To maintain and advance knowledge of today’s “weird things” requires ongoing skeptical scholarship-perhaps especially ( I have argued) historical scholarship that traces the origins and evolution of fringe ideas over time.
During the 20th century the relative sophistication of Zetetic Astronomy collapsed into muddled conspiracy theories, parody, and ultra-fundamentalist Biblical literalism nevertheless, flat-Earth advocacy continues to this day.Ĭover of Junior Skeptic 53, bound inside Skeptic Vol. 3) and Richard Anthony Proctor, and prompting reflections from later thinkers including George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell. The pseudoscientific notion that the Earth is a flat disk may seem as quaint as it is preposterous, but so-called “Zetetic Astronomy” enjoyed a surprisingly strong period of public prominence in the UK and US during the 19th century-attracting attention from debunkers of the period such as Alfred Russel Wallace 1 (see Skeptic Vol. You can read the book in its web version here, where you also find the EPUB ebook version available for download.ĭuring his life, Bob Schadewald was the world’s leading skeptical expert on the history of flat-Earth advocacy. Schadewald (1943–2000), has now been prepared for publication and released online for free. I’m very pleased to learn that The Plane Truth, the unfinished final work of skeptical scholarship by the late Robert J. Explore Bob Schadewald’s final project, a book on the topic of his most specialized area of skeptical expertise: Flat Earth theories.
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