The Book Club: Carlo Rovelli
Best of the Spectator
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Greek Science and Chinese Science in the Cultural Contexts
In the third century before our era in Egypt, Erath Dostinys made this very, very famous and celebrated measurement of the size of the Earth. He got astonishingly right. In China, remarkably, roughly the same century, the same measurement was done. So an emperor sent a scientific expedition south to measure how much, when you go south, the sun is more or more on your head. But it was misinterpreted because the idea was the Earth is flat and the sun is closed.
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