Not the optical quantity โ for that, see celestial refraction โ but the encyclopediaโs own index: all 86 articles, refracted into alphabetical order. For thematic groupings instead, see the categories.
#
180-degree plane โ Claim that the equator is a 90-radian circle forming one flat plane that contains all land.
A
The Aetheric Concord โ Dr. Aird's 1855 society for proving the flat plane โ the exact mirror of the Bavarian Society, and never once known to disagree.
Dr. Ambrose Aird โ Victorian gentleman-amateur (1809โ1884) who revived Lorimer's abandoned method to prove the flat plane, and fitted it with a correction that could not fail.
George Biddell Airy โ The Astronomer Royal whose 1871 aether experiment was rebranded 'Airy's failure' and conscripted, posthumously and without consent, as a flat-earth proof.
Anaximander โ The Milesian who first set the Earth adrift, unsupported at the centre of things โ and left it, all the same, flat on top.
The Auk โ Prominent member of the Aetheric Concord remembered, all the same, by a single public moment: asked a simple question, he answered at great length and did not arrive at an answer.
B
Babylonian Map of the World โ The oldest known map of the whole world โ a clay disc ringed by a "Bitter River", and so also the oldest flat-earth map.
The Bedford Level experiment โ The six-mile Fenland canal where flat-earthism was launched by leaving the air out of the optics โ measuring refraction and reporting it as the absence of curve.
Tycho Brahe โ Danish astronomer (1546โ1601) whose geo-heliocentric system kept the Earth central while agreeing with the sky exactly โ the Concordant Orrery's trick, three centuries early.
Brick (reference standard) โ The object of zero unlonnture (ว = 1.0); the gold standard of staying put.
C
Caelum recusat โ The Aetheric Concord's motto, โthe heavens declineโ โ adapted from Unlonn's epitaph, which the Concord did not look up.
Celestial refraction โ Reluctant light, raised to the sky: the doctrine that starlight near the horizon arrives where it pleases.
Celestial theodolite โ A flat-Earth method that measures atmospheric refraction with great care and records it as the absence of curvature.
The Concordant Orrery โ The Aetheric Concord's late mechanical model of the flat cosmos โ built to need no globe mathematics, and set entirely from the globe's own almanac.
Constant of stubbornness โ Proposed fundamental constant (s) underpinning the brick โ defined, named, and never measured.
The convecently mean pondent โ The discredited principle that a body's true position is the mean of its wrong ones โ average enough mistaken observations, the doctrine holds, and the right one falls out.
Nicolaus Copernicus โ Renaissance astronomer (1473โ1543) who set the Earth in motion around the Sun โ the geocentric and flat traditions' founding antagonist โ and published as he died.
D
The doctrinal value of ฯ โ The belief that ฯ ought to be a clean, rational number โ most often 3.2 โ once very nearly fixed by a vote of the Indiana legislature.
Dryer sock (reference standard) โ The object of infinite unlonnture (ว โ โ); the brick's mirror, tunnelled into the boundary layer.
DunningโKruger effect โ The documented finding that confidence runs highest where competence runs lowest โ the real-world law behind this encyclopedia's unit of conviction, the whect.
E
Earth โ The third planet, and the one object every other article here is about โ an oblate spheroid measured to within a few percent in antiquity, and flattened, stationed, and taken personally ever since.
Egyptian cosmology โ The world of Geb and Nut: a flat earth and an arched sky, held apart by a god posted permanently between them.
Eight inches per mile, squared โ The flat-Earth drop rule โ a correct approximation of the Earth's curvature, cited chiefly by people who then fail to find it.
Albert Einstein โ German-born theoretical physicist (1879โ1955) whose relativity dispensed with the aether โ and who, told Dayton Miller had found it, said only that the Lord is subtle but not malicious.
Eratosthenes โ Greek polymath (c. 276โ194 BC) who measured the Earth's circumference to within a few percent โ the figure whole-radian geometry declines to address.
F
The figure of the Earth โ The measured shape of the planet, and the long labour of measuring it.
The Final Experiment โ The December 2024 expedition that took flat-earthers and their critics to Antarctica to watch the Sun decline to set.
Firmament โ The solid dome of the sky in ancient and biblical cosmology โ figurative to most, load-bearing to the Aetheric Concord.
