History Talk: The Earth is not Flat. Alan Hunton

Another very interesting talk from Alan on what we might term “scientific history”

Ancient civilisations had little understanding of our planet and the general opinion was that it was flat or saucer shaped. All the heavenly bodies appeared to revolve around the Earth. In this talk we will learn how Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers working in Alexandria disproved the flat Earth theory. Surprisingly they also discovered the size of the Earth and Moon and the distances between them without using any telescopes or advanced equipment. The influence of Aristotle and Ptolemy and the teachings of the Church stalled any further progress and it was not until the seventeenth century that Kepler and Galileo could show beyond doubt that the planets went round the Sun using the earliest telescopes as aids.

However unlikely it seems, we will also discover that in the 18^th Century, Nevil Maskelyne found a way of ‘weighing’ the Earth by taking a very large plumb line on a series of rambles in the Scottish Highlands.