Careful readers noticed yesterday that I used the words “pope” and “Copernicus” when dismantling Tesla-lovers’ desire to save the planet while they commute alongside me. I did this because my guided reading through the Great Books of the Western World has landed me in Ptolemy and Copernicus (and now Kepler).

I told a co-worker that I feel like I’m reading sacred scripture when I read these guys’ words. I mean they are it. These are the ones who tackled the big problems and won (and lost). I cannot emphasize enough how interesting and provocative the writings are—especially the ones that have been disproved. Just fascinating. For example, did you know that folks knew Earth was a sphere over 2000 years ago? They knew. And they knew through easy methods that even you and I can understand, the most simple being that during lunar eclipses, the shadow on the moon is always circular. And only a sphere object can do that.

Anyhow, in short, (because I know you aren’t going to rush out and get the set) Ptolemy (and many in his day, circa 100-200AD) thought the Earth was an unmoving sphere inside a larger rotating sphere which was lined with the stars and the other lights of the sky. To be clear, this is a ball within a ball scenario. Like if we go to a planetarium and lay back in the dome structure to “ooh and ahh” the night sky as projected digitally, that’s pretty much what they thought. I mean to emphasize that they did not see the night sky (or day sky for that matter) as “deep”. Had they thought to travel out to the lights, they apparently thought they would hit a wall/boundary. (Keep in mind, they didn’t conceive of traveling off earth.) This, of course, stands against everything we moderns believe, which includes that we can and will journey further and further and further away from the Sun/Earth or really anything out there.

With me?

Next, it was Copernicus who went through the Pope (and had to in 1543–life is so different today—so very different) to correct Ptolemy’s errant belief that Earth was the center of the larger sphere. The Sun was the center—and, put simply, for the reason that it makes the math simpler. Note here that Copernicus still did not believe that space went out and out and out. (He also showed other things, such as the Earth itself moves and this what makes the stars appears to move, not the other way around.)

In the guided reader, they make mention of the types of proofs that Ptolemy and Copernicus were concerned with and this is where it is mentioned that the Foucault Pendulum was finally invented and put to use in 1851. You can look it up yourself; I still don’t fully understand how it works. Maybe you will. But when you look it up, you’ll discover that these pendulums are all over the globe now at various science museums, and they report in to each other. It is this comparison of observations that is truly the mechanical proof of the rotational movement of the sphere earth.

This was a “Eureka!” moment for me.

To rehearse and summarize some of this trivia, Ptolemy really made his mark because he took into account past astronomical observations and added to them an extensive new amount of data. Then Copernicus did the same. (See the methodological trend?) By the time we get to Foucault’s Pendulum, we already have an established pattern of humans using other humans’ information, so the idea of sharing the results from these pendulums that are swinging all over the world is not entirely new.

Are you tracking yet?

(I enjoy leading folks to the conclusion rather than just bluntly stating it, but I’ll be blunt after one more clue.)

Put another way, Ptolemy alone didn’t suggest the Earth was the center and a sphere. Copernicus alone didn’t suggest the Sun was the center and the Earth rotated. Foucault alone didn’t prove that the Earth was a rotating sphere.

People need people! Get it?

We all have encountered Flat Earthers of late. Or most of us have. Guess what? They are alone. They have no friends. Even the others at the conventions aren’t friends. They don’t compare notes and use each others’ new and unique and accurate and confirmable measurable data to develop and defend their idea. They just bleat. Bah bah baaaa.

I am impassioned by this topic because a very good former friend of mine that I met at the seminary revealed his insanity when he one day decided to lob a joke about the earth being round into the fray. When I didn’t buy into his BS, he wouldn’t allow for any other topic of conversation to pass.

Keep in mind I told him, “I don’t care which mental construction of the universe you hold in your mind. I just think we should be able to talk about something else too.”

Nope. He wouldn’t move past it until I agreed with him.

I had invited him in for lunch in my seminary, Steinway-housing apartment. His wife and him (and baby) hosted H- and I for an afternoon meal and relaxing stroll at his place. We were at the seminary together. Man. It was/is frustrating. But it also proves my “newly learned” point. These folks have no friends. (Did I mention he was a green beret? Yeah. Unrelenting persistency does not always pay off.)

Anyhow. Crazy times we live in. The good part, as I have said and wrote time and time again, is we have books. I’m still with TJ, “I cannot live without books.”