Zetetic Astronomy: Earth not a globe. 1857 (Broadsheet).
Though only a traveling lecturer's advertisement, there are so many
arguments and quotations that it is a little pamphlet. The lecturer gained
great praise from provincial newspapers for his ingenuity in proving that
the earth is a flat, surrounded by ice. Some of the journals rather incline
to the view: but the _Leicester Advertiser_ thinks that the statements
"would seem very seriously to invalidate some of the most important
conclusions of modern astronomy," while the _Norfolk Herald_ is clear that
"there must be a great error on one side or the other." This broadsheet is
printed at Aylesbury in 1857, and the lecturer calls himself _Parallax_:
but at Trowbridge, in 1849, he was S. Goulden.[183] In this last
advertisement is the following announcement: "A paper on the above subjects
was read before the Council and Members of the Royal Astronomical Society,
Somerset House, Strand, London (Sir John F. W. Herschel,[184] President),
Friday, Dec. 8, 1848." No account of such a paper appears in the _Notice_
for that month: I suspect that the above is Mr. S. Goulden's way of
representing the following occurrence: Dec. 8, 1848, the Secretary of the
Astronomical Society (De Morgan by name) said, at the close of the
proceedings,--"Now, gentlemen, if you will promise not to tell the Council,
I will read something for your amusement": and he then read a few of the
arguments which had been transmitted by the lecturer. The fact is worth
noting that from 1849 to 1857, arguments on the roundness or flatness of
the earth did itinerate. I have {89} no doubt they did much good: for very
few persons have any distinct idea of the evidence for the rotundity of the
earth. The _Blackburn Standard_ and _Preston Guardian_ (Dec. 12 and 16,
1849) unite in stating that the lecturer ran away from his second lecture
at Burnley, having been rather too hard pressed at the end of his first
lecture to explain why the large hull of a ship disappeared before the
sails. The persons present and waiting for the second lecture assuaged
their disappointment by concluding that the lecturer had slipped off the
icy edge of his flat disk, and that he would not be seen again till he
peeped up on the opposite side.
But, strange as it may appear, the opposer of the earth's roundness has
more of a case--or less of a want of case--than the arithmetical squarer of
the circle. The evidence that the earth is round is but cumulative and
circumstantial: scores of phenomena ask, separately and independently, what
other explanation can be imagined except the sphericity of the earth. The
evidence for the earth's figure is tremendously powerful of its kind; but
the proof that the circumference is 3.14159265... times the diameter is of
a higher kind, being absolute mathematical demonstration.
The Zetetic system still lives in lectures and books; as it ought to do,
for there is no way of teaching a truth comparable to opposition. The last
I heard of it was in lectures at Plymouth, in October, 1864. Since this
time a prospectus has been issued of a work entitled "The Earth not a
Globe"; but whether it has been published I do not know. The contents are
as follows:
"The Earth a Plane--How circumnavigated.--How time is lost or gained.--Why
a ship's hull disappears (when outward bound) before the mast head.--Why
the Polar Star sets when we proceed Southward, etc.--Why a pendulum
vibrates with less velocity at the Equator than {90} at the Pole.--The
allowance for rotundity _supposed_ to be made by surveyors, not made in
practice.--Measurement of Arcs of the Meridian unsatisfactory.--Degrees of
Longitude North and South of the Equator considered.--Eclipses and Earth's
form considered.--The Earth no motion on axis or in orbit.--How the Sun
moves above the Earth's surface concentric with the North Pole.--Cause of
Day and Night, Winter and Summer; the long alternation of light and
darkness at the Pole.--Cause of the Sun rising and setting.--Distance of
the Sun from London, 4,028 miles--How measured.--_Challenge to
Mathematicians._--Cause of Tides.--Moon self-luminous, NOT a
reflector.--Cause of Solar and Lunar eclipses.--Stars _not worlds_; their
distance.--Earth, the _only material_ world; its true position in the
universe; its condition and ultimate destruction by fire (2 Peter iii.),
etc."
I wish there were geoplatylogical lectures in every town; in England
(_platylogical_, in composition, need not mean _babbling_). The late Mr.
Henry Archer[185] would, if alive, be very much obliged to me for recording
his vehement denial of the roundness of the earth: he was excited if he
heard any one call it a globe. I cannot produce his proof from the
Pyramids, and from some caves in Arabia. He had other curious notions, of
course: I should no more believe that a flat earth was a man's only
paradox, than I should that Dutens,[186] the editor of Leibnitz, was
eccentric only in supplying a tooth which he had lost by one which he found
in an Italian tomb, and fully believed that it had once belonged to Scipio
Africanus, whose family vault was discovered, it is supposed, in 1780. Mr.
Archer is of note as {91} the suggester of the perforated border of the
postage-stamps, and, I think, of the way of doing it; for this he got
4000l. reward. He was a civil engineer.
