Flat earthism and the appeal to personal experience as epistemological criterion

Abstract

Negationist movements have been hitting the spotlight mainly disseminated through social media in the last years. A growing support to these ideas and to fake news can be traced back to an epistemological crisis related to the loss of trust toward socially foundational institutions, including science. Incredulous individuals increasingly depend on their own experiences and beliefs, a phenomenon which extends to areas such as the scientific domain. This paper addresses a dimension of the current flat earthism: the appeal to personal experience as indisputable epistemological criterion. Our approach is mainly supported by the discussions conducted by Alfred Schulz regarding the ways of experiencing reality, both in the everyday and in the scientific provinces. We were able to identify, in flat earthism, typically everyday characterizations of reality emphasized and extrapolated to the scientific context, particularly regarding their assessment on Earth’s shape and rotation. Our analysis is enriched through real-world examples of flat earthist notions on these subjects. We consider that the appropriation, by science teachers, of the recent phenomena of growing dissemination of negationist and anti-science movements is essential in order to understand their characteristics and discuss then with students, especially from an epistemological point of view, clarifying their simplifying and limiting criteria.