Re: Flat Earth

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Hugh Haskell wrote:
...
> I suspect that among educated people it was
> pretty much accepted from Greek times. After all Eratosthenes first
> measure the earth's circumference in about 350 B.C.E. Since
> historians don't spend much time talking with the uneducated, I don't
> know how widespread that idea was with them much before Columbus'
> time. Contrary to the stories about Columbus' sailors, I doubt many
> seamen by that time doubted the sphericity of the earth. After all,
> they had been watching ships disappear hull down for centuries, and
> they had lots of opportunities to see lunar eclipses and watch the
> earth's shadow move across the lunar surface, looking much like at
> least a disc.
>
> So I would say that the idea that the earth was flat was most likely
> limited to those who lived a goodly distance from the sea, were
> illiterate, and didn't spend much time looking up. In other words,
> after, probably, the third century B.C.E., it was limited to
> relatively isolated areas where the populace never had much reason to
> think about it.

No. Nooooooooo. No.

Thomas Kuhn warned about this.  He said scientists love
to think that just because
  a) We know it today, and
  b) it could have been known 2350 years ago, then
  c) it must have been widely known then and at
     all times since then.

But the history of science does not work that way.
It just doesn't.  And wishing won't make it so.

Look at the evidence.  You can easily find any number
of 14th-century maps made in Europe that are utterly
devoid of any suggestion of non-flatness or periodic
boundary conditions or anything like that.

  http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/manuscrits/aman6.htm

I would be very interested to see a 14th-century
globe, or a map attesting to a non-flat view of the
world.  Can anybody find such a thing?

===============

In general, if you want to be a historian, stick to
the facts, not gut feelings about how it "should" have
been.