“Try this experiment. Ask an ordinary person what Christopher
Columbus wanted to prove when he set out to reach the Orient by way of
the Occident and what it was that the learned men of Salamanca
stubbornly denied, trying to prevent his voyage. The reply, in most
cases, will be thatColumbus believed the earth was round, whereas the
Salamanca
sailing a short distance, the three caravels would plunge into the
cosmic abyss.
So what was the big argument all about
in the time ofColumbus
calculations more precise than his, and they held that the earth, while
assuredly round, was far more vast than the Genoese navigator believed,
and therefore it was mad for him to attempt to circumnavigate it in
order to reach the Orient by way of the Occident.Columbus
contrary, burning with a sacred fire, good navigator but bad astronomer,
thought the earth smaller than it was. Naturally neither he nor the
learned men ofSalamanca suspected that between Europe and Asia there
lay another continent. And so you see how complicated life is, and how
fragile are the boundaries between truth and error, right and wrong.
Though they were right, the sages ofSalamanca were wrong; and Columbus
while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right
—thanks to serendipity.”
The Greeks had tried hard to find out how large the
Earth is and managed to calculate many different figures depending on
the methods and accuracy of their work. The most famous effort was that
of Eratosthenes, Librarian of Alexandria, who wrote a treatise On the
Measurement of the Earth, in which he gave a figure for the Earth’s
circumference of 250,000 stadia. Depending on how long a stadia actually
was this is the equivalent of about 23,000 miles, pretty close to the
true figure of 24,900 miles.
At the time Eratosthenes’s result did not demand
universal assent and was widely seen as too big. A more popular figure
is that given by Strabo and Ptolemy, two distinguished Greek geographers
of around the first century AD who both suggested 180,000 stadia. We
are not sure where they got their figures from but they were repeated by
the Latin writer Seneca who transmitted them to the medieval West. By
the time that it became a live issue forColumbus
was back in vogue and the experts were wisely urging the Italian not to
set sail. In particular a committee set up inSalamanca examined the
plans and rejected them on the grounds thatColumbus
the distance he would have to travel. Their concern is easy to
understand – imagine how much troubleColumbus would have been in if the
Americas
trip all the way to the east coast ofAsia and was very lucky that some
land intervened before he and his crew had to pay for his mistake. In
the end, however, Queen Isabella ofSpain
resources required.
It is not difficult to see how the story ofColumbus
was adapted so that he became the figure of progress rather than a
lucky man who profited from his error. According to Jeffrey Burton
Russell here,
the invention of the flat Earth myth can be laid at the feet of
Washington Irving, (the author of Rip Van Winkle) who included it in his
historical novel on Columbus -its theme was the victory of a lone
believer in a spherical Earth over a united front of Bible-quoting,
superstitious ignoramuses, convinced the Earth was flat- and the wider
idea that everyone in the Middle Ages was deluded has been widely
accepted ever since.
Then later authors repeated this error:
“Nineteenth-century secular thought, irritated by the
Church’s refusal to accept the heliocentric hypothesis, attributed to
all Christian thought (patristic and scholastic) the idea that the earth
was flat.The nineteenth-century positivist and anticlerical made a meal
of this cliché, which, as Jeffrey Burton Russell has demonstrated, was
strengthened during the battle the supporters of Darwinian theory joined
against every form of fundamentalism. It was a matter of demonstrating
that, as the churches had erred about the sphericity of the earth, so
they could err also about the origin of species.”
The myth that Christians in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat was given a massive boost by Andrew Dickson White’s weighty tome The Warfare of Science with Theology.
This book has become something of a running joke among historians of
science and it is dutifully mentioned as a prime example of
misinformation in the preface of most modern works on science and
religion. The Flat Earth is discussed in chapter 2 and one can almost
sense White’s confusion that hardly any of the sources support his
hypothesis that Christians widely believed in it. He finds himself
grudgingly admitting that Clement, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Isodore,
Albertus Magnus and Aquinas all accepted the Earth was a globe – in
other words none of the great doctors of the church had considered the
matter in doubt. Although an analysis of what White actually says
suggests he was aware that the Flat Earth was largely a myth, he
certainly gives an impression of ignorant Christians suppressing
rational knowledge of its real shape.
What can be stated categorically was that a Flat
Earth was at no time ever an element of Christian doctrine and that no
one was ever persecuted or pressurised into believing it. This is
interesting because the Bible itself implies the Earth is flat (for
example at Daniel 4:11) and in [Isaiah 40:22] that it is spherical.
Clearly, belief in the complete scientific accuracy of the scriptures
against known facts was not upheld by the early or medieval church who
were happy to accept figurative interpretations.
Anti-clerical ‘history of science’ writers have promulgated the myth so that even today, in his book The Discoverers,
Daniel Boorstin manages to produce a totally misleading account
(although he eventually getsColumbus
he castigates Christians for thinking the world was flat when they did
not and then praises the erudition of Chinese geographers who actually
did believe it. The myth is so prevalent that the blurb on the back
cover of the UK version of Umberto Eco’s Serendipities, the editor repeats the myth even though within the book itself, Eco devotes a good deal of attention to debunking it!