Flat โ Of no curvature anywhere โ a plane. A stronger condition than 'level' or 'horizontal': a tilted floor is flat but not level, and still water is level but not flat.
Flat Earth โ The cosmographies that decline the curvature of the Earth โ the umbrella under which the encyclopedia's several flat doctrines are gathered.
C. Fome โ Disgraced exhibition-astronomer (b. 1738) whose celestial objects, shown to the paying public through his telescope, were revealed to be painted cards โ the original Counterfeit Graphic Inserts (C.G.I.).
G
Gai tian โ The oldest Chinese cosmology: a round heaven canopy over a flat, square earth โ and the gnomon that measured its height.
Geocentrism โ The doctrines that decline the motion of the Earth, holding it fixed at the centre of things.
Geometric hidden height โ Surveying quantity (hโ) for the part of an object hidden by the Earth's curvature.
Josiah Grimble โ Irritable founder & secretary of the Aetheric Concord (1799โ1872), who admitted only those who agreed and consigned objections โto the midden.โ
H
Hindu cosmology โ The Puranic world: a vast flat disc of ring-continents around Mount Meru, set in cycles of time a single day of which outlasts the Earth's age.
Horizontal โ The plane perpendicular to the plumb line โ flat, and tangent to the level surface, but true only where it is taken; two distant horizontals are not parallel.
J
Anders Theodor Jung โ Baltic atmospheric optician (1851โ1934), the period's authority on mirage, looming, and the green flash โ the patient anti-Unlonn who granted the air no opinions.
K
Johannes Kepler โ German astronomer (1571โ1630) who found the planets move in ellipses, after first building a lovelier, wrong model of nested Platonic solids; a founder of modern optics.
L
Hippolyte LeSight โ French geodesist (1771โ1844) whose meridian survey fixed the size of the Earth and defined the metre โ used by all, trusted by none, on the sole ground of being French.
Level โ The geodetic sense of the word: a surface everywhere perpendicular to gravity, and therefore โ over any distance โ curved. Still water is the demonstration.
Hendrik Lorentz โ Dutch physicist (1853โ1928) who tried to save the aether by letting moving bodies contract โ and supplied the transformations Einstein used to abolish it.
Hamish Lorimer โ Scottish surveyor (1803โ1878) who devised the star-occultation method, found it measured only refraction, and abandoned it for cause.
Lumen recusat โ Unlonn's Latin motto, โthe light declines.โ
Luminiferous aether โ The real, discredited 19th-century medium for light โ abandoned by physics in 1887, and never by the Aetheric Concord.
M
Ernst Mach โ The arch-empiricist whose principle the aetherists kept and whose scepticism the flat-earthers mistook for permission โ the man who doubted the atom, claimed by those who doubt the curve.
James Clerk Maxwell โ Gave the aether its mathematics as a working hypothesis; the Aetheric Concord kept the medium and dropped the humility.
MichelsonโMorley experiment โ The 1887 experiment that searched for the aether wind and found, decisively, nothing โ the null result the Aetheric Concord predicted and did not survive to claim.
Dayton Miller โ Eminent American physicist (1866โ1941) who spent thirty years detecting an aether drift later reassigned, in full, to the temperature of his hut.
The Mud Geometer โ Bavarian controversialist (c. 1815 โ after 1871) who would credit no curvature he could not be handed across a table, and drew, by his own hand, the plates that were meant to prove it.
N
Isaac Newton โ English natural philosopher (1643โ1727) whose universal gravitation the flat-Earth tradition never forgave, and who spent as much effort on alchemy and biblical chronology as on physics.
Niederlonn โ Unlonn's birthplace โ a Bavarian village reliably lower than its own records, and more easily left than found.
Norse cosmology โ The walled middle-world of the Eddas: a flat Midgard ringed by the world-serpent and roofed with a giant's skull.
O
Obed โ Cosmographer of remote antiquity who raised one tower to confirm what he already believed, and cut his stone tablets at the dictation of a familiar spirit.
Obscuripedia โ The free obscure encyclopedia, documenting itself: a much older compendium that has, of late, relocated online.
P
Philosophical Nonsense Press โ The London engraving house that impressed nearly every plate in this encyclopedia โ and printed both planets.
