ow many men have ever paused in the summer night to look up at the stars and give a thought, not to astronomy, but to the men who first slashed the Gordian knot of planetary motion? Of course, all educated men have, at one time or another, scraped the surface of the source of such facts. But, today we speak grandly of galaxies and consider astronomy an exact science and bow down before facts.
There probably does not exist a professor in the world who has not, unwittingly or otherwise, held the ignorance of the ancients to ridicule; and there is no field where this is more apparent than astronomy.
Early Hebrews and Chaldeans, among others, believed in a flat earth, a sky supported by mountains and which upheld a sea, which, in turn, leaked through and caused rain. The flat plain was supported by nothing in particular. Of course we all know this, but there is a worthwhile point to make.
The Hindus believed that the earth was a hemisphere, supported by four large elephants. "This seems to have been entirely satisfactory until someone asked what was holding the elephants up. After some discussion, the wise men of India agreed that the four elephants were standing on a large mud turtle. Again, the people seem to have been satisfied until some inquisitive person raised the question as to what was holding the mud turtle up. I imagine the philosophers had grown tired of answering these questions by this time for they are said to have replied that there was mud under the mud turtle and mud all the rest of the way." (Astronomy by Arthur M. Harding, Ph.D. p.4)
Twelve pillars, according to the Veda of India, supported the earth, leaving plenty of room for the sun and the moon to dive under and come up on the other side.
If you wish, you can find a multitude of such beliefs, all common enough. But there are two facts concerning these and their presentation which are most erroneous. By examining the above quote, one sees that terms have been confused. Men who ask questions and then figure out answers are, indeed, philosophers. The masses take anything which seems to have a certain academic reverence attached and cling to it desperately. The other error is considering that these beliefs were foolish and that scientists, laboring in their laboratories or observatories are wholly responsible for the ideas which permeate the world of thought.
It is not that we here wish to maintain these facts about the state of the earth. On the contrary. But, they are not presented for ridicule because they are the ideas which some philosopher developed painfully with the scant data he had at hand and who had to aid him no means of communication, travel, instruments or even mathematics. They are, what we chose to call, hypotheses possessing sufficient truth to be accepted. Today, thanks to Copernicus and all the rest, we know about gravity. Thanks to Newton, we have mathematics. Thanks to a lens grinder, we have a telescope.
