AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Geocentrism/Heliocentrism: The Earth Is Flat?

Would it be common knowledge (or at the least, commonly accepted knowledge) in Faerun that the world is a sphere? And if so, would heliocentrism be known and understood? There are definitely astronomers around, and there's sufficient Spelljamming activity to support the idea that people in Forgotten Realms commonly know the world is round. But whether they understand it as revolving around the sun rather than the sun around the earth...

Is there any lore to support either notion?

I don't know yet, but Yossarin has always been geocentric. Even has a DC item based around that belief! Leave it to him to believe he and the world he lives in are at the center of the universe.

The resource I just picked up the other day may speak to this query. If I come across it, I will mention it.

Yeah, I'm curious too. Thank you.

Someone asked Madrik how time works in the Triumvir and the best Madrik could come up with was, "Biologically"

IS Toril a heliocentric world? All things considered, there's no reason a fantasy world couldn't be geocentric.

Prime's such as Toril is to my knowledge a "sphere" mimicing Earth

As for the planes and all that it depends on if it is the "great wheel" or "world tree" does it not?
The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting goes into significant detail about the other celestial bodies in Toril's solar system, as well as the orbits of toril around its star and it moon around the planet. This can be found on Pg 230 in the section "Beyond Faerun."

Well, there's that. But how well would this be known and understood IC?

Forgotten Realms technology is easily at or past what Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei had available if you ask me. It would likely be fairly common knowledge among the academic.

What NC said.

NinjaClarinet wrote:

Forgotten Realms technology is easily at or past what Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei had available if you ask me. It would likely be fairly common knowledge among the academic.

Or may be among majority educated individuals? (because proof of ellipsoidal shape of planet is trivial (but clever and nice

)).

I just like the idea of playing a +127 Lore character who knows both arguments but sides for occult reasons with the "wrong" one.

Yossarin wrote:

I just like the idea of playing a +127 Lore character who knows both arguments but sides for occult reasons with the "wrong" one.

Lore 256 for Toril is particular 3D slice of Calabi-Yau n-dimensional manifold (with n >> 6), where every other plane is its different slice.

I think a learned man would know the prime is called a Crystal Sphere and there are many spheres but he'd also know some planes are absolutely flat (Baator being an inverted triangle, Gehenna) as you can indeed walk off them and fall for the rest of your life.
Others such as Mechanus as a cog and Carceri are round (Carceri being a string of pearls) and some no one has any clue about shapewise (Pandemonium, Abyss, Limbo.)
Some planes are cubical too (Archeron) or stretch out for forever as far as has been explored(Arborea, Beastlands)

The outland are a flat circle as well with a spire in the middle.

The elemental planes are ever weirder indeed.

With such known evidence I think there might well be proponents of both ideas (and possibly a lot more ideas to boot!)

The crystal spheres of the prime material plane function almost exactly as the planets in our universe do. The only difference is that there's massive crystal blockages between solar systems.

The transitional planes are super condensed carbon copies of the prime material.

The inner planes are all big blobs of their element.

The outer planes vary enormously based on the personal cosmology of whatever pantheon rules over them. Some are flat, others are infinite in all directions, some are floating spheres in a void or atmosphere. It's weird.

On a related topic. Does the toril have the same seasonal periods of night and day near the poles as does the real world? Ie long periods of night in the winter/ long day light in the summer.

almost no civilisation in history has assumed the world was flat(no the dark ages didnt think so either, it was a stupid idea made up far later that the dark ages where stupid), I would assume the same would be the case for faerun.

sailors would easily know it is not flat, as the understanding curvature of the world is rather usefull to be able to navigate, and you can clearly see the curving when you look over the sea

not to mention that maztica has been discovered and is somewhat well known atleast on the swordcoast

as for heliocentrism....thats more complicated and I have no idea

Quick question-

If telescopes exist, do microscopes also exist?

Probably, though if they do they are much earlier than the microscopes we know in the current day.

That's just my quick guess, I'd need to go over the historical development of the technology on our modern day and extrapolate if I was to want to do any serious theorizing. Though, there is the implication of magnifying glasses, so I don't see why early microcopes couldn't exist.

