Hiselman 1

Audrey Hiselman

Baxter

World Lit

6 March 2017

The Shape of our Planet: Are Curves Controversial?

In a charming Ontario town, located near the US Canadian border, it was proven that not all

Canadians are polite. A middle aged man got in an argument turned violent with his sons

girlfriend over the shape of our planet. Is it spherical or flat? If you were there to witness the

screaming, objects thrown into the fire, and police arriving; youd realize that this issue is still

relevant in our society (Police). You would also be surprised to hear that the conclusion to the

debate hadnt been reached a day ago, a hundred years ago, or even a thousand years ago. It is a

common historical misconception that for a majority recorded history, we have lived without

knowledge of our planet's shape. After all, didnt Christopher Columbus have to sail to the

Americas to prove the planet wasnt flat? This is nowhere close to true. This common historical

misconception was created by Washington Irving in his fictional book about Christopher

Columbus, which disregards the fact that for thousands of years, the Earths true shape has been

embraced by philosophers, scholars, and the church since the idea was first proposed (Simanek).

Before the age of classic philosophy, ancient people taught that the Earth was anything but

spherical. These wild beliefs ranged from the flat, square shaped planet that the Egyptians

thought we lived on; to the hollow planet the Babylonians believed, as it would leave adequate

room for a hell (Simanek). However, the flat Earth that most are familiar with, is the ancient

Greek version of our planet. Although there was some discrepancy about the exact shape of the

planet, a number of Greeks believed that the earth floated in the water like a log and was trapped
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inside a floating sphere. This sphere surrounded the Earth, and shielded the planet from the fire

beyond, and the holes in the dome were the stars (Ancient Models of the World). During the

daytime, the Greek god Helios would drive the sun across the sky in a pegasus drawn chariot

(Homer). Without modern science, ancient people turned to folklore in order to explain natural

phenomena. This mystical reasoning continued until the age of classical Greek philosophy,

bringing with it one of the most famous philosophers, Aristotle.

Born in Macedonian-Greece around 384 BCE, Aristotle was sent to study in Athens at the age of

17. For twenty years he went to Platos Academy, which is widely considered by historians to be

the first university. Aristotle became one of Platos brightest students, and later went on to found

his own school and tutor Alexander the Great (Shields). Clearly, Aristotle was a genius man, and

he proved it by being one of the first to come to the conclusion that our planet is a sphere.

Although he didnt use scientific tools to measure it, his deductions based off observations of the

world we live in give him credit as the first person to use logic to come to a conclusion. His most

famous reason for the Earth's shape is one that anyone with a sailboat could go out and prove for

themselves. He noticed that when watching a ship approaching from the horizon, the mast would

always be visible first. If the planet was flat, he reasoned, the entire ship would be visible at the

same time (Modeling). Aristotle also noticed that when traveling south, the familiar stars would

disappear behind you, and new ones would appear ahead of you. If depending where you stood

on our planet, there were different stars, that would mean that our planet is a sphere (Edson).

Among these intelligent observations there were also some dubious ones. Aristotle figured that

since matter tends to form in globs and drops, our planet must have been formed the same way

(Simanek).
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In some of Aristotle's writings, measurements of the planet's circumference are referenced, but

incomplete with no source. The first complete record of these measurements come nearly a

hundred years later, from Eratosthenes, a librarian of Alexandria. These measurements were

based off the variation of the suns elevation with latitude (Simanek). Eratosthenes had heard

through word of mouth that there was a well in the Egyptian city of Swenet, that on the summer

solstice at noon, the sun's rays would shine directly down to the bottom of the well. The sun was

so directly overhead in fact, that the light wouldnt touch the sides of the well. So, he set up a

pole in Alexandria, and on the summer solstice he noticed that the shadow of the pole indicated

that the sun was slightly south. This is how he came to the realization that the Earth is not flat,

but actually curved (Brown). Being a scholar, Eratosthenes felt an ingrained urge to calculate

various measurements of the planet, including what he is most well known for, our planet's

circumference. As explained by Kahn Academy:

Eratosthenes could measure the angle of the Suns rays off the vertical by dividing the
length of the leg opposite the angle (the length of the shadow) by the leg adjacent to the
angle (the height of the pole). This gave him an angle of 7.12 degrees. He knew that the
circumference of Earth constituted a circle of 360 degrees, so 7.12 (or 7.2, to divide 360
evenly by 50) degrees would be about one-fiftieth of the circumference. He also knew the
approximate distance between Alexandria and Syene, so he could set up this equation:

360 degrees = circumference of the Earth

7.2 degrees distance from Alexandria to Swenet

Eratosthenes estimated the distance from Alexandria to Syene as 5,000 stadia, or about
500 miles (800 kilometers). He made this estimation from the time it took walkers, who
were trained to measure distances by taking regular strides, to trek between the cities. By
solving the equation, he calculated a circumference of 250,000 stadia, or 25,000 miles
(40,000 kilometers) (Brown).
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Eratostheness measurements were very sophisticated. In fact, they were so accurate that they are

only about five percent off from modern day measurements (Singham). The ability to make these

sorts of measurements was improved upon, and in no time measurements of the size of the sun

and moon, and the various distances between them were calculated by early mathematicians, and

made available to the public. In the words of Mano Singham, a university professor, ... these

things were not secrets. All were widely known among educated people.

