Post by cal on Sept 9, 2015 20:32:51 GMT 1
Leo Charles Ferrari was the founder of the Canadian Flat Earth Society in 1970. In January 2015 I drove across Canada (5,000 km one way) from Alberta to Fredericton, New Brunswick to read his unpublished manuscript: The Earth Is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax! Here is my critical review of it. Enjoy!
Sunset would occur within the hour. Would I be able to make it to my pre-booked Thunder Bay hotel, or be stranded on Highway 17, east of Wawa? The police officer was stopping the few drivers who were crazy enough to be on the road during this January storm. Returning west, this was the final leg of my trip to the Harriet Irving Library of the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton, which was punctuated with some of the worst driving conditions I’ve ever encountered. I certainly was driven “to the edge” of my physical endurance on this trip, travelling more than 10,500 kilometers—more than one-quarter the way around the entire earth—to seek cosmological truth in this flat earth manuscript. I was now waiting for the snowplow to clear the road one more time before we would be allowed to go through, and then they would close the Trans-Canada Highway after us!
The late Leo Charles Ferrari (1927-2010) became a full professor of philosophy at St. Thomas University (STU) in 1971, and the first chair (1965) of the Executive Committee of St. Thomas University Faculty Association (FAUST). Ferrari, along with Raymond Fraser and Alden Nowlan, were the founding members of the Flat Earth Society of Canada, which was created on November 8, 1970, in Fredericton, N.B. In 1998, Ferrari was the first person to be named Professor Emeritus at STU.2
Ferrari’s stated purpose in writing this manuscript was to restore confidence in the validity of one’s own sense perceptions, in response to science’s insistence on things unseen.3 As can be seen from the above abbreviated biographic credits, Ferrari was a very intelligent and thinking person. However, one wonders whether he was “on the cutting edge” of cosmological theory, or had gone “over the edge” of reason by his foray into flat earth thought. Coincidentally, one of Leo Charles Ferrari’s books includes a book of poems entitled Over the Edge!4
First and foremost, I would like to congratulate Dr. Ferrari for his independent thought and going out on a limb in taking a position on flat-earth theory, and in establishing the Flat Earth Society of Canada. This act is all the more amazing considering that the bastion of surveying technology in Canada was also at Fredericton. No doubt, Dr. Ferrari had no fear of entering or creating a storm of controversy of his own.
At that time “the cutting edge” of geodesy studies were in two locations in the world. The first was in Stuttgart, Germany, and the other was at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton! The department of Geodesy was established in 1960, became the fully fledged Department of Surveying Engineering in 1965, and changed its name to Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering in 1994.5
Not coincidentally, the head of the surveying/engineering company where I work graduated from UNB. One of his professors was Petr Vaníček (1935-), who is currently Professor Emeritus and has academic credentials longer than some books!6 Undoubtedly, Ferrari had discourse with the Faculty of the Geodesy and Geomatics Department, and the fact that the manuscript remains unpublished is more than likely due to the common location of these two bipolar streams of thought.
A second reason why I believe that the manuscript remains unpublished is because it is so polarizing! Unfortunately, Dr. Ferrari was so convinced of his “planoterrestrialist” concept that he descended into name calling, vitriolic and polemical language. A few examples from him and one his colleagues will suffice:
“This poor, benighted man [Copernicus] is the famed inventor of the notion of the ‘Spinning Earth,’ a far-out fantasy which has gained widespread popularity among the thoughtless masses in the more recent past” (p. i); “Anyone with the bare minimum of uncontaminated Common Sense can readily see that the Earth is both flat and motionless…” (p. ii); “Indeed, it would seem that the essential flatness of the Earth had already been denied even before the wild aberrations of the Pythagoreans in the sixth century B.C. These pitiful creatures went so far as to claim not only the supposed sphericity of the earth, but also its supposed annual rotation about the central sun” (p. iii); “No one is more pitifully foolish than the person who attempts to prove by argument that the world is round.—Alden Nowlan” (Cover).
