Flat Earth

Bear with me on this one, I will attempt to make it as brief as I can.

If you live by the sea, and you are fortunate enough to see boats or ships with sails, have you ever seen a ship sail over the horizon? If you have, you may notice that the ship does not shrink until it is so small that you cannot see it. Instead, you should see that the boat disappears from the bottom up, with its mast being the last part sinking out of view.

That might suggest to you that, like an ant crawling over an apple, the ship is disappearing over the edge of a round object.

There is fundamental, imparted knowledge that we often take for granted. We do not question certain facts simply because so much is built on them. To question these things would be to question virtually everything around us.

We are taught, in some subliminal (and perhaps accidental) way, that "to question is to argue". That when we ask a question, we are rejecting the subject of our questions and disagreeing with it.

What a terrible mindset to be stuck with.

Take this fundamental truth for example: the world is round. Excluding the intellectual exercises of the Flat Earth Society and so on, most educated people of today accept that the world is round. We are taught that the world is spherical, that it is not a flat plain. We accept this without question.

Regardless of whether the Earth is round or not, this is still imparted knowledge. Imparted knowledge is not nearly as valuable as wisdom you gain for yourself through observation, experimentation, and mental exercise.

Until this morning, I accepted the imparted wisdom of a round Earth. I never assumed to argue with the idea that the Earth was round. There is more than enough proof, if you ever wanted it, that the Earth is not flat.

However, this morning I was introduced to the idea of watching a sailing ship disappear over the horizon, its masts remaining in view for longer than the rest of the boat. It was not until this morning that I stopped accepting that the Earth was round. It has only been since this morning that I have known that the Earth is round.

Would that we could apply this method to all education so we could stop accepting and start knowing.