My journey to the Flat Earth
Our human frailty displays most itself vituperatively when we are confronted with ideas that contradict those closely beliefs that we have invested our lives in. This frailty is on display daily at the Flat Earth Society Forum as helio-centrists storm and rant at those who dare challenge mainstream academia. One question that seem to be asked over and over is “how can you believe such (expletive deleted)?” Although I am certain that this question is merely rhetorical for most I am going to attempt to answer it for the minority who are sincerely interested in how one makes the journey form helio-centrist ( a “helio”) to a flat earther (a “FE”). Perhaps this will assist those who earnestly desire to break off the shackles of ignorance and see the world as it truly is!
Based on what is admittedly a small sample size of comments I have inferred that most “helios” (as I will refer to those who think the earth orbits the sun) believe that Flat Earthers (Fes) are uneducated and ignorant. This indeed may be true- since I have no way of really knowing the bonafides of those FEs on the board, or elsewhere, (other than those who have published their views and their true identities). I want to make it clear that educated, and uneducated, people can be wrong headed or geniuses in equal proportion. Bill Gates is an uneducated (formally) genius who dropped out of Harvard. So education is no guarantor of either genius or stupidity; to be clear.
My maternal grandfather, born in Wales, was a mining engineer, having passed his technical licensure (including a surveyor’s license) just after the Great War. Whilst working in a mine he developed, and patented, an improved method for sorting coal at the tipple and subsequently founded a company that manufactured such improved equipment. Because of this my mother grew up in much improved circumstances. But although the family's new found wealth improved their conditions they remained stolidly middle class.
My mother, an early beneficiary of the 1944 Educational Act, was one of the first females to attend her public school (public school is the opposite of what is meant in North America) under a quota system established at this school, and others. My father’s father was a Civil Engineer who worked for a large construction company, which, amongst other things, built some of the last great shipyards in Glasgow. My parent’s marriage, and her family’s relative wealth, established the financial wherewithal to send my siblings (and me) to public school. Thus I was fortunate enough to attend a public school- and although interested in literature and the law, being a child of my father was sent from public school, after graduation, to matriculate for engineering degree at the University of Strathclyde.
There I took the normal curriculum for technical studies including organic and inorganic chemistry, calculus, physics (including electricity and magnetism courses), mechanics, basic electrical engineering course, thermo-dynamics, structures, soils, surveying (including learning how to “shoot Polaris” at night for bearings), and other courses. I also loaded up on history and literature for my electives as much as I could- for this was my real love. Once out of university (having graduated) I worked for a while with a large energy company but my heart was not in engineering. Thus I returned to school and completed the course requirements in humanities to allowed me to take the BPTC and and from there I completed my pupilage to become a Barrister. I am old enough so that Latin and logic were still required at the public school I attended and this helped me immensely during my preparation for admission to the Bar Council. In fact I would say that my private reading and public school education made all this very easy when compared to the difficult course work required to earn my engineering degree.
During my course of studies at University I took no greater joy than spending hours of my free time amongst the stacks at the Library. Second only to girls this was my passion. I would roam the dusty stacks in my spare time (between studies) reading and browsing books- especially those from the 17th and 18th century (and those written in Latin). My University, although not amongst the oldest in Great Britain, is still ancient by most measures. I found my self fascinated by obscure works written by the Scholastics and I soon realized that their world view was completely antithetical to those of the modern world (this modern world being 1964 ). One incident that occurred the summer of 1964 is burned in my memory. I was in my maternal Grandfather’s study sitting in a leather arm chair discussing the ideas of the philosopher and lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, one afternoon. I can still remember the sun light streaming through the old fashioned wooden blinds of the windows and lighting up the dust particles in a warm glow. My Grandfather (Great Papa to me) gave me a quizzical look and said, right out of the blue, “You do KNOW that the earth is NOT a globe, Richard?”
I actually had no response to that unprovoked question other than thinking “well the old gentleman is in his dotage and his brain has finally untracked itself”. But he rummaged amongst the stacks of books littering his desk, and the floor beside it, and handed me a well worn green leather bound book with the title “The Earth is Not a Globe”. “Here”, he said, pushing it towards me, “read this and think upon what it says and it will place your engineering studies in an entire new light.”
I wish I could say that I read it immediately- but being young and foolish I did not. It lingered on my bookshelf for a number of years- until one day after I had been accepted to the bar, about a year after my grandfather’s death. I had been thinking about the old man and saw the book sitting in a nook in my study and I begin reading it. It aligned perfectly with ideas that had been swimming in my head, just out of sight, doubts and other interpretation of the phenomena and engineering principles I had studied in school.
Although my professional life was becoming ever busier, I begin studying the matter at night and on the weekends- bringing out my old texts from university days to compare the two. I found myself taking long weekend trips to London to read books, long since forgotten by the present day, written by the scholastics as well as summaries of the great Greek Natural Philosophers. The more I read the more I became convinced that the helio-centric theory became predominate not because of science but because of politics and religious prejudice. It was a tool to further the power and careers of those that backed it. No more and no less. That does not make those who backed Copernicus evil only human. It became evident that the more I studied the pre- Copernicus theories the more I became convinced that those theories were correct.
I started a helio-centrist- but I became, through study and keeping an open mind, and guarding against my own prejudice, have ended as flat earth theorist.