The most your average person knows about the relation between the church and astronomy is

that its a deadly pairing. Usually, the first thing to come to mind is how Galileo was persecuted

by the Catholic Church for claiming that the Sun is the center of our solar system (Finocchiaro).

Though it is true that the church silenced the voices of those who spoke against the grain of the

bible, they werent foolish enough to carry on an argument that had been resolved before Christ

was born. A majority of the disapproval with the spherical model of the Earth had taken place

before the fall of the roman empire, around 500 CE, when the Christian church was relatively

new. Those who disagreed would point out a bible quote from Isaiah 11:12: And gather the

dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. This suggests that the biblical view of our

planet is similar to the ancient Egyptian model: a square shaped planet (Simanek). Despite the

vocal deniers of the planets spherical shape, support only grew larger and became regarded by

society as a truth. In fact, a book about the shape of our planet, called "The Sphere", was a

required textbook in European universities during the fourteenth century still in use 500 years

after written (Strauss). If all of this is true, then how come the middle ages are stereotyped as a

time when people were so dull, they believed the earth was flat?

This can all be traced back to a common historical myth about Christopher Columbus. During

elementary school, you may have been taught that Christopher Columbus's voyage was rejected
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by the King of Portugal because common belief that the Earth was flat; and was only able to

prove it once and for all after Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand V sponsored his expedition.

This is nowhere close to true, because the Earth being a sphere was a well known fact since the

times of Ancient Greece (Strauss). This largely fictional version of Christopher Columbuss

voyage across the ocean was created by Washington Irving, an American author best known for

writing The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. When he published a romanticized biography of

Christopher Columbus, it was mistaken by many to be academic work, which resulted in

generations of Americans raised believing a story about a heroic sailor defying all odds to prove

that the Earth is round (Irving). With that out of the way, only one question is left: if the Santa

Maria sailing off the edge of the planet was a non issue, then why was his trip initially rejected?

It all boiled down to money and time. The King of Portugal thought it was a far too long and

costly trip to be worthwhile, and he was right to skip funding a risky trip. Columbus had

seriously miscalculated the size of the planet, despite relatively accurate information on the size

of the planet being available, and as a result departed with inadequate supplies to make it to

India. If it werent for the Americas blocking the way, his whole crew would have starved

(Huemer). On top of not being the brightest, his idea of sailing westward to India wasnt original,

and had been first proposed by a geographer, Strabo, around 63 BCE (Singham).

After clearing common misconceptions about the beliefs of those who came before us, its made

obvious that the ancients were a lot smarter than theyre given credit for. Not only did they

manage to make accurate observations and calculation about the world we live in without

modern technology, these new ideas were embraced by all people since they were first proposed,

despite common belief. How speedily thousands of years of knowledge and acceptance had been
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misconstrued with the stroke of Washington Irvings pen should make you wonder: what credit

will be taken away from us two thousand years from now?

Works Cited

Ancient Models of the World. NFO, NF Observatory.

Brown, Cynthia Stokes. Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Kahn Academy.

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Edson, Evelyn. Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their

World. London: British Library, 1999; Ehrenberg, Ralph E. Mapping the World: An

Illustrated History of Cartography. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006;

Wilford, John Noble. The Mapmakers. New York: Random House, 1981.

Finocchiaro, Maurice A. The Church and Galileo. The Catholic Historical Review, vol.

94, no. 2, 2008, p. 260+. Academic OneFile

Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by Samuel Butler, Champaign, Project Gutenberg, 199-.

Huemer, Michael. The Problem of Political Authority. Palgrave Macmilan, 2013.

Irving, Washington. The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Boston, Twayne

Publishers, 1981.

Modeling the Cosmos. Ancient Greek Astronomy and Cosmology. Library of Congress.

Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

Police, firefighters called in after flat Earth debate turns heated. The Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation, 14 June 2016. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, Accessed 20

Feb. 2017.

Shields, Christopher, Aristotle, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016

Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Simanek, Donald E. Early Ideas about the Shape of the Earth. The Flat Earth, Accessed

22 Feb. 2017.

Singham, Mano. Columbus and the flat Earth myth: perhaps it is not the people of the

Middle Ages who should be accused of clinging to erroneous beliefs, Mr. Singham

suggests. Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 88, no. 8, 2007, p. 590+. Academic OneFile, Accessed

19 Feb. 2017.
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Strauss, Valerie. Busting a Myth about Columbus and a Flat Earth. The Washington

Post, 10 Oct. 2011. Accessed 19 Feb. 2017.