Well Microscope was invented around 1590. I personally would say that the highest period of development in Faerun is around the 1500's without Gunpowder becoming a widespread resource. So Late Medieval, early renaissance. This would lead me to believe that the Microscope hasn't been invented yet, especially with most academics in the world being magically based and so their advances being in their field. I also feel that the drive to make a microscope isn't there. Compared to people in a high medieval and early rennaissance, their world and its mechanics are understood to a much higher degree, to a much higher degree to even we do today. Academics know that their world is part of a crystal sphere, the layout of the planes and how one affects the other, what their universe IS. Even the common man KNOWS, not believes, KNOWS, what happens to his soul when he dies. Because of this... the drive to discover, to understand, may not drive academics to look at ever smaller components to understand the nature of the world they live in.

Some Gnome priest of Gond might be messing around with the technology however, it seems like the sort of thing they would do.

Actually... ignore my diatribe. The first working Telescopes started to appear in 1608, while the first microscopes arrived in 1590. Both were very primative affairs which developed as the field of Optics did. So it stands to reason that yes... They would have Microscopes too.

The notion of heliocentricism and a spherical globe were around before the Dark Ages. The information in Western culture was lost due to said time period due to lack of education and the focus on discovery and innovation; however, the Renaissance saw a "return" to knowledge already known and discovery of new ideas, as well.

So, basically: the belief that people thought the world was flat and the world was the center of the universe until relatively recent history is untrue. They started believing that due to a loss of educatoon, but after the Renaissance, when already established truths were returned to the academic light, it faded out again.

Regarding microscopes - Just bear in mind that these late-16th century microscopes could only reach about 9x magnification (by contrast, modern light microscopes can reach about 1000x or 1500x magnification), and the image would be quite blurry. You wouldn't actually be able to use it for any practical purpose.

serbiris wrote:

Regarding microscopes - Just bear in mind that these late-16th century microscopes could only reach about 9x magnification (by contrast, modern light microscopes can reach about 1000x or 1500x magnification), and the image would be quite blurry. You wouldn't actually be able to use it for any practical purpose.

Of course there are no electron microscopes or anything remotely close- that goes without saying.

I didn't even mention electron microscopes. I'm talking about basic light microscopes you use in a classroom - they outclass 16th century pieces by orders of magnitude. They would be completely useless.

When it comes to Geocentrism I am pretty sure the theory about the spherical earth was around since atleast ancient greece nad maybe further back. That they thought the world was flat in the Dark Ages is a myth.

Shadowfiend wrote:

When it comes to Geocentrism I am pretty sure the theory about the spherical earth was around since atleast ancient greece nad maybe further back. That they thought the world was flat in the Dark Ages is a myth.

The Dark Ages...not so sure about, but other civilizations knew the earth was spherical a loooonng time ago. The Dark Ages I believe had a religious influence that set them back.

They had no problem with the shape of the Earth - the religious influence mainly concerned whether the universe was Geocentric or Heliocentric. Mind you, it was a particular political climate, involving the infamous Inquisition. And this wasn't "Dark Ages", this was Renaissance. This isn't really on-topic though.

Yup, hence my post in this thread. The shape of the earth seems clear to anyone with an education. But whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa is so steeped in mysticism that the geocentrism has a reasonably strong foothold, especially amongst eccentrics and others loaded with esoteric knowledge.

I think it's on topic because ancient civilizations have had an understanding of the shape of the earth- and if that can be superimposed onto this world in this game, assuming there are correlations between the two worlds in terms of science, we can possibly come to an understanding as to what science is known.

The topic had moved towards religiously-motivated anti-progressivism in our world, which isn't really relevant. I believe we can establish that Faerunian Scholars can determine the shape of Toril - The Greeks were able to do so with observation and mathematics, and Faerun has more advanced means than they do. Namely, reliable Divination magic.

All the magicky science apart, I think it's also down to your character's interpretation of the world - or perhaps even the multiverse. It stands to reason that even many Lathanderans might have a geocentric view, as a heliocentric view would de facto undermine the spiritual meaning of dawn. On the other hand, a lot of other planes don't even have a sun as we understand it, yet still have light coming from somewhere and other means to mark the passage of time.

Geocentrism/Heliocentrism: The Earth Is Flat?

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