I believe there is a third reason why this manuscript has not seen beyond the walls of the Harriet Irving Library Archives. This is because it was sacrificed on the altar and to the god of Scientism. Dr. Ferrari had the rare visionary insight and mental ability to see beyond the veil of the currently well entrenched heliocentric cosmological paradigm and trust his senses. He was actually correct on all counts he discusses, save one—that the earth is indeed round. It is both flat and spherical at the same time, i.e. a geocosmos.7
Written and unpublished in 1973, the 500th anniversary of Copernicus’ birth, this manuscript was meant to reverse the “globularist” hoax—a hoax indeed—because Copernicus offered no proof for his contentions. Copernicus’ only correct postulate was his second one—that the earth is spherical. The rest of his cosmological system is entirely fictitious. However, it has been adopted as scientific fact!
In contrast to Copernicus and the present day globularists, Ferrari was right on many points. These include: 1) The earth is flat (p. ii); 2) The earth is motionless (pp. i,ii); 3) Geocentricity is correct rather than heliocentricity; and 4) The earth has a prominent position in the universe (p. ii, 208). However, he paints all the globularists with the same brush, assuming that a spherical earth shape necessarily implies all of other the assumptions of heliocentricity, not supposing that the shape of the earth could be spherical without any of the other heliocentric entrapments.
On the first page of his paper, Ferrari states that his purpose is to determine the shape of the face of the earth:
The question I want to raise here is whether this earth is shaped like a globe (as the brainwashed geographers would have us believe), or on the other hand, is the face of the Earth essentially a flat surface? (p. 1).
However, he offers a choice between only two cosmological models, and he does not actually arrive at an acceptable concept within the confines of the paper as determined from the evidence presented. Later on, he accuses the globularists of begging the question (i.e., assuming as true what one is trying to prove), but essentially has committed the same sin himself. This is as bad as the pot calling the kettle black!
When one reads through these proofs, it becomes apparent that, for the most part, they are vitiated by what is known in logic as petition principia, or the fallacy of assuming as true what one is supposedly proving (p. 70, emphasis his, lcf).
We have discussed at length the ‘scientific’ proofs for the claimed sphericity of the Earth and seen these proofs crumble before our eyes on closer examination. Our conclusion therefore must be that they are proofs indeed, but proofs only of the prejudices of their proponents (p. 111).
Guilty of his own accusation, Ferrari and other flat-earthers, assume that the earth is flat, without first proving it. “… we believe, nay, we know that the Earth is flat” (p. 2, emphasis his, lcf).
We, of the Flat Earth Society know that the Earth is flat, as any good person of uncorrupted Common Sense can readily perceive. It is therefore up to the deceitful Globularists to prove that the earth is spherical! (p. 7, emphasis his, lcf).
The sad truth for “planoterrestrialists” is that geodesic studies have indeed shown the earth to be spherical (concave not convex).8 However, on the other hand, none of the postulates other than the sphericity of the “globularists’” cosmological model have been shown to be true by any scientific experiment (and no, the earth is not a convex ball but rather a concave sphere). Actually, the converse is true—that the earth is motionless9, the sun and planets orbit inside of the concave earth, and the stars (not the earth) rotate once every twenty-four hours,10 and we live on the inside of a concave Earth. 11
One of Ferrari’s main arguments for his flat-earth position and against the globularists is that “The Globular Theory Just Won’t Hold Water!” (pp. 24, 27). While, Ferrari is actually correct that the earth’s surface is flat, he does not arrive at this conclusion by proof or evidence submitted in his paper. There is no mention of non-Euclidean or Rieman geometry to explain the curved surface of the earth being equivalent to the curved space of Ernst Barthel. Nor does he actually define what type of flat-Earth surface he envisions. Is it a flat disk, or some other flat shape? In this sense he has just lucked out with the right answer without the required due diligence. Ernst Barthel’s works, while sadly only in German, explain how the Earth can be both flat and spherical at the same time—because the Earth’s surface is actually curved space!12
I found Ferrari’s section on the “Growth of Globularism” to be useful to see the propagation of the Copernican error and the accretions of heliocentric thought throughout history. In other places, he provides some valid arguments, such as the horizon, water requiring a flat surface to be contained, and the unknown cause of gravity. I also noticed one paragraph which betrays his ignorance of light rays bending upwards, as has been demonstrated by Heinrich Hohenner (1874-1966) and Wilhelm Martin.13
Now we put the critical question to our poor benighted marine Globularist: ‘Is the horizon all round us on the same level or not?’ The answer must of course be ‘yes,’ as can be easily verified with a theodolite, if needs be (p. 57).