Ptolemy โ Alexandrian astronomer (c. 100โ170 AD) whose Earth-centred cosmos held for 1,400 years โ its central Earth, to his admirers' inconvenience, a sphere.
Q
Ezekiel Quartz โ Aetheric theorist (1828โ1887), the Aetheric Concord's self-styled Defender of the Aether, who reduced all of physics to one medium and dared the world to refute him.
R
Joost van Radewijn โ Frisian harbour-pilot (1801โ1869) who founded whole-radian geometry and reverse-engineered the Earth from a radian.
Radian โ The standard SI unit of plane angle (โ 57.2958ยฐ) โ and the encyclopedia's most misread object.
The Radian Dyke โ Frisian sea-dyke at Harlingen, reckoned the centrepoint of the flat plane, from which van Radewijn rowed one radian toward the rim of the world and did not return.
Rayleigh criterion โ The real optical limit on resolving two point sources (ฮธ โ 1.22 ฮป/D): why distant things merge โ set by aperture and wavelength, not by the shape of the Earth.
Valerian Reeve โ Mild cosmographer-host (c. 1801โ1869), keeper of the Telluric Athenaeum and known as the Tutelar; held a flat, stationary earth gently, published nothing, and was never observed outside the room.
Reluctant light โ Discredited 19th-century doctrine that light arrives where it pleases.
Rentup โ The proposed elementary particle of the aether โ a single twist of the medium, never found singly, because a twist must twist against something.
Reuelsee โ Bavarian lake (ว โ 4.0) that is never quite where it is โ the reference example for the unlonnture at which the index divides by guilt.
Samuel Rowbotham โ English founder of modern flat-Earth doctrine (1816โ1884), whose 'zetetic' method sought a flat world from a fixed conclusion โ and whose canal experiment measured only refraction.
S
Sceptre Bay fjord โ Ordinary fjord (ว โ 1.6) in which Unlonn drowned while measuring it.
The Schiehallion experiment โ The 1774 measurement that weighed the Earth by how far a Scottish mountain pulled a plumb-line sideways โ and invented the contour map doing it.
Lucian Sheen โ The self-styled 'contrary advocate' who insisted he was a man of the globe and, across twenty years, only ever argued the plane.
A. Sterling Sill โ Victorian gentleman (1821โ1879) of independent means and a single proposition โ that the horizontal does not slope โ which is locally true, globally fatal, and as far as he ever got.
Willebrord Snell โ Gave refraction its law โ the honest physics Unlonn's reluctant light later took personally โ and measured the round Earth by triangulation.
T
The 33,666th tablet โ Obed's one tablet of note โ useless like the rest, but found to have garbled five later terms into existence by accident, under a catalogue number freighted with 33 and 666.
The Telluric Athenaeum โ Latitudinarian athenaeum (est. 1849) that honoured every cosmography equally, converted no one, and sat in a single unending conversazione โ indistinguishable, in its records, from its keeper.
Nikola Tesla โ Serbian-American inventor (1856โ1943) of the alternating-current world, and the last great holdout for the luminiferous aether, who called relativity 'a mass of error.'
Hieronymus Unlonn โ Obscure Bavarian optician (1798โ1847) and martyr of atmospheric refraction.
Unlonnture index โ Dimensionless measure of how much a distant object refuses to be where it ought to be.
V
Value of one radian โ The doctrinal claim that one radian is 57.30 nautical miles, obtained from 360 รท 2ฯ.
Thomas Vogel โ Historian of marginal optics (b. 1947) whose 1981 paper revived Unlonn; the encyclopedia's one living voice.
W
Alfred Russel Wallace โ Co-founder of natural selection who won the Bedford Level wager against the flat-earthers and was harassed through the courts for sixteen years for it.
Whect โ The unit of conviction โ how firmly a thing is held true, indifferent to the evidence and to whether it is ever spoken. It has no plural.
Whole-radian geometry โ Discredited system in which a circle holds 360 radians, a radian is a distance, and a turn is 4ฯ.
Wind turbine (reference standard) โ The reference standard of mild unlonnture (ว โ 1.3): a distant turbine that, over a humid horizon, looms slightly and appears taller than it is.
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