Flat Earth

Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea by Christine Garwood, 362 pages

Once upon a time, every American schoolchild knew that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and proved, despite the obscurantism of swarthy Inquisitors, that the earth was round.  Many are still taught this, if not as pure history, at least as part of the mythical war between Science and Faith.  Of course, by the time of Columbus the fact of the sphericity of the earth had been virtually unchallenged for two thousand years and was firmly embedded in medieval culture, as witness The Divine Comedy and the emblem of the globus cruciger, the orb topped with a cross, used as a symbol of Christ's dominion over the world.

As Christine Garwood explains, the legend of Columbus as the conqueror of flat earth superstition had its origins in the early nineteenth century and the desire to cast Science as the liberator of mankind from the slavery of religion.  Ironically, it was this same narrative that helped to generate the first genuine flat earth theorists in a millennium, as a few extreme fundamentalists, believing that science was the inveterate enemy of what they were convinced was the Biblical view of the universe, declared that the supposed roundness of the earth was, in fact, a massive deception.  Turning the tables on their opponents, they claimed that their "zetetic" mode of inquiry, which relied entirely on personal observation and experience, was more objective than conventional science.  Indeed, they even attacked the round earth "theory" as an ancient superstition with no place in a more enlightened age.

Garwood traces the history of flat earth belief from the debating societies of Victorian England to the desert of twentieth century California.  Along the way, she includes a colorful assortment of cranks and charlatans, from aristocratic dilettantes to fire-breathing faith healers to playful Canadian academics, all of whom Garwood treats with admirable sympathy.  In addition to being consistently interesting, Flat Earth reveals that, far from being a survival of "medieval superstition", flat earth belief is a form of modern pseudo-science, which not only helps to explain the fringe appeal of a flat earth, but more popular forms of pseudo-science such as "creation science".