The doyen of historians of Medieval Science, Edward Grant, covers the issue in his 2001 book, God and Reason in the Middle Ages
where he finds all educated people in the Middle Ages were well aware
the Earth was a sphere. Perhaps today we can at last dispense with this
patronising belief about the Christian Middle Ages.
Columbus wanted to prove when he set out to reach the Orient by way of
the Occident and what it was that the learned men of Salamanca
stubbornly denied, trying to prevent his voyage. The reply, in most
cases, will be that
sailing a short distance, the three caravels would plunge into the
cosmic abyss.
So what was the big argument all about
in the time of
calculations more precise than his, and they held that the earth, while
assuredly round, was far more vast than the Genoese navigator believed,
and therefore it was mad for him to attempt to circumnavigate it in
order to reach the Orient by way of the Occident.
contrary, burning with a sacred fire, good navigator but bad astronomer,
thought the earth smaller than it was. Naturally neither he nor the
learned men of
lay another continent. And so you see how complicated life is, and how
fragile are the boundaries between truth and error, right and wrong.
Though they were right, the sages of
while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right
—thanks to serendipity.”
The Greeks had tried hard to find out how large the
Earth is and managed to calculate many different figures depending on
the methods and accuracy of their work. The most famous effort was that
of Eratosthenes, Librarian of Alexandria, who wrote a treatise On the
Measurement of the Earth, in which he gave a figure for the Earth’s
circumference of 250,000 stadia. Depending on how long a stadia actually
was this is the equivalent of about 23,000 miles, pretty close to the
true figure of 24,900 miles.
At the time Eratosthenes’s result did not demand
universal assent and was widely seen as too big. A more popular figure
is that given by Strabo and Ptolemy, two distinguished Greek geographers
of around the first century AD who both suggested 180,000 stadia. We
are not sure where they got their figures from but they were repeated by
the Latin writer Seneca who transmitted them to the medieval West. By
the time that it became a live issue for
was back in vogue and the experts were wisely urging the Italian not to
set sail. In particular a committee set up in
plans and rejected them on the grounds that
the distance he would have to travel. Their concern is easy to
understand – imagine how much trouble
trip all the way to the east coast of
land intervened before he and his crew had to pay for his mistake. In
the end, however, Queen Isabella of
resources required.
It is not difficult to see how the story of
was adapted so that he became the figure of progress rather than a
lucky man who profited from his error. According to Jeffrey Burton
Russell here,
the invention of the flat Earth myth can be laid at the feet of
Washington Irving, (the author of Rip Van Winkle) who included it in his
historical novel on Columbus -its theme was the victory of a lone
believer in a spherical Earth over a united front of Bible-quoting,
superstitious ignoramuses, convinced the Earth was flat- and the wider
idea that everyone in the Middle Ages was deluded has been widely
accepted ever since.
Then later authors repeated this error:
“Nineteenth-century secular thought, irritated by the
Church’s refusal to accept the heliocentric hypothesis, attributed to
all Christian thought (patristic and scholastic) the idea that the earth
was flat.The nineteenth-century positivist and anticlerical made a meal
of this cliché, which, as Jeffrey Burton Russell has demonstrated, was
strengthened during the battle the supporters of Darwinian theory joined
against every form of fundamentalism. It was a matter of demonstrating
that, as the churches had erred about the sphericity of the earth, so
they could err also about the origin of species.”
The myth that Christians in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat was given a massive boost by Andrew Dickson White’s weighty tome The Warfare of Science with Theology.
This book has become something of a running joke among historians of
science and it is dutifully mentioned as a prime example of
misinformation in the preface of most modern works on science and
religion. The Flat Earth is discussed in chapter 2 and one can almost
sense White’s confusion that hardly any of the sources support his
hypothesis that Christians widely believed in it. He finds himself
grudgingly admitting that Clement, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Isodore,
Albertus Magnus and Aquinas all accepted the Earth was a globe – in
other words none of the great doctors of the church had considered the
matter in doubt. Although an analysis of what White actually says
suggests he was aware that the Flat Earth was largely a myth, he
certainly gives an impression of ignorant Christians suppressing
rational knowledge of its real shape.
What can be stated categorically was that a Flat
Earth was at no time ever an element of Christian doctrine and that no
one was ever persecuted or pressurised into believing it. This is
interesting because the Bible itself implies the Earth is flat (for
example at Daniel 4:11) and in [Isaiah 40:22] that it is spherical.
Clearly, belief in the complete scientific accuracy of the scriptures
against known facts was not upheld by the early or medieval church who
were happy to accept figurative interpretations.
Anti-clerical ‘history of science’ writers have promulgated the myth so that even today, in his book The Discoverers,
Daniel Boorstin manages to produce a totally misleading account
(although he eventually gets
he castigates Christians for thinking the world was flat when they did
not and then praises the erudition of Chinese geographers who actually
did believe it. The myth is so prevalent that the blurb on the back
cover of the UK version of Umberto Eco’s Serendipities, the editor repeats the myth even though within the book itself, Eco devotes a good deal of attention to debunking it!
The doyen of historians of Medieval Science, Edward Grant, covers the issue in his 2001 book, God and Reason in the Middle Ages
where he finds all educated people in the Middle Ages were well aware
the Earth was a sphere. Perhaps today we can at last dispense with this
patronising belief about the Christian Middle Ages.
