Who discovered the world is round...aristotle?galileo?

Question

Well I'm writing an essay about how religion supports the status quo and that it is a conservative force on society. So, one example I want to use is the fact that ______ discovered that the world is round and rotates around the sun, but people did not want to accept that because they were scared people will lose faith in religion..blah bllah blah..so i need to know who that person was.
thanks!

Answer 1

You have a respectable thesis.

The correct answer would be Yajnavalkya.

Yajnavalkya (c. 9th–8th century BCE) recognized that the Earth is spherical in his astronomical text Shatapatha Brahmana. This is also recognized in another Vedic Sanskrit text Aitareya Brahmana composed around the same time, and in a later Sanskrit commentary Vishnu Purana

Pythagoras reached the same conclusion in 540BC.

Philolaus of Croton 480-405BC believed that the Earth orbited along with the Sun around a central 'fire'.

Several Greeks circa 350BC held the Pythagoras view such as Heraclides Ponticus, Hicetas, and Ecphantus.

Aristarchus of Samos 310-230BC believed that the Earth went around the Sun but his views were ignored by the Bishops of the church (who then claimed scientific prowess).

Circa 200BC Erasthenes of Cyrene attempted a measurement of the Earth's circumference.

It was an inaccuracy by the great mathematician Ptolemy circa 140BC which claimed that the Earth was again at the center of the System and this allowed the church to hold the view for the next 1500 years.

Kopernik - Copernicus 1473-1543AD never blatantly challenged the authority of the church. His works were published after church approved 'corrections' and omissions. His last work was published the year of his death.

It is only when these facts are brought to light that one can see the true damage done by the Roman Catholic church which tried so long to keep truth secret from people in order to hold power over them. Even if it meant persecuting the innocent.

Only about 1/3 of Aristotle's works have survived. He was a great physisist making contributions in the understanding of motion and dynamics among other things. He believed that stars were spheres. However, he also believed that Earth was at the center of the Solar System.

It was Galileo who was dramatically persecuted by the church in the 1600's for his scientific and astronomical beliefs which kept science and truth from advancing for many years thereafter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Answer 2

It's not hard to see that the Earth is round. The fact was known in classical Greece, probably from well before Aristotle. This has never really been a controversial idea.

Revolving around the Sun is a different matter. Aristarchus of Samos apparently argued for a heliocentric system in the 3rd century BCE, but Aristotle and other Greek thinkers still believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus is generally credited with introducing the heliocentric idea. He was careful to claim that it was merely a convenient assumption to make it easier to calculate planetary orbits. Galileo championed his ideas and found supporting evidence with his telescope. The Church forbade Galileo to teach Copernicus's theory as fact, and threatened him with torture and placed him under house arrest when he persisted.

Answer 3

The Flat Earth model is an archaic belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies.[1]

The paradigm of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.

The modern misconception that educated Europeans at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as the myth of the flat Earth.

Answer 4

I found this interesting. I gave same example to my 8 year old daughter.
There were many people who put theories round this from many parts of the world. However there were no blogs at that time and so the time stamps could not be traced. I salute to these people who studied physics and put down their theories.
When explaining to my daughter, I used Galileo. Because he was the one who persisted in stating that earth is round, in spite of all the opposition from the churches. He believed in his theories. And I salute him.

Answer 5

Nobody is sure who first deduced that the world is round but most attribute the discovery to Arisotle. Just say Aristotle.

Answer 6

The early Greeks knew that the earth was round, because they reasoned that a lunar eclipse was earth's round shadow on the moon; however, many still thought the earth flat, rather like a coin or hockey puck, rather than spherical.

Eratosthenes measured the radius around 220 BC and got it as right as was reasonable at the time.

Answer 7

The first circumnavigation of the world by the Spanish expedition headed by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 confirmed that the world is indeed round. However, Magellan failed to make the circumnavigation himself because he was killed at the battle of Mactan in Cebu, Philippines.

Answer 8

Matrix for me too! I fell in love with Keanu Reeves BQ: Spirited Away BBQ: Leon: The Professional BQ3: I don't think I have ever watched a movie for over three hours

Answer 9

The example you want to use may not hold up as religion was the founder of this scientific fact!

The fact that the Earth is round was first documented in the Bible in Isaiah 40.22. This book was written at least a few hundred years before Aristotle made the argument that the world was spherical. Prophet Isaiah lived about 700 or 800BC whereas Aristotle lived from 384-322BC

"He . . . sitteth upon the circle of the earth." Isaiah 40:22.

Even more amazing, Moses who lived hundreds of years even before 1000BC and wrote the book of Job, (oldest book of the Bible) understood that our Earth is suspended in the universe when he wrote :

"He . . . hangeth the earth upon nothing." Job 26:7

Remember - "All scripture is given by inspiration of God." 2 Timothy 3:16

Answer 10

The round state of planet Earth was not "discovered", it was simply a conclusion based on observations. Aristotle claimed it was common knowledge. Your best name is likely Eratosthenes, who calculated the circumference of Earth. Wikipedia has an article on him here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes