Yes, the World Is Round:

Report on Long-Term Observational Data

Compiled by Conservative Science
By Sally Morem

Is the world round? No one knew the answer for the longest time. Earth is very big and
we are very small. Our eyes normally tell us that the world appears to be flat; its mystery
guarded by an eternally receding horizon—a magical rim none could pass beyond.

Humans relied on ancestral myth and legend for answers to the mystery. Mythology
consists of stories we tell ourselves when we can’t experience the thing at first hand.
Creative guesses about the shape of our planet abounded in many cultures. A table? A
turtle? An island? Each one was an attempt to explain Earth’s apparent sturdy solidity
and the existence of some sort of strange consistency in the directions “up” and “down.”

Then, in the 5th Century B.C.E., the ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians came
along and gave us an unexpected answer, one that seemed to belie common sense: That
the motion of the heavens was merely a reflection of the spinning sphere on which we
ride.

Science is the means by which we reach past our deeply ingrained misrepresentations and
see the world as it truly is. There are many ways in which to experience the workings of
the scientific method. If you wish, you may participate in some of these in this essay.

***

Be a Greek mathematician. Begin in Alexandria, Egypt. Carefully measure and cut a

yard-long stick, place it in open ground at high noon during the summer solstice, then
measure and record the length of the shadow. Head 50 miles south next year. Use the
same stick to measure the shadow at noon on summer solstice. Record your
measurements. Keep doing this year after year until you end up on the Tropic of Cancer.
Here you will see an astonishing sight. When you plant your stick at noon on the summer
solstice, you will see no shadow.

From the changing length of the shadows and further measurements to the east and west,
you will deduce the curved nature of Earth and you may conclude that its curvature wraps
around and meets “on the other side” as a sphere. With ever more exacting
measurements and calculations, you may determine its circumference to within a few
miles of 25,000 miles.
You have just done what no man of learning—no priest, no mathematician, no
astronomer, no philosopher—had ever been able to do before; you have discovered the
shape and size of the world through careful observation and reasoning. You did not have
to make up legends. You drew your conclusions from facts.

***

Anyone even slightly familiar with the work of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot will
recognize what Rob Wipond is up to in his essay (The Humanist March/April, 1998). It’s
all a question of scale. Size really does matter. Your perception of Earth depends on your
size and the size of your instruments in comparison with that of the planet. The shape
and texture of the world will differ greatly to that of an ant as compared to that of a
mountain.

In the 1960s, Mandelbrot explored the mathematical concept of coastlines and was
stunned when he realized that no mapmaker really knew how long any coastline was. For
example, each atlas gives a different length for the coast of Norway.

After thinking the problem through, he was even more amazed when he realized that it is
mathematically impossible to determine an absolutely objective and true measurement for
a coastline. Consider this. If you place your surveying instruments every mile along the
fjords of Norway, you will get one distance. If you place them every half-mile, you’ll get
another, much longer distance. And if you place them at smaller and smaller distances—
yards, feet, inches—you’ll get progressively larger and larger numbers as you dutifully
record the length of smaller and smaller bays and peninsulas.

This is so because of the broken, squiggly, fractal nature of coastlines. The zigzagging
Norwegian coast is more than a line; it covers an area. In mathematical terms, the
coastline is closer to two dimensions than it is to one. Analysis may show that the
Norwegian coast has a dimensionality of 1.83, for example. That particular measurement
of the “fractality” of the coastline gives scale—the distance between measurements—a
far greater importance than it has in any mathematical analysis of simpler, more
geometrically regular shapes.

We can take Mandelbrot’s scalar analysis of coastlines and apply it to the concept of
Earth’s “roundness.” At ant level, the planet appears to be an impossibly huge, intricately
detailed web of high and deep places—worlds in a forest, forests in a lawn. At human
scale, the lawn becomes a plush green carpet, a forest becomes a canopied home and
source for food, and mountains tower over the comparatively flat, human-shaped
landscapes into the celestial bowl of sky. At mountain scale, Earth’s curvature becomes
readily apparent toward the horizon. The atmosphere exists on a far larger scale yet.
Beneath it lays a slightly pear-shaped, bulbous mass with a pleasant, average roughness
to it. And, seen full from deep space…well, you will experience that later.

***
Be a Druidic Moon watcher. Through painstakingly long observation, day after day,
month after month, year after year, you are not only able to anticipate the phases of the
Moon, you also know that the moon follows a complex seasonal cycle moving north and
south, and that some unknown force seems to draw the Moon closer to Earth and away
during a separate cycle.

But this doesn’t lead you astray. You know that tonight is the night of the next full lunar
eclipse. You are ready. You watch as Earth’s circular shadow advances across the face of
the Moon. And at that very moment, you realize for the first time that you’ve seen a
reflection of the true shape of your home.

