We’ve discussed the Ancient Greeks’ snowglobe vision of the Universe(#288), tackled the far-out theories of the Hollow Earth (#85), and yet managed to be surprised by the absurdity of the square earth theory. It seems unnecessarily implausible to add straight borderlines to the already farfetched model of a flat earth. But not only does the square earth theory still have proponents today, it was the common world-view of yesteryear (which explains why we still use expressions like The four corners of the world).

A look at the discourse of modern defenders of the Square Earth explains why: almost all of their arguments are biblical, which they choose to take literally instead of poetically, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. A lot is explained by the opening quote on the website of the International Square Earth Society:

“After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.” (Revelation 7:1)

The website rails against ‘lazy Biblical literalists’ who ignore the Good Book’s geodetic information. In the true spirit of factionalism, the first enemy attacked by the square-earthers are the… flat-earthers: “Even the late, great Charles K. Johnson, the valiant fighter for Truth who carried the message of earlier Zetetic Astronomers forward into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by founding the International Flat Earth Society, made the grievous error of assuming that the Earth was shaped like a circular disk. Nothing could be further from the Truth.” (note the capitalisation of truth – making it rarer and more precious).

Square-earthers find support for their theory in biblical quotes referring to “the ends of the Earth” (Job 28:24, 37:3). These ends are interpreted as straight edges. Verse referring to “the four quarters of the Earth” (Isaiah 11:12) necessarily means that those need to be congruent (i.e. identical when superimposed). Which leads to exactly eight possible shapes:

• A square
• A non-square rectangle
• A non-square rhombus (i.e. a “diamond” shape)
• A non-rectangular, non-rhombic parallelogram
• A trapezoid
• A concave quadrilateral
• An isosceles quadrilateral
• A scalene quadrilateral”

These are narrowed down even further by yet another bible verse, plus some logical gymnastics; “Finally, we can look to the mention of the four winds in Revelation 7:1 to give us the last clue. Everybody knows that ‘the four winds’ are the North Wind, the South Wind, the East Wind, and the West Wind. Right? Well, Revelation 7:1 clearly shows four angels holding back these four winds. In order for each angel to ‘hold back’ one of the Four Winds, he would have to be standing at the point on the Earth from whence the Wind originated. Thus, to hold back the North Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the northernmost point on the Earth. To hold back the South Wind, an angel would have to be standing at the southernmost point on the Earth. Et cetera. The four angels would have to have been standing at the northernmost, southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost points on the Earth — in other words, at the extreme ends of the four main compass points.”