Overall, I was quite satisfied with having made the effort to see the work of this great man. I too, was a flat-Earth proponent for a couple of years, but thanks to Ferrari and others, I can now stand on the shoulders of giants and see much further.
At the end of his paper, Dr. Ferrari gives a clarion call to a more realistic cosmological model. He now speaks from the grave and yearns for a restoration and a return to the much simpler cosmological understanding of the ancients, and I can only agree:
Give us back the Earth which was destroyed by the wicked Globularists. Restore the Earth to its rightful place as the pillar and ground of the universe. Give back to the human race a human Earth in a human universe in which we can once more live as human beings (p. 208).
As I sat on the side of the road to wait for the sign to continue, I pondered the words of my hostess in Fredericton. “If there is a storm and the roads are bad, you would stop and check into a hotel, wouldn’t you?” Wawa would take at least an hour’s drive through some of the worst conditions I’ve ever faced, and then, Thunder Bay, another five and a half hours beyond that. Not afraid of a challenge, like Dr. Ferrari and many other courageous pioneers before me, I repeated my mantra—“Fortune favors the brave”—and headed into the storm.
Copyright©2015 by Mark Vincent
The Earth Is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION page i-vi
Chapter
1. Round or Flat? 1
2. Does Half the World Live Upside Down? [Upside-down in original] 18
3. The More Elementary “Proofs” of the Globularists 43
4. The Scientific “Proofs” of the Globularists 69
5. The Growth of Globularism 111
6. Gyroglobularism, or the Curse of Copernicus 144
7. Planoterrestrialism or Globularism? 173
8. The Philosophy of the Flat Earth Society 192
9. Adventures with the Flat Earth Society 209
EPILOGUE 234
FLAT EARTHERS’ FORUM
TRACTATES OF THE EXECUTIVE
Newton? … Nonsense! by H.R.H. James A. Stewart 241
Colocation in Planoterrestrialist Space by Leo C. Ferrari 250
The Special Case of the Ship Seeming to Submerge on
Horizon, Leo C. Ferrari 261
The Age of Exploration, Alden Nowlan 271
Essai sur la crédulité des incrédules, Alden Nowlan 275
An Interim Report to the President’s First Field Trip
To the Edge, Alden Nowlan 278
The Earth is Flat (Song), Captain Raymond Fraser 282
A Seaman Looks at Globularism, Captain Raymond Fraser 284
Is Globularism Scientific? by David Paul Guntar 287
Where Do you Stand? by David Paul Guntar 291
A Short Proof of Planoterrestrialism, by David Paul Guntar 297
PAPERS AND POEMS BY MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY 301
In Defense of the Flat Earth Society, Bryan H. Andrew 301
What Shall I Tell my Child About Planoterrestrialism?
Monroe H. Freedman 307
Questioning “Facts,” B.W. Mayhew 309
A Planoterrestrialist’s Creed, Barry Van Kirk 312
“ON THE LEVEL” – AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE
FLAT EARTH SOCIETY, Dr. Leo Ferrari, by Allan Chambers 313
FOOTNOTES 318
SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILS 330
FOOTNOTES
1 Leo Charles Ferrari, President, The Flat Earth Society, The Earth is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax. Harriet Irving Library Archives, University of New Brunswick, MG H 168, Series 2, Subseries 3, File 53, Box 8, 1973.
2 New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, “Leo Charles Ferrari.” St. Thomas University, 2011. w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/ferrari_leo_charles.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
3 Ibid.
4 Leo Charles Ferrari, Over the edge! poems in grateful celebration of fifty years of life, love and of laughter. Fredericton, N.B.: Owl and the Pussycat Publications, St. Thomas University, 1977.
5 Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, “50th Anniversary Celebrations,” University of New Brunswick, 2010. www2.unb.ca/gge/50/50.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
6 Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, “Petr Vaníček,” University of New Brunswick, 2013. www2.unb.ca/gge/Personnel/Vanicek/Vanicek.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
7 See the work of Mostafa Abdelkader, “A Geocosmos: Mapping Outer Space Into a Hollow Earth.” Speculations in Science and Technology, 6 (1983): 81-89; “The Hollow Earth: A Maddening Theory that can’t be Disproved.” OMNI Magazine, (October 1983), p. 128 cited at www.skepticfiles.org/ufo1/theory.htm, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; also “Mostafa Abdelkader and the Geocosmos,” www.andrepiet.nl/holle_aarde/Abdelkader.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; as well as Ernst Barthel, Polargeometrie, Berlin: Druck und Verlag von Leonhard Simion Nf., 1919.