***

Notwithstanding Wipond’s fairly accurate criticism of scientific hubris and error over the
centuries, I firmly reject his rejection of the scientific method. At its core, science can
only offer tentative descriptions of reality and predictions of its future state. It says, “Do
not block the way of inquiry.” But science doesn’t end there. It lays out techniques and
procedures that allow scientists to modify and replace descriptions and predictions that no
longer suffice. It allows the human imagination to slowly edge its way from fantasy to
reality. This method of trial and error isn’t a weakness; it’s science’s greatest strength.

All descriptions we humans have ever made or can make about the universe and
predictions of its future state are, at least in principle, falsifiable. The notion that some
notion can be proven wrong is an extraordinary notion. We don’t think of it as odd
because we live in a scientific culture. We’re used to it. But falsifiability created a
radical disjunction between scientific and religious thought. When the Sun shines or the
wind blows, a religious person will say it’s God’s will. Never mind the specifics, ignore
cause and effect; God did it. Religious pronouncements end all inquiry and nothing more
need be learned.

On the other hand, when an astronomer observes a solar flare during an eclipse or a
meteorologist detects high winds coming ahead of a large storm system from the west by
using Doppler radar, those two scientists will not assume that the Sun is Ra riding his
glowing chariot or the wind is the breath of Zeus. The astronomer will seek out patterns
of causation within solar convections and the eleven-year sunspot cycle. The
meteorologist will record the wind velocity and direction around the churning
thunderstorm for a television weather report and for future analysis. They will always
assume that a physical cause precedes a physical effect. They will break down complex
events into smaller, more understandable parts, trying to uncover a deeper underlying
pattern in such interactions between energy and matter.

***

Be a surveyor in the American wilderness. The Confederation Congress under the old
Articles of Confederation mandated the orderly incorporation of new lands into your new
country under the Northwest Ordinance. The new Constitution also mandated the
creation of new states, equal to the old, out of the Northwest Territories and any other
new territories that would be incorporated later. In order to fulfill these mandates, you
and your fellow surveyors were employed to create detailed maps and to lay down a grid
of rectangles within rectangles—range, township, section—in order to provide readily
saleable land to the public.

You and your fellow surveyors began by establishing one major north-south line
(principal meridian) and one east-west (base) line for each future state or groups of states.
But you ran into a problem. America is a very large nation. As you moved north, you
quickly ran out of room for those northern rows of townships. The Earth is indeed
curved, so the northern lands are actually smaller than their southern counterparts
between the same meridians. You and your fellow surveyors solved the problem by
staggering the northern townships so they’d fit into the range you were working on.

You never took the curvature of the Earth for granted for the rest of your life.

***

This process of learning by picking one’s way through rock fields of uncertainty has
much to recommend it. It mates human intelligence and limitations, creativity and
traditionalism, and curiosity and ignorance with a strong focus on a specific scientific
discipline, producing an explanatory system of natural processes of unsurpassed
predictive power. Science models rough, bumpy, textured reality into a mathematical
ideal, rendering the abstraction smooth enough for humans to understand it more fully.

That said, we must acknowledge that science is not and cannot be wholly reasonable,
even though it’s the best system of reasoning we’ve ever managed to develop. Science as
a whole is not planned, schooled, ruled, or in any sense guided by any one person or
group. It is an emergent system of observation, guesswork, experiment, theory,
exchange, and judgment. As such, it closely resembles the biological and cultural
evolutionary systems it examines. And yes, Rob Wipond, it is conservative.

Thinking rationally is problematical. Success depends on experience. Remember the

computer programmer’s warning about data? GIGO—“Garbage in, garbage out.” You
may assemble and dissect erroneous data until the cat’s nine lives are used up, and yet
you will fail to create an effective model of the world. Brilliant abstractions are no
substitute for good, solid observations. This is what Benjamin Franklin meant when he
warned is fellow delegates at the Constitutional Convention, “Reason may mislead us;
experience must be our guide.”

***

Be an astronaut. Your assignment is to compile data from navigational and

reconnaissance satellites to determine the precise shape of the Earth. You discover the
following: Our planet is somewhat pear-shaped. The equator bulges 13 miles, the North
Pole bulges a slight 33 feet, and the South Pole sags 100 feet. Even so, the Earth, to
scale, is more perfectly rounded than the most carefully crafted ball-bearings.

You’ve earned a rest. You stretch out by the window and watch the Earth turn “below”
you, then realize that everything you ever knew or did is wrapped up in that blue-white-
brown bubble of air-water-rock. What once seemed endless to your younger self back on
the Earth, you now envision as not even a speck compared to the vastness of the distances
between stars and galaxies.

