H is for Hollow Earth #AtoZchallenge

         (Welcome to the A-Z Blog Challenge 2021!  My theme this year is Mythical and Imaginary Places.  If you want to visit more A to Z Blogs, find the Master List here.)

        H is for Hollow Earth, a concept with a long and diverse history, having occurred to cultures around the world, to both theologians and to scientists, and now, alas, to conspiracy-loving nutcases.  To see some of the varied and interesting ways that worlds inside our planet Earth have been conceived, read 

the post about Hollow Earth here.

        Why would this idea be so widely appealing?  I think it has to do with a longing for mystery.  The more science tells us that everything’s already been explored, the more we rebel with the idea that there must be more, hidden out of sight somewhere, ripe for discovery.  The truth is that science hasn’t explained everything yet, and that the human spirit knows and needs that mystery.  There are plenty of aspects to human experience that seem to fall outside of the realm of science altogether, but apparently 

sometimes rather than wrestle with the truly interesting issues of love, creativity, souls and spirits, life and death, that will always remain mysterious, people find it easier just to believe that there’s an unexplored world inside the Hollow Earth that I know about even though those smarty-pants scientists don’t.  Plus, it makes perfect sense that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs on the surface of the earth would not have affected the dinosaurs inside the earth, so that’s pretty cool, right?

        The MORAL of the Hollow Earth:  A creative exploration of possibilities?  That’s charming, entertaining, and fun.  A deluded belief that governments, scientists, or your scapegoats of choice are for some inexplicable reason trying to hide this implausible truth from you, but you know better than them anyway?  That’s sad, scary, potentially dangerous, and definitely not fun.

              OR:  A useful pro tip for packing efficiently is to place your small planets inside your larger planets.

        So, what’s your favorite non-scientific way to imagine the Earth?  Hollow?  Flat?  Geocentric?  Or perhaps we’re just the inhabitants on the inside of a much larger Earth?

[Pictures: Back cover illustration from The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres by John Cleves Symmes and Americus Symmes, 1878 (Image from Hathi Trust);

Front cover illustration from Geokosmos: Weltbild der Zukunft (Worldview of the Future) by Karl Neupert, 1942 (Image from Ricardo).]