8 See also Koresh (pseudo. Cyrus Reed Teed), Ulysses G. Morrow, The Cellular Cosmogony: Or the Earth a Concave Sphere. (Chicago, Il: Guiding Star Publishing House, 1898), and Johannes Lang, Die Hohlwelt-Theorie (The Hollow World Theory). Frankfurt A.M.: Verlag Schirmer & Mahlau, 1938.
9 The Rotating Earth: theory, fact or fiction? abafte.blogspot.ca/2008/05/earth-is-not-revolving.html?view=classic, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
10 Ibid, François Dominique Arago and George Biddle Airy’s (Airy’s Failure) experiments.
11 See the numerous excellent videos by Stephen Christopher. For example: “The Concave Earth,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0yBX68g3vk#t=32, accessed Jan. 19, 2015; His website: “Miss Teri Babylon Lone Star,” www.missteribabylonestar.com/index.html, accessed Jan. 19, 2015; and his Concave Earth Treatise: www.missteribabylonestar.com/CET5.pdf, accessed Jan. 19, 2015.
12 Ernst Barthel, Polargeometrie; and Die Erde als Totalebene: Hyberbolische Raumtheorie mit einer Voruntersuchung über die Kegelschitte, (The Earth as totally level: Hyperbolic Space Theory with a Preliminary Investigation in Conic Sections), Leipzig, Otto Hillmann, Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914; Einführung in die Polar-Geometrie, (Introduction to Polar Geometry), Leipzig, 1932.
13 Heinrich Hohenner, Geodäsie: Eine Anleitung zu Geodätischen Messungen für Anfänger (Geodesy: A Manual of Geodetic Measurements for Beginners), B.G. Teubner, 1910; Rolf Kepler, Messung sur Lichkrümmung, (Measurement of Light Bending), www.rolf-keppler.de/lichtkrumm.htm, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; Wild Heretic, “Bendy light – the evidence.” www.wildheretic.com/bendy-light-the-evidence/, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; “Horizon.” www.wildheretic.com/horizon/, accessed Jan. 21, 2015.
Over the Edge! A Critical Review of Dr. Leo Charles Ferrari’s unpublished manuscript The Earth Is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax1
Reviewed by Cal Piso, B.Sc., M. Div., P.Eng. Sunset would occur within the hour. Would I be able to make it to my pre-booked Thunder Bay hotel, or be stranded on Highway 17, east of Wawa? The police officer was stopping the few drivers who were crazy enough to be on the road during this January storm. Returning west, this was the final leg of my trip to the Harriet Irving Library of the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton, which was punctuated with some of the worst driving conditions I’ve ever encountered. I certainly was driven “to the edge” of my physical endurance on this trip, travelling more than 10,500 kilometers—more than one-quarter the way around the entire earth—to seek cosmological truth in this flat earth manuscript. I was now waiting for the snowplow to clear the road one more time before we would be allowed to go through, and then they would close the Trans-Canada Highway after us!
The late Leo Charles Ferrari (1927-2010) became a full professor of philosophy at St. Thomas University (STU) in 1971, and the first chair (1965) of the Executive Committee of St. Thomas University Faculty Association (FAUST). Ferrari, along with Raymond Fraser and Alden Nowlan, were the founding members of the Flat Earth Society of Canada, which was created on November 8, 1970, in Fredericton, N.B. In 1998, Ferrari was the first person to be named Professor Emeritus at STU.2
Ferrari’s stated purpose in writing this manuscript was to restore confidence in the validity of one’s own sense perceptions, in response to science’s insistence on things unseen.3 As can be seen from the above abbreviated biographic credits, Ferrari was a very intelligent and thinking person. However, one wonders whether he was “on the cutting edge” of cosmological theory, or had gone “over the edge” of reason by his foray into flat earth thought. Coincidentally, one of Leo Charles Ferrari’s books includes a book of poems entitled Over the Edge!4
First and foremost, I would like to congratulate Dr. Ferrari for his independent thought and going out on a limb in taking a position on flat-earth theory, and in establishing the Flat Earth Society of Canada. This act is all the more amazing considering that the bastion of surveying technology in Canada was also at Fredericton. No doubt, Dr. Ferrari had no fear of entering or creating a storm of controversy of his own.
