Few can dispute that there have been some truly crazy scientific ideas in the history of humanity. While some of these theories have turned out to contain some truth (Quantum theory springs immediately to mind), others seem to hold little value but for entertainment.
Who can forget, of course, that old theory that the Earth was flat? While the notion that the Earth is spherical has actually been fairly common throughout history, it seems as if once this was finally proven to be a fact (some of the credit for this goes, of course, to Christopher Columbus), the debate over the shape of the Earth would finally have been settled once and for all.
Fortunately for those who like to look back with amusement on such “pseudoscientific” theories, the fact that the Earth was round opened up an entirely new can of worms. One of the more impressive amongst these theories is the very descriptively-named “hollow Earth” theory.
The Theory's Noble Beginnings...
Perhaps most famously espoused in Jules Verne’s classic 1864 adventure, Journey to the Center of the Earth, it might be surprising to learn that a great many people throughout history have quite sincerely believed that the Earth was a hollow object, and that what lay inside it (perhaps even including entire civilizations) was a mystery – the next great frontier of human exploration.
It should surprise no one who is familiar with the history of scientific thought to learn that the theory of a hollow Earth did not begin (nor did it end) with Jules Verne. In fact, amongst those who espoused such ideas (I am not necessarily including Verne himself, for his books were mere science fiction) were such notable scientists as Edmund Halley (1656-1742) and Sir John Leslie (1766-1832), as well as some religious figures such as Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Halley particularly (yes, he is the same Halley whom the famous comet is named after) was one of the first to propose the hollow Earth as a valid scientific theory, used in an attempt to explain some “erroneous” readings being made with compasses. Now, it very well may be true that Halley, true scientist as he was, may not have personally held to full belief in this theory himself. To him it very well may have been simply a thought – a “what if” sort of scenario which might explain certain heretofore unexplainable aspects of the world. After all, this is the essence of what any valid scientific theory entails. Today, of course, one can rather easily see the flaws with a hollow Earth theory, but no one can rightfully blame someone living in the seventeenth century for believing such nonsense, especially if it explained certain mysteries.
...and Its Ignoble End
Now, for those living more recently, even as in the nineteenth century, there really should be no excuse at all for such scientific absurdities. Even a couple hundred years ago, it took a real eccentric to attempt to revive the theory that there was nothing inside the Earth but empty space.
Enter Captain John Cleves Symmes, hero of the War of 1812. In 1818 Symmes issued a pamphlet entitled “To All the World,” in which he finally released the details of the theory he had apparently been working on for some time. In essence, it was just an extension of Halley’s theory from more than a century prior – that the Earth was a series of concentric spheres, the innermost being hollow. Symmes, though, took this a step further, saying that the Earth itself surely opened up at both the north and south poles (holes he estimated to be more than four thousand miles in diameter), and that it might be very easy to finance an expedition (which he himself would lead, of course) to the north pole, over the rim, and into the center of the Earth, which surely held its very own variety of plant and animal life. For reasons which should be obvious to us all, Symmes got very little support and his mission never got off the ground. He did have his share of followers, though, including a man named James McBride, who soon published a book called Symmes’ Theory of Concentric Spheres, followed by an 1878 collection of all of Symmes’ writings, edited by his son, Americus.
The hollow Earth theory did not die with John Symmes, though. In fact, it got even stranger after this. Cyrus Reed Teed was one of the last alchemists (so we’re off to a good start already), who apparently had a vision of a girl one night, who shared with him the real secret of the Earth. According to this vision, the Earth is indeed hollow, but it is we who are on the inside. The sun sat in the middle of the open space within the Earth – half light and half dark, which as we rotate around it creates the illusion of sunrises and sunsets. Yes indeed, Teed had it all figured out, and he spent the better part of forty years trying to convince the rest of the world of this fact. It is perhaps a sad testament to the human mind that Teed at one point could boast the number of his followers to be in the ten thousands. He wrote numerous books and articles, and was apparently quite the convincing man. He somehow also convinced these followers that he was the messiah, and started a new town in Florida which he claimed would one day become the capital of the world. It never happened. Eventually (in 1908), Teed died and never rose again. Eventually his not-so-little cult dissipated and were never heard from again, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Finally, In 1913 Marshall B. Gardner of Aurora, Illinois, published a book called Journey to the Center of the Earth, which gave the world still another vision of the Earth as being hollow. Gardner, did not, however, hold to the same views as either Symmes or Halley – views which he thought denied “all the facts of science and get up some purely private explanation of the formation of the Earth.” Gardner viewed all the hollow Earthers coming before him as non-scientists and “cranks”. Indeed, his theory was clearly much more scientific: To Gardner, the Earth was entirely hollow, apart from a sun in the center which provided perpetual daylight to the inhabitants living therein. Similar to Symmes’ theory, Gardner proposed that there was a giant hole at the north pole, through which some of the inhabitants of the inner Earth had apparently been driven by giant wooley mammoths, which explains where the Eskimos came from, as well as why we find frozen mammoths in glaciers.
Clearly, no one can accuse Gardner of being unscientific. Unfortunately, try as he might to popularize his view of a hollow Earth, it never did really catch on. In 1926, when the first flight was made over the north pole, finding no hole whatsoever, Gardner stopped all writing whatsoever.
References:
Sifakis, Carl. "Great American Eccentrics." BBS Publishing Corp. 1994.
John C. Symmes' Hollow Earth Writings. http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1818symm.htm.
Isaac M. McPhee - Isaac McPhee was born as a human child in Mt. Vernon, WA, c. 1982; he currently resides in the bustling heart of New York City where he ...
