The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was still held by the more learned, but the heads of the church held it to be unscriptural.
Lambert, indeed, seems to have believed in the sphericity of the earth.
The deviation of the earths figure from sphericity, and the variation of g with latitude, are here ignored.
In particular, Plato taxes Parmenides with his inconsistency in attributing (as he certainly did) to the fundamental unity extension and sphericity, so that "the worshipped dv is after all a pitiful j.) " (W.
In the same way, the elementary conception of the sphere involves the idea of sphericity, which would be tested in a similar way, and is in fact so tested, at an early stage by tactual perception, and at a more advanced stage by mechanical methods; the next step being the circularity of the central section, as roughly tested (where the sphere is small) by visual perception, i.e.