At that time “the cutting edge” of geodesy studies were in two locations in the world. The first was in Stuttgart, Germany, and the other was at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton! The department of Geodesy was established in 1960, became the fully fledged Department of Surveying Engineering in 1965, and changed its name to Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering in 1994.5
Not coincidentally, the head of the surveying/engineering company where I work graduated from UNB. One of his professors was Petr Vaníček (1935-), who is currently Professor Emeritus and has academic credentials longer than some books!6 Undoubtedly, Ferrari had discourse with the Faculty of the Geodesy and Geomatics Department, and the fact that the manuscript remains unpublished is more than likely due to the common location of these two bipolar streams of thought.
A second reason why I believe that the manuscript remains unpublished is because it is so polarizing! Unfortunately, Dr. Ferrari was so convinced of his “planoterrestrialist” concept that he descended into name calling, vitriolic and polemical language. A few examples from him and one his colleagues will suffice:
“This poor, benighted man [Copernicus] is the famed inventor of the notion of the ‘Spinning Earth,’ a far-out fantasy which has gained widespread popularity among the thoughtless masses in the more recent past” (p. i); “Anyone with the bare minimum of uncontaminated Common Sense can readily see that the Earth is both flat and motionless…” (p. ii); “Indeed, it would seem that the essential flatness of the Earth had already been denied even before the wild aberrations of the Pythagoreans in the sixth century B.C. These pitiful creatures went so far as to claim not only the supposed sphericity of the earth, but also its supposed annual rotation about the central sun” (p. iii); “No one is more pitifully foolish than the person who attempts to prove by argument that the world is round.—Alden Nowlan” (Cover).
I believe there is a third reason why this manuscript has not seen beyond the walls of the Harriet Irving Library Archives. This is because it was sacrificed on the altar and to the god of Scientism. Dr. Ferrari had the rare visionary insight and mental ability to see beyond the veil of the currently well entrenched heliocentric cosmological paradigm and trust his senses. He was actually correct on all counts he discusses, save one—that the earth is indeed round. It is both flat and spherical at the same time, i.e. a geocosmos.7
Written and unpublished in 1973, the 500th anniversary of Copernicus’ birth, this manuscript was meant to reverse the “globularist” hoax—a hoax indeed—because Copernicus offered no proof for his contentions. Copernicus’ only correct postulate was his second one—that the earth is spherical. The rest of his cosmological system is entirely fictitious. However, it has been adopted as scientific fact!
In contrast to Copernicus and the present day globularists, Ferrari was right on many points. These include: 1) The earth is flat (p. ii); 2) The earth is motionless (pp. i,ii); 3) Geocentricity is correct rather than heliocentricity; and 4) The earth has a prominent position in the universe (p. ii, 208). However, he paints all the globularists with the same brush, assuming that a spherical earth shape necessarily implies all of other the assumptions of heliocentricity, not supposing that the shape of the earth could be spherical without any of the other heliocentric entrapments.
On the first page of his paper, Ferrari states that his purpose is to determine the shape of the face of the earth:
The question I want to raise here is whether this earth is shaped like a globe (as the brainwashed geographers would have us believe), or on the other hand, is the face of the Earth essentially a flat surface? (p. 1).
However, he offers a choice between only two cosmological models, and he does not actually arrive at an acceptable concept within the confines of the paper as determined from the evidence presented. Later on, he accuses the globularists of begging the question (i.e., assuming as true what one is trying to prove), but essentially has committed the same sin himself. This is as bad as the pot calling the kettle black!
When one reads through these proofs, it becomes apparent that, for the most part, they are vitiated by what is known in logic as petition principia, or the fallacy of assuming as true what one is supposedly proving (p. 70, emphasis his, lcf).
We have discussed at length the ‘scientific’ proofs for the claimed sphericity of the Earth and seen these proofs crumble before our eyes on closer examination. Our conclusion therefore must be that they are proofs indeed, but proofs only of the prejudices of their proponents (p. 111).
Guilty of his own accusation, Ferrari and other flat-earthers, assume that the earth is flat, without first proving it. “… we believe, nay, we know that the Earth is flat” (p. 2, emphasis his, lcf).
We, of the Flat Earth Society know that the Earth is flat, as any good person of uncorrupted Common Sense can readily perceive. It is therefore up to the deceitful Globularists to prove that the earth is spherical! (p. 7, emphasis his, lcf).
