This Flat Earth Thing: Part I; Samuel Birley Rowbotham

“Too much social distancing is going to push these Flat Earthers right over the edge.”

     I have spent the morning watching and reading various notions on the belief that the earth is flat. However, I’m still teetering on the edge. It comes across as a little too two dimensional, if you ask me; haha, like flat as in the Earth, like a two dimensional earth. Do ya get it? Good, cause the puns are going to get more complicated.

What I’ve discovered is that Samuel Birley Rowbotham is, essentially, the L. Ron Hubbard of the Flat Earthery community, from what I gather during my brief history of research this morning, is that S. Bir Rowbotham waded out into shallows of the Old Bedford River in Cambridgeshire U.K. with a telescope balanced in his arms to eye the curvature of the earth through an unstable glass lens as a boat sailed away in the near distance. Now, because he wasn’t able to see the hull of the boat detrude in the horizon he concluded that the earth was flat, obviously because that’s generally my first instinct when weird shit happens and I can’t quite explain it; a curvature in the earth should have, and absolutely does decrease your vision of an object as it disappears in the distance.

Rowbotham is considered an English inventor and writer, according to Wikipedia, which is pseudo reliable, at best, the thing is that I cannot, for the life of me, uncover a single thing that this Rowbotham character invented, ever. Except for popularizing the concept of THE FLAT EARTH; which is to say, I suppose, that Rowbotham 'invented' the flat earth. And just the epistemological and stoic profundity of such ideology is a red pill kind of speculum. 

Nevertheless...

My favorite part of the Bedford Level Experiment - this is what they called Rowbotham wading into the waters of the Bedford river with a telescope - however, is that Rowbotham published his findings in a book he titled, Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe by Parallax.

Zetetique is an application of the scientific method used to investigate paranormal phenomena (I hope that’s not lost on anyone, because I find that to be outrageously fantastic), he recognized how incredibly outlandish his own study was, and if you need further proof of that recognition he published the book under the pseudonym, Parallax! F*cking parallax! Parallax! Parallax is, as if I should even bother to define it, “the displacement or difference in the ‘apparent’ position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight...blah, blah blah.” which is a scientific explanation for an optical illusion, which makes it that much better!

Rowbotham published his own bizarre findings in a book that by all semantic means, was titled, Paranormal Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe by Batman...

The only general concession regarding S. Bir Rowbotham is that he was a phenomenal orator, the man could capture a persons' attention and squeeze the sphere out of it; he could debate a concept until it unceasingly orbits your subconscious and planets itself in your mind. After all Rowbotham has captured the apple of millions of gyres all "around the globe..." 

But don't take my word for it, see for yourself in for Part II of "This Flat Earth Thing" 

Coming up who is Mark Sargent? And why does he matter? I'm almost too excited I'm having trouble thinking up a dramatic cliffhanger!