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Old 02-18-2003, 06:25 PM   #12
Aiwendil
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Join Date: Mar 2001
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Flat earth cosmology with sun and moon as leaves of trees is certainly human (that's why I was pushing you to repeat the vote on round/flat earth)
I don't think we can simply decide that the flat earth version is an incorrect human idea and leave it at that. First of all, we don't have unequivocal evidence that this was Tolkien's decision. It's certain that at one point he intended to actually rewrite the Silmarillion with the round earth cosmology. Whether he abandoned this or not is debatable. A bigger problem is this: Tolkien seems to have thought that introducing the round world version made his mythology somehow more scientifically realistic. This simply isn't the case. How, for example, could Earendil have become a star if the stars are in fact balls of plasma millions of kilometres away?

But all that is peripheral. And it's also not a problem unless someone can find a passage in the Ainulindale D that necessitates that the earth is flat. If not, there's no reason that it cannot have been written by Rumil, in any case.
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