The sad truth for “planoterrestrialists” is that geodesic studies have indeed shown the earth to be spherical (concave not convex).8 However, on the other hand, none of the postulates other than the sphericity of the “globularists’” cosmological model have been shown to be true by any scientific experiment (and no, the earth is not a convex ball but rather a concave sphere). Actually, the converse is true—that the earth is motionless9, the sun and planets orbit inside of the concave earth, and the stars (not the earth) rotate once every twenty-four hours,10 and we live on the inside of a concave Earth. 11
One of Ferrari’s main arguments for his flat-earth position and against the globularists is that “The Globular Theory Just Won’t Hold Water!” (pp. 24, 27). While, Ferrari is actually correct that the earth’s surface is flat, he does not arrive at this conclusion by proof or evidence submitted in his paper. There is no mention of non-Euclidean or Rieman geometry to explain the curved surface of the earth being equivalent to the curved space of Ernst Barthel. Nor does he actually define what type of flat-Earth surface he envisions. Is it a flat disk, or some other flat shape? In this sense he has just lucked out with the right answer without the required due diligence. Ernst Barthel’s works, while sadly only in German, explain how the Earth can be both flat and spherical at the same time—because the Earth’s surface is actually curved space!12
I found Ferrari’s section on the “Growth of Globularism” to be useful to see the propagation of the Copernican error and the accretions of heliocentric thought throughout history. In other places, he provides some valid arguments, such as the horizon, water requiring a flat surface to be contained, and the unknown cause of gravity. I also noticed one paragraph which betrays his ignorance of light rays bending upwards, as has been demonstrated by Heinrich Hohenner (1874-1966) and Wilhelm Martin.13
Now we put the critical question to our poor benighted marine Globularist: ‘Is the horizon all round us on the same level or not?’ The answer must of course be ‘yes,’ as can be easily verified with a theodolite, if needs be (p. 57).
Overall, I was quite satisfied with having made the effort to see the work of this great man. I too, was a flat-Earth proponent for a couple of years, but thanks to Ferrari and others, I can now stand on the shoulders of giants and see much further.
At the end of his paper, Dr. Ferrari gives a clarion call to a more realistic cosmological model. He now speaks from the grave and yearns for a restoration and a return to the much simpler cosmological understanding of the ancients, and I can only agree:
Give us back the Earth which was destroyed by the wicked Globularists. Restore the Earth to its rightful place as the pillar and ground of the universe. Give back to the human race a human Earth in a human universe in which we can once more live as human beings (p. 208).
As I sat on the side of the road to wait for the sign to continue, I pondered the words of my hostess in Fredericton. “If there is a storm and the roads are bad, you would stop and check into a hotel, wouldn’t you?” Wawa would take at least an hour’s drive through some of the worst conditions I’ve ever faced, and then, Thunder Bay, another five and a half hours beyond that. Not afraid of a challenge, like Dr. Ferrari and many other courageous pioneers before me, I repeated my mantra—“Fortune favors the brave”—and headed into the storm.
Copyright©2015 by Mark Vincent
The Earth Is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION page i-vi
Chapter
1. Round or Flat? 1
2. Does Half the World Live Upside Down? [Upside-down in original] 18
3. The More Elementary “Proofs” of the Globularists 43
4. The Scientific “Proofs” of the Globularists 69
5. The Growth of Globularism 111
6. Gyroglobularism, or the Curse of Copernicus 144
7. Planoterrestrialism or Globularism? 173
8. The Philosophy of the Flat Earth Society 192
9. Adventures with the Flat Earth Society 209
EPILOGUE 234
FLAT EARTHERS’ FORUM
TRACTATES OF THE EXECUTIVE
Newton? … Nonsense! by H.R.H. James A. Stewart 241
Colocation in Planoterrestrialist Space by Leo C. Ferrari 250
The Special Case of the Ship Seeming to Submerge on
Horizon, Leo C. Ferrari 261
The Age of Exploration, Alden Nowlan 271
Essai sur la crédulité des incrédules, Alden Nowlan 275
An Interim Report to the President’s First Field Trip
To the Edge, Alden Nowlan 278
The Earth is Flat (Song), Captain Raymond Fraser 282
A Seaman Looks at Globularism, Captain Raymond Fraser 284
Is Globularism Scientific? by David Paul Guntar 287
Where Do you Stand? by David Paul Guntar 291
A Short Proof of Planoterrestrialism, by David Paul Guntar 297
PAPERS AND POEMS BY MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY 301
In Defense of the Flat Earth Society, Bryan H. Andrew 301
What Shall I Tell my Child About Planoterrestrialism?
