TO ALL THE WORLD!
I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.
Jno. Cleves Symmes.
Of Ohio, Late Captain of Infantry.[1]
This announcement, distributed at ‘Circular Number 1,’ set off a century of hollow earth theories, scientific inquiry, exploration, and literature in the United States. The relationship between this nineteenth century pseudo-science (a term applied only with retrospective knowledge of the Earth’s structure) and the literature it inspired builds a case for hollow earth novels engaging in the first didactic speculative fiction based upon scientific theory. More than utilizing hollow earth science as a model for storytelling, there is also the authorial push in several of these texts to explore the Polar Regions more thoroughly to verify the theory of openings at “12 or 16 degrees” latitude. Literature, influenced by the scientific writings of proponents of the Symmes Theory, was a mode of popular engagement with the masses to build support for and disseminate information about the hollow earth.
Before John Cleves Symmes’s declaration in 1818, theories of a hollow earth based on science (and not superstition or mythology) had been in existence since Edmund Halley’s 1692 paper proposing that the Earth was constructed of a series of concentric spheres beneath the surface. His reasoning for this stemmed from his work on Newton’s Principia, in which Newton had calculated the density of the moon to be significantly greater than the Earth:
“Now if the Moon be more solid than the Earth, as 9 to 5, why may we not reasonably suppose the Moon, being a small Body, and a Secondary Planet, to be solid Earth, Water and Stone and this Globe to consist of the same Materials, only four Ninths thereof to be Cavity, within and between the Internal Spheres; which I would render not improbable.”[2]
Because of this miscalculation, Halley felt the need to account for the Earth’s larger size yet smaller density, and a series of hollow, concentric spheres fit the bill. Into all of this Halley includes explanations for gravity, magnetism and hydrodynamics. The entire world system must be made cohesive in order to succeed as a scientific theory.
Symmes and his followers enacted this same attention to detail, but they substituted observations of natural phenomena for mathematics in their construction of a hypothetical terra cava. The reason for supposing the interior portions of the world to be habitable – and inhabited – did not change in the 126 years separating the publication of Halley’s paper and Symmes’s declaration: Providence wills it to be so. “Why may not we rather suppose that the exceeding small Quantity of solid Matter, in respect of the fluid Ether, is so disposed by the Almighty Wisdom as to yield as great a Surface for the use of living Creatures as can consist with the conveniency and security of the whole?”[3] The whole of Creation must be given to life and useful purpose as a matter of theological parsimony. Whereas Halley proposed that there must be some other internal structure to provide light besides the sun to provide for life, Symmes’s theory allows for the geometry of reflected light to illuminate the interior of a world that is open at the Poles.
https://thesymzonian.wordpress.com/.../testing-terra.../
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Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery by Adam Seaborn
(pseud. John Cleves Symmes?) [1820]
This is among the first and rarest of the Hollow Earth books. In the early 19th century, John Cleves Symmes proposed that the earth was actually a set of five nested spheres, each with polar openings. He unsuccessfully lobbied congress to fund an expedition to the poles to investigate this theory. This novel, based on Symmes' theories, was published in 1820. Some believe that Symmes was the author, but this has not been established beyond a shadow of doubt.
Probably the first US utopian science fiction novel, Symzonia is also a classic sea yarn. The narrator, Mr. Seaborn, initiates just such an expedition as Symmes dreamed of. With a special high-tech paddle boat, built with no metal to avoid magnetic effects, Seaborn sets out on a voyage into uncharted southern waters. Conflict is provided by a mutinous Mr. Slim, who proves to be Seaborn's nemesis. Eventually the ship penetrates into the Antarctic hole, and voyages deep into the inner surface of the earth, which Seaborn claims for the US and calls 'Symzonia'. They encounter a utopian society, run by a benevolent aristocracy, which has long since banished all of their misfits to a distant colony, and possibly the outside Earth. The Symzonians have advanced airships, boats with jet propulsion, flame-proof cloth woven from spiderwebs, and a mysterious weapon of mass destruction. Eventually, they expel Seaborn and his crew back to the exterior world. Due to a series of accidents, all material evidence of Symzonia is lost on the return voyage, and Seaborn is swindled out of his profits.
Edmond Halley, the famed astronomer, was the first to propose that the Earth contained a set of nested hollow spheres. Symme's theory, and this book in particular, was likely one of Poe's primary influences, particularly seen in his Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. The rumor of a hidden advanced civilization inside the earth has long been elaborated in fictional and occult books from Bulwer-Lytton to the the Shaver Mystery.
Hanuman,
Orthodox sxience of the times of Halley didn’t permit the justification of the Hollow Earth Theory, nor the orthodox science of today. In fact, science hasn’t changed much. Newtonian gravity is still sacrosanct, treated as if holy. But the superior weight imposed on successively lower and lower layers of the Earth’s crust would crumble on top of itself, there is no way that a hollow earth could exist within such a scheme.
And the science of gravity is like that the world over. Physics is a worldwide network and you are only allowed to join it and study physical science if you have already been brainwashed in high school. And the media enforces it, too. Such scientific enforcement even exists within inimical countries and cultures. Science already exists within a scheme which is global, the globalism of science. It is the modern religion that exists over and above nationality.
And I don’t thinnk we’ll be able to do doodley squat about it.
Cheers!
ANTEDELUVIJAN CIVILIZACION ARIZONA ERYPT HOPPY https://www.facebook.com/reel/26129408180027184
HOLLOW EARTH DOLLORES CANON https://www.facebook.com/reel/251444413603588