Each time we humans study and explore our surroundings, we see our planet anew. The
Earth is our palimpsest to the understanding of ourselves.

***

In order for science as a system of inquiry to work properly, scientists had to pick the
investigative axioms by which they live very carefully. They had to come up with such
guidelines as: “Use the simplest explanations possible, all things being equal,” and “The
world is real,” and “Go with the flow of cause and effect,” and “Remove yourself and
your preconceptions as far as possible from your experiments and observations.” None
of these axioms can be proven “true” in any metaphysical sense. Scientists accept them
because they seem to lead toward positive results. They seem to help scientists avoid
unwarranted assumptions that may get in their way. They seem to allow scientists to
make genuinely new discoveries. They seem to work.

Contrast and compare these axioms to those offered by traditional philosophers and
theologians: “Use the most convoluted explanations you can dream up,” or “The world is
a mass solipsistic dream,” or “God did it.” Note which set of instructions is likely to lead
to a greater understanding of the world or further inquiry and which set is most likely to
mask the true nature of the world and stop inquiry in its tracks.

Wipond is flatly wrong when he urges us to “...live a life based on continually learning
and discovering, and not on accumulating beliefs of any kind.” The first part of that
recommendation can’t ever happen if we follow the second part. Learning must be a
process of accumulating beliefs. If we examine evolutionary systems, we’ll understand
why. The greater part of evolutionary “effort” involves the preservation of its constituent
parts. In biological evolution, for example, a more efficient hunter may arise out of
chance mutation, but then natural selection must repeat that pattern in succeeding
generations in order for the adaptation to be preserved in time.

A constant churning of genetic mutations will evolve nothing of consequence. You will
merely wind up with genetic drift. Without the power of preservation, a potentially
useful biological novelty will be buried under a blizzard of succeeding changes and will
be lost to the ages. No further adaptations can be built on any earlier adaptation. No
arrow of evolutionary change in time will ever gain a definite direction.
Thus the development and maintenance of scientific conservation in an apparently radical
age. The ratchet effect of doubt and insistence on corroborating evidence for any new
hypothesis preserves the vast, interlocking systems of thought and discovery, better
known as scientific theories, against the fluctuating fads of any given period of history.
Such old systems succumb only to constant, determined pressure of streams of new data
and newer, more illuminating interpretations of that data. Conservative science works as
well as it does because it forces young scientists to work hard and think brilliantly in
order to overthrow the work and thought of their elders.

Wipond’s heroes didn’t make the cut. Timothy Leary revealed little curiosity about what
LSD was really doing to the brain. To him it was just a good trip. It took scientists such
as Candace Pet to explain why drugs give us “good trips.” She and her colleagues
discovered that drugs mimic natural endorphins produced and deployed by the brain.
Linus Pauling took his vitamins in megadoses without bothering to address the double
danger of overdosing and rising tolerance levels. It is one thing to be on the cutting edge
of science; it’s another thing entirely to wholly grasp that edge without cutting yourself.

There is a certain amount of irony involved in the use of a phrase such as “conservative
science.” One would assume that any system that “conserves” or “preserves” would be
old and stodgy, stubbornly resistant to any and all change. And yet, conservative science
has utterly revolutionized and secularized our understanding of the world of nature and
ourselves. In so doing, scientific theory guides the development of powerful technologies
that have utterly transformed our way of life. If you don’t believe me, consider the
following: Most of us modern Americans live better lives than medieval kings. We could
never live so well unless our scientists managed to attain a solid understanding of the true
ways of matter and energy, and made this knowledge available to inventors and
engineers. Science and technology are bound together in a learning curve leading ever-
upward.

Conservative science is at once the detonator and conservator of the true cultural
revolution. The same ratchet effect that prevents slippage also preserves. Perhaps this
metaphor will help explain this apparent paradox: You need a good, sturdy floor on
which to dance.

***

Be a young merchant of ancient Troy. You stand upon the wharf while your first ship
laden with trade goods and treasure bound for all the known world sets sail. It is a clear,
calm day. The ship’s blazing white sails shimmer in the Mediterranean sunlight. You are
proud of your excellent eyesight. It permits you to watch as your ship appears to grow
smaller and smaller in the distance. Perhaps in a minute or two it will become so small, it
will appear as a mosquito, then a gnat, then disappear from view.

Wrong. Astonished, you stare as the ship reaches the horizon, then descends behind it.
First, the bow, then the lower mast, then the top sail. Your ship appears to have slipped
beneath the water.
For a moment you’re alarmed. Are the ship and men lost? Did the Great Middle Sea
devour them? Then you remember. When you were very young, you stood beside your
father on this very wharf, watching his ship appear to sink in just that way. He was
untroubled. He smile and said, “We sail upon the ever-turning wave of the world, the
Great Orb, Pendant of the Gods.”