Ebook: When the Earth Was Flat Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle's proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.;Introduction. -- Preliminaries on Sources and Methodology -- Part One Ancient Greece -- Peculiarities of Presocratic Flat Earth Cosmology -- Anaximander's Images -- Anaximander's Phenomenological Cosmology -- Anaximander's Numbers -- Anaximenes' Cosmology -- Xenophanes' Cosmology -- Anaxagoras on The Milky Way and Lunar Eclipses -- Anaxagoras on The Light and Phases of the Moon -- Anaxagoras and the Measurement of the Sun and Moon -- Aristotle's Arguments for the Sphericity of the Earth -- Part Two Ancient China -- An Ancient Chinese Cosmology: Main Features -- An Ancient Chinese Flat Earth Cosmology. Details and Calculations -- Ancient Chinese Versus Greek Flat Earth Cosmology -- Two Appendices: Cosmas Indicopleustes and Samuel Birley Rowbotham -- Quotations from Ancient Greek and Roman Authors -- Quotations from the Zhou bi and Ancient Chinese Authors -- Bibliography.