I knew the ancient philosophers knew the word was round (because of the lack of shadows at noon) but not that this was known to illiterate people in the Middle Ages, until I read this article.
The idea that they did not was a mistake by Washington Irving.
I was struck by this fact that I hadn't thought of.
English kings being crowned since at least Harold II – including Charles III – have been ceremoniously presented with an orb, not a disc, representing the planet.
I was once driven by a terribly sweet taxi driver who told me in confidence that the world was flat and the moon landings had been faked. I was delighted by his scepticism but sad too, because he was so nice, that he was wrong.
I would much rather trust a peasant who tills the fields than to a taxi driver who, in Bucharest, tends to be a part time scammer and a part time pimp - when not throwing a tantrum punishing innocent citizens because competition is allowed to exist.
ReplyDeleteMost taxi drivers I meet are good, intelligent men and in 3 or 4 cases women but some are pimps. I would certainly trust peasants more.
DeleteEratosthenes (from North Africa but schooled in Athens) calculated the size of the Earth with a surprising degree of accuracy in the third century BC. A subsequent calculation by Poseidonus was very wrong and underestimated the size of the globe. Columbus, against conventional wisdom, trusted the incorrect (smaller) calculation, giving him the confidence to sail across the "ocean blue".
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