartography until the 17th century during the late Ming and early Qing periods, due to European influence and evidence of the circumnavigation of the globe. The flat Earth theory in Chinese science was finally overturned by 17th-century Jesuits in China, who introduced the spherical Earth model originated by the ancient Greeks such as Philolaus and Eratosthenes, and demonstrated in world maps such as Matteo Ricci's ""Kunyu Wanguo Quantu"" published in Ming-dynasty China in"
"of nature itself instead of being attributed to angry gods. Thales of Miletus, an early philosopher who lived from 625 to 546 BC, explained earthquakes by theorizing that the world floated on water and that water was the fundamental element in nature. In the 5th century BC, Leucippus was an early exponent of atomism, the idea that the world is made up of fundamental indivisible particles. Pythagoras applied Greek innovations in mathematics to astronomy, and suggested that the earth was spherical. Later Socratic and Platonic thought focused on ethics, morals and art and did not attempt an investigation of the"
"was a sphere, the work advances the idea that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid, and especially attacks the idea that the heavens were spherical and in motion, now known as the geocentric model of the universe. The author cites passages of scripture which he interprets originally in order to support his thesis, and attempts to argue down the idea of a spherical earth by stigmatizing it as ""pagan"". An early surviving reference to the work is by Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople in the 9th century AD."