[Buddha-l] Bowl shaped earth

[Jim Peavler]

On May 16, 2007, at 10:18 AM, curt wrote:

> Jim Peavler wrote:
>> Anyone who has ever stood out in the middle of the high plains  
>> somewhere (say the Texas panhandle or Kansas for examples, knows  
>> that no matter which way the observer turns, the horizon is  
>> slightly higher than her head. Hence it is obvious that the earth  
>> is bowl-shaped and no matter where you stand you are standing at  
>> the bottom. (kind of a reverse Foucault's pendulum).
>>
>> Is the obvious bowl-shaped universe somehow tied in with Buddhism?  
>> I hope so, or this missive is off-topic!
>>
> There would be no horizon if the earth's surface were bowl-shaped -  
> unless that horizon truly marked the literal edge of the earth's  
> surface.

I didn't mean to imply that the horizon is not the literal edge.  
Clearly it is the edge because any airplane that flies or train that  
crawls past the horizon obviously falls over the edge.


> Additionally, if you climb even a modest hill you will find that  
> you can see further (the horizon receds further into the distance.

If you send me a map showing where I can find a modest hill, or even  
a short tree in the Panhandle, I will be glad to try to find it to  
test your theory. I tried standing on a cow, but I fell off when it  
began to run.

> These two simple observations are all the empirical evidence needed  
> to conclusively disprove of the bowl shaped earth theory.

Simple observations are the kind I normally make, if any. Would the  
same observations work with Einstein's saddle shaped universe?