Monroe H. Freedman 307
Questioning “Facts,” B.W. Mayhew 309
A Planoterrestrialist’s Creed, Barry Van Kirk 312
“ON THE LEVEL” – AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE
FLAT EARTH SOCIETY, Dr. Leo Ferrari, by Allan Chambers 313
FOOTNOTES 318
SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILS 330
FOOTNOTES
1 Leo Charles Ferrari, President, The Flat Earth Society, The Earth is Flat: An Exposé of the Globularist Hoax. Harriet Irving Library Archives, University of New Brunswick, MG H 168, Series 2, Subseries 3, File 53, Box 8, 1973.
2 New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, “Leo Charles Ferrari.” St. Thomas University, 2011. w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/ferrari_leo_charles.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
3 Ibid.
4 Leo Charles Ferrari, Over the edge! poems in grateful celebration of fifty years of life, love and of laughter. Fredericton, N.B.: Owl and the Pussycat Publications, St. Thomas University, 1977.
5 Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, “50th Anniversary Celebrations,” University of New Brunswick, 2010. www2.unb.ca/gge/50/50.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
6 Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, “Petr Vaníček,” University of New Brunswick, 2013. www2.unb.ca/gge/Personnel/Vanicek/Vanicek.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
7 See the work of Mostafa Abdelkader, “A Geocosmos: Mapping Outer Space Into a Hollow Earth.” Speculations in Science and Technology, 6 (1983): 81-89; “The Hollow Earth: A Maddening Theory that can’t be Disproved.” OMNI Magazine, (October 1983), p. 128 cited at www.skepticfiles.org/ufo1/theory.htm, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; also “Mostafa Abdelkader and the Geocosmos,” www.andrepiet.nl/holle_aarde/Abdelkader.html, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; as well as Ernst Barthel, Polargeometrie, Berlin: Druck und Verlag von Leonhard Simion Nf., 1919.
8 See also Koresh (pseudo. Cyrus Reed Teed), Ulysses G. Morrow, The Cellular Cosmogony: Or the Earth a Concave Sphere. (Chicago, Il: Guiding Star Publishing House, 1898), and Johannes Lang, Die Hohlwelt-Theorie (The Hollow World Theory). Frankfurt A.M.: Verlag Schirmer & Mahlau, 1938.
9 The Rotating Earth: theory, fact or fiction? abafte.blogspot.ca/2008/05/earth-is-not-revolving.html?view=classic, accessed Jan. 18, 2015.
10 Ibid, François Dominique Arago and George Biddle Airy’s (Airy’s Failure) experiments.
11 See the numerous excellent videos by Stephen Christopher. For example: “The Concave Earth,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0yBX68g3vk#t=32, accessed Jan. 19, 2015; His website: “Miss Teri Babylon Lone Star,” www.missteribabylonestar.com/index.html, accessed Jan. 19, 2015; and his Concave Earth Treatise: www.missteribabylonestar.com/CET5.pdf, accessed Jan. 19, 2015.
12 Ernst Barthel, Polargeometrie; and Die Erde als Totalebene: Hyberbolische Raumtheorie mit einer Voruntersuchung über die Kegelschitte, (The Earth as totally level: Hyperbolic Space Theory with a Preliminary Investigation in Conic Sections), Leipzig, Otto Hillmann, Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914; Einführung in die Polar-Geometrie, (Introduction to Polar Geometry), Leipzig, 1932.
13 Heinrich Hohenner, Geodäsie: Eine Anleitung zu Geodätischen Messungen für Anfänger (Geodesy: A Manual of Geodetic Measurements for Beginners), B.G. Teubner, 1910; Rolf Kepler, Messung sur Lichkrümmung, (Measurement of Light Bending), www.rolf-keppler.de/lichtkrumm.htm, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; Wild Heretic, “Bendy light – the evidence.” www.wildheretic.com/bendy-light-the-evidence/, accessed Jan. 18, 2015; “Horizon.” www.wildheretic.com/horizon/, accessed Jan. 21, 2015.
