A talk with Christine Garwood

The true origins of flat-earth theory

WHEN WE THINK of the idea of a flat earth, we think of ancient beliefs, medieval church doctrine, and a benighted assumption finally overturned by science. We don't think of it as an intellectual trend hatched in the 19th century. But maybe we should.

Most people in the Western world understood that the earth was round from late antiquity onward, says Christine Garwood, author of "Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea." While flat-earth belief may have lingered in some corners into the Middle Ages, the idea of a flat earth as a serious alternative to mainstream astronomy arose much more recently.

It wasn't until the mid-1800s when a self-described doctor and radical socialist named Samuel Birley Rowbotham - operating under the alias "Parallax" - crafted a new philosophy based on the flatness of the earth in response to what he saw as scientific elitism and an increasing disregard for the biblical account of creation. Parallax built a hugely successful career as a lecturer, and inspired a wave of flat-earth believers. His followers campaigned and debated against the mostly amateur scientists of the time, often putting them on the defensive in newspapers and other public forums.

This modern strain of flat-earth belief was reinvigorated in the 20th century, when it became threaded with insistence on a larger scientific and media conspiracy to conceal the truth. Today, flat-earth belief persists on Internet forums and newsletters maintained by the Flat Earth Society, and has evolved its own scientific-sounding responses to modern developments such as footage of a round earth seen from space. The flat earth may again be a fringe belief, but the impulses behind it are still at work, says Garwood, fueling the continued acceptance of ideas like a 10,000-year-old earth, UFOs, and the theory that man never walked on the moon.

Ideas interviewed Garwood, a lecturer at the Open University in England, by phone at her home in London.

IDEAS: So Columbus didn't really believe that the world was flat, and that he might fall off the edge?

GARWOOD: I think that's been exposed now as quite a famous myth in the history of science, although it is quite long-lived. That angle got picked up by lots of people and became translated as fact. So then the Columbus myth is used by lots of different rationalist writers in the 19th century and linked to the idea that all medieval people thought the earth was flat.

IDEAS: Which isn't true?

GARWOOD: Which isn't true either. But the amount of people I speak to who actually have no idea that the mainstream view of the spherical earth dates back to 4th century BC - people are usually quite shocked by that.

IDEAS: Why did it recur in the 19th century?

GARWOOD: Obviously there was lots of debate about the place of the Bible, challenges from science, ideas about evolution, different theories circulating. There was also a subculture in Britain at the time with . . . people trying to train themselves, working men starting to investigate questions to do with the natural world for themselves. So sort of do-it-yourself-type sciences, phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism - that Parallax could key into.

IDEAS: But why that the earth was flat? What was it about that particular thing that really spurred the imagination?

GARWOOD: Well, it's the ultimate challenge to science, isn't it? It really is. If you want to work the Victorian lecture circuit and generate as much income as you can, you're far more bound to get a crowd if you're standing up claiming the earth is flat - that it's fact-backed with experimental proof - than you would be if you said, "Well, you know, the typical view of creation is the correct one," because people were still saying that at that point.

IDEAS: What does its persistence tell us about human nature?

GARWOOD: It's a populist view, isn't it? It's anti-authority, anti-science. Obviously, people try to use science to back up their perception.

IDEAS: It's like a direct insult to science.

GARWOOD: Yes. It's intuitive, isn't it, flat-earth belief? Normal people have their own right to make their own knowledge about the natural world - the earth appears to be flat. It's all to do with different beliefs about the nature of evidence. What people are willing to accept as evidence. Some people believe that they've been abducted by aliens. People can interpret things in all different sorts of ways.

IDEAS:Do modern flat-earthers really believe that they can literally walk off the earth?

GARWOOD: No. They usually talk about some sort of mountain range around the boundary, which comes from Parallax.

IDEAS: During these 19th-century flat earth campaigns, the mainstream astronomers and naturalists like Alfred Russel Wallace didn't always do a very good job proving their own theories.

GARWOOD: They weren't always so good at explaining themselves, but can you reason with believers? In the end, Wallace was an incredibly lucid writer and was good at putting his argument in print, but his efforts were ultimately doomed. It wasn't so much a failure on his part as the dogma on the other.

IDEAS: Why did flat-earthers insist that all the scientific thinkers knew the earth was really flat, but lied to the public?

GARWOOD: If you can't think of anything else, then you've got the conspiracy. It wasn't just involving scientists, but involved the press as well. You see that more with the 20th-century flat-earth proponents

IDEAS: You bring up an important point - the professionalism of science didn't happen until the very late 1800s. Is there still a sense for the public that science is an amateur activity, that scientists don't have better notions of truth than anyone else?

GARWOOD: It's quite difficult, as science has become more complex, to explain the unbelievable, almost, in ways that ordinary people would understand. There is a barrier that scientists need to breach.

Peter Bebergal is a frequent contributor to the Globe. He has a blog at mysterytheater.blogspot.com.