that last sentence everybody says iirc. I've heard it from quite a few other leaders too. it's generic
"Your maps have proven that the world is round"
- Thread starter Morholt
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that last sentence everybody says iirc. I've heard it from quite a few other leaders too. it's generic
No there can be other geometries which yield these kind of shadows, certainly with the very limited amount of data they had. It does however tell you that the earth is convex near the positions of your observations. Eclipses can show something, they are however unclear 2D projections which cannot be used as a proof of 3D objects.
Pythagoras and his contemprories also had some ideas that were quite wrong, they looked at things mostly from a philosophical way rather than a empirical way.
hahaha. I'm confident that if forced to u could logically prove that given the data available, changing shadows, lunar eclipses, constellations, horizons u could prove the earth was a sphere. dismisses the evidence peacemeal is dishonest, and frankly is simply not how reality worked.
I don't know what ur contention is, I guess its that the greeks believed it was a sphere, accurately measured the circumference of the sphere but they coulda been wrong, maybe, because the earth could have been....what exactly?
Well the data makes it plausible that the shape of the earth has spherical properties, however likeliness is no truth. It might work in a court of law, but science needs proper evidence.
Earth is an oblate spheroid as wikipedia kindly states it. It is however a sphere within engineering uncertainty.
science works on conjecture all the damn time. now ur just being obtuse and unnecessarily silly. even math, which is the most "proof demanding" of the sciences has worked on the assumption of the riemann hypothesis for 200 years now w/o "proof." god knows what conjectures and hypothesis physicists go around using.
Math is build out of axioma's, physics uses some axioma's. You should however not confuse proof with guessing, the Greeks estimated the circumference of the earth assuming it was a sphere. It is wrong to use an axioma to proof that axioma.
Take the following arguments, which are exactly the same.
- I assume that the number of the current civ is 10,000 times the circumference of the earth.
I measure that the current number of civ is 4.
So the circumference is 40,000 km.
Well the circumference of the earth is 40,000 km.
So I have proven that the size of the earth is a function of civ. - I assume that the earth is a sphere.
I measure some shadows and such and calculate the circumference.
So the circumference is 40,000 km.
Well the circumference of the earth is 40,000 km.
So I have proven that the earth is a sphere
You cannot know that the earth is a sphere until you have examined it fully rather than partially, and theorem 1 holds until civ 5 comes out.
like I said, science uses conjecture all the time. riemann hypothesis unproven for 200 years, and it underpines dozens, maybe hundreds of other mathematical proofs. even einsteins relativity had assumptions that were proven after the fact.
YOUR WRONG, what u propose is NOT how science works. what u suggest is pedantic, silly, and unnecessary. I'm sorry u got caught up in this and now u feel u have to keep responding. but this is just going to degrade from here, because ur just going to slip farther and farther into unrealistic nonsense.
Well you are wrong, relativity has never had axioma's that were proven later. There are 2 axioma's that will not be proven.
You are the silly one here, you have no intention whatsoever to understand my point; a petitio principii is no proof.
ur point is wrong, 100% verifiably wrong. ur trying to say that its not "real proof" that they had these half dozen or so observations that led them to a consensus that the earth was a sphere, because it could have, somehow, been another object. even though of course u dont propose this mystical other object. u then try to use the backup that "real science" uses "proof" which is also 100% wrong.
so considered that ur basically just wrong, both times, and completely, can this now end?
well id hardly say, working something out using the best of your knowledge is lucky
They used scientific/mathematic methods & what evidence they had so id say it was a lot more judgement than luck!Any ellipsoid would work.
You say they proved it, I on the contrary say that they did not do so. Thereafter I used an argumentation that shows that the kind of proof you refer to is nonsense, and now I would be the one who says science needs proof. I say it uses axioma's and that these axioma's cannot be proven from reasoning build upon these axioma's.
You have no interest in responding to my arguments besides saying that I am wrong or silly. You do not respond to my actual words, and do not ask someone to end an argument, walk away yourself instead.
Sorry if this is off-topic, but would you believe that some people in our modern society still believe the Earth is flat? 
Check out the Flat Earth Society.
Edit: There was another site I came across about a year ago, that to me had stronger points in their arguments, as well as a really interesting map. Unfortunately, I can't find that specific site again.
Check out the Flat Earth Society.
Edit: There was another site I came across about a year ago, that to me had stronger points in their arguments, as well as a really interesting map. Unfortunately, I can't find that specific site again.
