imperial Empirical evidence does not enter the debate from my perspective .. at a very early age I had noted the Sun and the Moon were round, curvature was apparent when on some days clouds stretched from horizon to horizon .. then starting school the teachers were on about "ppl thought the Earth was flat."

Which to my ears was arrant bs since my own observations had discerned otherwise, which left me in no doubt the ppl in those same days had come to the same conclusion - that the Earth is a sphere - as I had at about age 4 yrs, and that dumbdown was underway within the school system.