We are living in a crisis of epistemology, but that’s so dry. Flat Earthism (‘FE’), while useless as a factual theory, provides a really excellent illustration taken as epistemological performance art.
How do we know what’s true? Epistemology is the study of that. You may think it’s outrageous to give FE any consideration, but that’s the audaciousness: it turns out to be surprisingly difficult for an ordinary person to _prove_ the earth is round without special resources.
With our own senses, we can tell the Earth must be _curved_. As a little kid I used to watch the ocean with binoculars. When ships came in over the horizon, first I’d see the antennae, then the bridge, the deck, and finally the hull.
But curved and round are not the same. Not proof.
With a modest telescope, like the ones Galileo built by hand in the 17th century, you can see Saturn and its moons are all round. Our moon is obviously round, and with a dark filter, you can see sunspots rotate.
Why would the Earth be shaped differently from all the other planets? FE doesn’t even bother to try to answer the question. But Newton also skipped the explanation when he invented the theory of gravity — “Hypotheses non fingo,” he wrote, ‘I feign no explanation’.
A huge difference: Newton’s theory simplified the model and provided hella useful answers, where FE adds complications and answers nothing. But today, while we can measure and predict gravity accurately, we still can’t explain it. Point is, a lack of explanation doesn’t prove roundness.
The ancient Greeks came up with a method: “geo-metry” literally means “measuring the Earth”. Measure the angle of shadows cast at noon in two locations, very far apart north-south. The difference between the angles divided by 360 equals the distance between the locations divided by the Earth’s circumference. Reverse the equation, to get a number for the circumference, you’ll find the value is incompatible with a curved planet, but not a round one.
By itself, the circumference can’t prove anything either, as the distance between locations could be manipulated. FE says there’s a vast conspiracy to distort all references to the circumference — maps, car odometers, airplane and ship mileage, all altered.
This claim can be disproven, but you have to stake your life on it.
Walk between those two locations and count your steps. Then learn the geometry and perform the calculation using your measurement. Or, invest a lifetime of effort to become the type of person who can travel into space — either an astronaut or a billionaire passenger.
At this point though, you can’t be considered “an ordinary person” any more. You would have done something remarkable, which would change you. FE represents an epistemological barrier — the boundary where common sense and scientific truth separate.
If we’re fully honest, we don’t think of the heliocentric model in our everyday life. In the morning, we describe what happens as “sunrise”, not “earth turn”. When we move, whether it’s by legs, bicycle, car, boat or plane, we don’t think of travel as being a curve across the surface of a sphere. We think of it as a straight line on a flat plane — like a map.
A phrase popular right now says, ‘believe the science’. That’s not even wrong. The motto of Newton’s Royal Society is ‘Nullius In Verba’ — take no one’s word for it. You’re supposed to treat the science skeptically, to _try_ to poke holes in it.
Practice uncertainty through audacious epistemology.
