Just a quick note to thank Allen Roy for his recent submission the URL
providing
background information on the Flat Earth Myth for our perusal. It is
welcome
background confirmation for the many readers who had generally
recognized that
Flat Earth accusations were questionable (dubious, over-stated). It
also well
serves as a respectful 'heads-up' advisory to others who may perchance
regret
having irresponsibly repeated this fallacious claim in their own
correspondance.
As a former long-time evolutionary "believer" I am continually amazed by
how
many of the arguments used to sway the public (students, myself) to
trustingly
embrace biological evolution as a responsible scientific explanation for
the
appearance and diversity of life on earth today turn out, on further
examination, to be based more on dubious semantics as typified here,
than on
evidence that can be verified and/or scientifically demonstrated.
Thanks again, Dave Bradbury
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allen Roy wrote: 10/4/00; 8:62 am
> Here is a summary of how the Flat Earth Myth got started.
>
> http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html
>
> The Myth of the Flat Earth
> Summary by Jeffrey Burton Russell
>
> for the American Scientific Affiliation Conference
>
> August 4, 1997 at Westmont College
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
> How does investigating the myth of the flat earth help teachers of the
> history of science?
>
> First, as a historian, I have to admit that it tells us something
about
the
> precariousness of history. History is precarious for three reasons:
the
good
> reason that it is extraordinarily difficult to determine "what really
> happened" in any series of events; the bad reason that historical
> scholarship is often sloppy; and the appalling reason that far too
much
> historical scholarship consists of contorting the evidence to fit
> ideological models. The worst examples of such contortions are the
Nazi
and
> Communist histories of the early- and mid-twentieth century.
>
> Contortions that are common today, if not widely recognized, are
produced by
> the incessant attacks on Christianity and religion in general by
secular
> writers during the past century and a half, attacks that are largely
> responsible for the academic and journalistic sneers at Christianity
today.
>
> A curious example of this mistreatment of the past for the purpose of
> slandering Christians is a widespread historical error, an error that
the
> Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in
its
> short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is
the
> notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat--especially
> medieval Christians.
>
> It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no
> educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third
> century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.
>
> A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with
> Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus,
among
> others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a
few
> dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of
> Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC),
and
> Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all
> educated Greeks and Romans.
>
> Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A
few--at
> least two and at most five--early Christian fathers denied the
sphericity of
> earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as
geographical
> rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of
thousands of
> Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the
spherical
> view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is
that no
> educated person believed otherwise.
>
> Historians of science have been proving this point for at least 70
years
> (most recently Edward Grant, David Lindberg, Daniel Woodward, and
Robert S.
> Westman), without making notable headway against the error.
Schoolchildren
> in the US, Europe, and Japan are for the most part being taught the
same old
> nonsense. How and why did this nonsense emerge?
>
> In my research, I looked to see how old the idea was that medieval
> Christians believed the earth was flat. I obviously did not find it
among
> medieval Christians. Nor among anti-Catholic Protestant reformers. Nor
in
> Copernicus or Galileo or their followers, who had to demonstrate the
> superiority of a heliocentric system, but not of a spherical earth. I
was
> sure I would find it among the eighteenth-century philosophes, among
all
> their vitriolic sneers at Christianity, but not a word. I am still
amazed at
> where it first appears.
>
> No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the
earth
> was flat.
>
> The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and
an
> American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection,
> though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean
> Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices
who had
> studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both
to
> misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as
believing
> in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church
Fathers
> (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller
Washington
> Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the
guise of
> history. His misrepresentations of the history of early New York City
and of
> the life of Washington were topped by his history of Christopher
Columbus
> (1828). It was he who invented the indelible picture of the young
Columbus,
> a "simple mariner," appearing before a dark crowd of benighted
inquisitors
> and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom
believed,
> according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate. Well, yes,
there
> was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to
quote a
> distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine.
Washington
> Irving, scenting his opportunity for a picturesque and moving scene,"
> created a fictitious account of this "nonexistent university council"
and
> "let his imagination go completely...the whole story is misleading and
> mischievous nonsense."
>
> But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become
melded and
> then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in
> schoolbooks as the solemn truth?
>
> The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a
colorful
> and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the
eternal
> war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western
history.
> This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagated by the
influential
> historian John Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such
as
> Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University,
who
> made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts,
encyclopedias,
> and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A
lively
> current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's The
> Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library.
>
> The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of
the
> earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and
> eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The
answer
is
> really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement. The
> flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists. The argument
was
> simple and powerful, if not elegant: "Look how stupid these Christians
are.
> They are always getting in the way of science and progress. These
people who
> deny evolution today are exactly the same sort of people as those
idiots who
> for at least a thousand years denied that the earth was round. How
stupid
> can you get?"
>
> And so it goes, from Antoine-Jean Letronne to Carl Sagan and Richard
> Dawkins. Goebbels was right, if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big
lie,
> and keep repeating it. The problem is that historians and scientists
ought
> to know better.
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