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From: tracer@stb.UUCP (Jeff Boeing)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.flame
Subject: Re: Flat Earth?  Strange if it weren't.
Keywords: Platygaeanism
Message-ID: <10066@stb.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 88 17:58:27 GMT
Reply-To: tracer@stb.UUCP (Jeff Boeing)
Organization: STB BBS, La, Ca, USA, 90402, (213) 459-7231
Lines: 35

In article <10731@shemp.UCLA.EDU> troly@MATH.UCLA.EDU (Bret Jolly) writes:
>argument which claimed the contrary. Let me say it again. *Mathematical
>consistency does not imply truth.*  In addition to mathematical consistency
>a correct scientific theory must also agree with reality. Notice the word 
>*correct*.(A theory may be useful and still not be completely correct).

   Hmmm, well, I hate to burst your bubble, but to the best of our experimen-
tation, most of the good mathematically-consistent theories do agree with
reality.  Like the idea of a (nearly) flat 3-space with a big ball in it,
where matter attracts matter.  You know, the stuff they taught you in junior
high school?  If matter attracts matter, by spacetime-curving or by gravitons
or by whatever method, it is GOING to have a natural tendency to fall together
into a big round ball.  Spherical shape is lowest possible potential energy
state and all that.
   Now, of course, where's the agreement in reality with that?  I mean, have
we actually tried to sail around the world, or launch missiles over the south
pole and not have them go off The Edge into the Forbidden Void Beneath the
World?  And have we actually measured the distance to the horizon and put
vertical tent-pegs in the Earth to measure the angles of their shadows from
different points?  Naw, why would we do anything like that.
   The bottom line is that whether or NOT the Earth is actually a physical
ball or is really a plate warped in Rotund Space to APPEAR as a ball to us
poor confused mortals, it DOES appear to our eyes and our measurements to be
roughly spherical.  That's what really matters.  That's all a spherogaeanist
(or whatever we're called) is trying to say.

But then, what do I know?  I believe in gravitons and not in gravitational
space warping.  (After all, is there such a thing as electromagnetic space
warping?)

-- 
Jeff Boeing (which is not my real name)   |   uunet!stb.uucp!tracer
------------------------------------------|------------------------
"All right, you weak bosons!  You're not dealing with some obscure 9th-level
 by-the-book paladin anymore!"   -- Sick Sword