A Flat Earth Manifesto
Henry Crabb Robinson [a journalist who knew William Blake was stunned when] Blake announced: ‘I do not believe that the world is round. I believe it is quite flat.’
Mark Vernon. Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination (p. 69). C. Hurst & Co., 2025 (Kindle Edition).
All the guests that evening were suddenly called to dinner, and Robinson did not have an opportunity to ask Blake to explain himself. This anecdote hangs in his biographical record simply as one of many fantastical things William Blake said and did. Some of those Blake anecdotes are likely apocryphal, and this one--even though it is from a reliable source--is a strange assertion by Blake because it contradicts not only what was common knowledge for the educated people that he was surrounded by, but it is also contrary to what he knew to be true. If he was in earnest, and I believe he was, we can to try to understand how Blake understood the world or even what he meant by the words "Earth" and "flat," but ultimately, to understand this counter-factual statement, we must be willing to take an imaginative leap away from what we now take for granted.
Blake was hostile to many rationalist ideas about the world, but he was not anti-science, nor was he a contrarian who rebelled just for the sake of getting a reaction, nor was he a fabulist who uncritically took on niché ideas; rather, he was suspicious of people who thought that science would solve all our problems and that it could be used to answer any and every question. Moreover, Blake was a sensible man, but one who insisted on the primacy of subjective and imaginative experience and someone who gave his sense of wonder free rein. Mark Vernon says as much in his biography of Blake, and he claims in this particular anecdote that Blake was asserting the unique experience of being on earth. Blake claimed the world was flat because he thought being on earth--and all that entailed--should not be regarded objectively, as if one merely existed on this sphere surrounded by a vast number of other celestial objects.
And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place, standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe. And on its verge the Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow To meet the flat Earth & the Sea in such an order’d Space. The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold. And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move Where’er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss. Such are the Spaces called Earth & such is its dimension. As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner As of a Globe rolling thro’ Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.
Blake sees value in the finite and immediate way we experience the world and that our senses of living in this world are not enhanced with the knowledge that is round. This argument rests on the way we inhabit our lives and encounter our environment. It is not, as many flat-earth proponents vainly assert, a false scientific idea; rather, it is both not useful to the needs of living in this uniquely remarkable world, and it objectifies the singular beauty that the Earth holds. Flat Earthers would deny what is obvious, refute the authority of science in pseudo-scientific ways, and darkly insinuate a conspiracy as if they alone hold the truth. It is not surprising that no flat-earth advocates invoke Blake in their screed. He does not neatly fit into their absurd narrative because he was true to the original idea of the Luddies, people who opposed technology when it dehumanized them, rather than the distorted idea of the Luddies, people who opposed technology out of ignorance or fear of change.
Thinking of the world as flat, instead of simply presuming it is a sphere, presents a challenge to consider how such an existence may change the way we live or act in the world. Rather than hovering objectively from above and contemplating pan-global events and summoning goods and services from across the wide world, a flat world situates us inside a bounded area that has mere presence in the tangible and more immediately accessible life. Such a renunciation is a kind of Sabbath where a community makes time for itself and quiet contemplation. The Balinese day of darkness (Nyepi), where absolutely everything is shut down (including the airport, but not emergency services) for the whole day, is a flattening of their existence, which is typically overrun with millions of tourists from every part of the globe.
A flattened world represents itself to the senses and invites contemplation of the ways our lives are bound to the finite present. We must leave off shopping for cherries in Winter and patiently await our own harvest. Our actions, like our horizons, should no longer stretch out endlessly till East becomes West and North becomes South. Instead, like the surface of a page, the sensible world springs forth infinite in its depth from that mere surface.