I have responded to ur arguments. science USES WHAT THE GREEKS USED AND WORSE ALL THE TIME. the greeks had actual experimentation. and any elipsoid would not work, because a lunar eclipse would not shadow a cricle off some oblong elipsoid, so AGAIN ur wrong.
ur wrong, theoritically, ur wrong practically, ur wrong in even ur counterargument. I mean really, its hard to get much more wrong. like I said, go look up the riemann hypothesis, UNRPOVEN, used in DOZENS of other mathematical proofs. if u know anything about the advance of human knowledge through science u wouldn't propose such an absurdity as they didnt have "real proof."
Well maybe you do not understand me because I did not use the English axiom, look up what it means and you agree with me.
An ellipsoid with two equal axes can be projected as a circle. An ellipsoid with almost equal axes will look like a circle. They did never proof that the earth was a sphere, it was an axiom. The property of an axiom is that you cannot proof it.
And finally the earth is proven to be not a sphere, but rather a spheroid, so they cannot have proven it rightfully, because it is wrong.
Well maybe you do not understand me because I did not use the English axiom, look up what it means and you agree with me.
An ellipsoid with two equal axes can be projected as a circle. An ellipsoid with almost equal axes will look like a circle. They did never proof that the earth was a sphere, it was an axiom. The property of an axiom is that you cannot proof it.
And finally the earth is proven to be not a sphere, but rather a spheroid, so they cannot have proven it rightfully, because it is wrong.
like I said, ur living in the dream worlf of understanding NOTHING about how science OPERATES. newton was wrong too, SCIENCE ISNT THEOLOGY. the greeks had numerous observations, they even had experiments and they reached a conclusion that the earth was a sphere. that conclusion is basically true, no matter how uninterestingly and inanely pedantic u want to be.
like I said, ur wrong in every possible way I can imagine. ur wrong theoretically, ur wrong practically, ur wrong about the shape, ur wrong about present day sceince, ur wrong about what science considers proof, ur wrong about how science operates. just...plain...wrong.
and an elipsoid w/ almost equal axis IS a sphere. seriously, here's the equation x^2/a^2+y^2/b^2+z^2/c^2=1. a=b=c define as r, makes it x^2+y^2+z^2=r^2. which is a sphere. welcome to sphere land.
If the Earth was a sphereoid, there would be no mountains or valleys.
Indeed. Aristotle was closer to understanding the mechanics of conception and developmental biology than scholars (mostly in association with the Church) did in the Middle Ages. In a book for a Developmental Biology class I took, in the introductory chapter it had mentioned that Aristotle had an understanding that during developmental biology cells proliferate and form new tissues which are organized into the embryo and continue to develop until birth. While in the Middle Ages, it was thought by many that little microscopic babies lived in sperm and simply got bigger in the womb
I don't know exactly how much the Greeks did or did not know in regards to the shape of the Earth. But if they had an accurate understanding of its shape, it wouldn't surprise me. It's just that after the fall of Rome everyone thought the world was far more simple than it really is. The concept of evolution was well on its way to being formulated in antiquity too, but again the Middle Ages put a halt to that.
Quite often the "court of law" in science (especially sciences such as theoretical physics) is peer review. A number of your peers look at your theory and also examine the evidence for and against it. The theory is then either dismissed out of hand or not dismissed. If it isn't dismissed then it has a chance to start to gain traction, but it's not "proven" in any mathematical sense.
And that's exactly as it should be. Without initial guesswork nothing can get done.
And the fact of the matter is that the Earth is earth shaped, and not a sphere (but, of course, lies close). Your best bet for an analytical approxmation for the shape of the earth is probably a geoid.
A few of you guys need to remember this:
Many people and academic disciplines follow the idea that scientific theories can't be proven, they can only be unproven. With that in mind, it may be that the Greeks hypothesized that the Earth was a sphere and they collected data to support their hypothesis. However, their data did not eliminate the possibility that the Earth was something other than a (misshapen) sphere. Hence, they did not prove their theory but they did support their hypothesis.
And, furthermore, this is the way it would be reported in many of today's scholarly journals: these data and/or these analyses "...support the hypothesis that..." It is very rare to read of claims of "proof."
Many people and academic disciplines follow the idea that scientific theories can't be proven, they can only be unproven. With that in mind, it may be that the Greeks hypothesized that the Earth was a sphere and they collected data to support their hypothesis. However, their data did not eliminate the possibility that the Earth was something other than a (misshapen) sphere. Hence, they did not prove their theory but they did support their hypothesis.
And, furthermore, this is the way it would be reported in many of today's scholarly journals: these data and/or these analyses "...support the hypothesis that..." It is very rare to read of claims of "proof."
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