(_August 28, 1865._) The _Zetetic Astronomy_ has come into my hands. When,
in 1851, I went to see the Great Exhibition, I heard an organ played by a
performer who seemed very desirous to exhibit one particular stop. "What do
you think of that stop?" I was asked.--"That depends on the name of it,"
said I.--"Oh! what can the name have to do with the sound? 'that which we
call a rose,' etc."--"The name has everything to do with it: if it be a
flute-stop, I think it very harsh; but if it be a railway-whistle-stop, I
think it very sweet." So as to this book: if it be childish, it is clever;
if it be mannish, it is unusually foolish. The flat earth, floating
tremulously on the sea; the sun moving always over the flat, giving day
when near enough, and night when too far off; the self-luminous moon, with
a semi-transparent invisible moon, created to give her an eclipse now and
then; the new law of perspective, by which the vanishing of the hull before
the masts, usually thought to prove the earth globular, really proves it
flat;--all these and other things are well fitted to form exercises for a
person who is learning the elements of astronomy. The manner in which the
sun dips into the sea, especially in tropical climates, upsets the whole.
Mungo Park,[187] I think, gives an African hypothesis which explains
phenomena better than this. The sun dips into the western ocean, and the
people there cut him in pieces, fry him in a pan, and then join him
together again, take him round the underway, and set him up in the east. I
hope this book will be read, and that many will be puzzled by it: for there
are many whose notions of astronomy deserve no better fate. There is no
subject on which there is so little {92} accurate conception as that of the
motions of the heavenly bodies. The author, though confident in the
extreme, neither impeaches the honesty of those whose opinions he assails,
nor allots them any future inconvenience: in these points he is worthy to
live on a globe, and to revolve in twenty-four hours.
(_October, 1866._) A follower appears, in a work dedicated to the preceding
author: it is _Theoretical Astronomy examined and exposed by Common Sense_.
The author has 128 well-stuffed octavo pages. I hope he will not be the
last. He prints the newspaper accounts of his work: the _Church Times_
says--not seeing how the satire might be retorted--"We never began to
despair of Scripture until we discovered that 'Common Sense' had taken up
the cudgels in its defence." This paper considers our author as the type of
a _Protestant_. The author himself, who gives a summary of his arguments in
verse, has one couplet which is worth quoting:
"How is't that sailors, bound to sea, with _a 'globe'_ would never start,
But in its place will always take _Mercator's_[188] LEVEL _chart_!"
To which I answer:
Why, really Mr. Common Sense, you've never got so far
As to think Mercator's planisphere shows countries as they are;
It won't do to measure distances; it points out how to steer,
But this distortion's not for you; another is, I fear.
The earth must be a cylinder, if seaman's charts be true,
Or else the boundaries, right and left, are one as well as two;
They contradict the notion that we dwell upon a plain,
For straight away, without a turn, will bring you home again.
There are various plane projections; and each one has its use:
I wish a milder word would rhyme--but really you're a goose!
The great wish of persons who expose themselves as above, is to be argued
with, and to be treated as reputable {93} and refutable opponents. "Common
Sense" reminds us that no amount of "blatant ridicule" will turn right into
wrong. He is perfectly correct: but then no amount of bad argument will
turn wrong into right. These two things balance; and we are just where we
were: but you should answer our arguments, for whom, I ask? Would reason
convince this kind of reasoner? The issue is a short and a clear one. If
these parties be what I contend they are, then ridicule is made for them:
if not, for what or for whom? If they be right, they are only passing
through the appointed trial of all good things. Appeal is made to the
future: and my Budget is intended to show samples of the long line of
heroes who have fallen without victory, each of whom had his day of
confidence and his prophecy of success. Let the future decide: they say
roundly that the earth is flat; I say flatly that it is round.
The paradoxers all want reason, and not ridicule: they are all accessible,
and would yield to conviction. Well then, let them reason with one another!
They divide into squads, each with a subject, and as many different
opinions as persons in each squad. If they be really what they say they
are, the true man of each set can put down all the rest, and can come
crowned with glory and girdled with scalps, to the attack on the orthodox
misbelievers. But they know, to a man, that the rest are not fit to be
reasoned with: they pay the regulars the compliment of believing that the
only chance lies with them. They think in their hearts, each one for
himself, that ridicule is of fit appliance to the rest.
Miranda. A book divided into three parts, entitled Souls, Numbers,
Stars, on the Neo-Christian Religion ... Vol. i. London, 1858, 1859,
1860. 8vo.
The name of the author is Filopanti.[189] He announces himself as the 49th
and last Emanuel: his immediate {94} predecessors were Emanuel Washington,
Emanuel Newton, and Emanuel Galileo. He is to collect nations into one
family. He knows the transmigrations of the whole human race. Thus
Descartes became William III of England: Roger Bacon became Boccaccio. But
Charles IX,[190] in retribution for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was
hanged in London under the name of Barthelemy for the murder of Collard:
and many of the Protestants whom he killed as King of France were shouting
at his death before the Old Bailey.