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They knew it was round, damn it
- Maultasche 10y agoIt turned out Columbus was wrong and everyone else was right. The Earth was simply too large to sail around the other way. The only thing that kept Columbus' expedition from certain doom was bumping into a continent that was unknown to most of Europe, despite some Norse having settled there in earlier centuries. Imagine if the Americas hadn't existed. He would likely have died in the middle of a huge ocean.
- duaneb 10y agoBoth sides were wrong. An earth of a larger size doesn't imply a lack of land, just the lack of assurance.
- dragonwriter 10y agoColumbus was wrong. While the grandparent posits a hypothetical where there was no land in between, that's not what Columbus critics suggested -- they suggested that the known size of the Earth was such that a more economical route to the Indies from Europe sailing West was not a reasonable thing to expect. They were correct, and Columbus -- who insisted that he had reached the (East, now, because of the confusion he caused) Indies -- was wrong.
- duaneb 10y agoIt was still a gamble where the outcome was entirely unexpected. They were both wrong about their expectations: finding the indes, or finding nothing and running out of resources.
- ptaipale 10y agoTrue, but one could say that the critics of Columbus based their opinion on reason and knowledge: world is too big to find India that way, and you can't know that there's land in between.
- mmanfrin 10y agoColumbus wasn't looking for America. He had miscalculated the circumference of the earth and thought he could sail west to India. The Portuguese laughed him out of the country because of this. Note that the Caribbean was called the West Indes for this reason -- Columbus thought he had hit India.
- duaneb 10y agoSure. But the bet on finding something paid off when others would not have made the journey. The outcome was something nobody expected. They were both wrong.
- CDRdude 10y agoFor someone to be wrong, they have to have made a some statement that turned out to be incorrect. The people that disagreed with Columbus' calculations said that the earth was larger than Columbus gave it credit for. This was not an incorrect statement.
- simonh 10y agoColumbus didn't bet on finding 'something', he bet on finding India. Imagine what his crew would have said if he'd told them he was betting on finding 'something'.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tosseraccount 10y agoEarth was simply too large to sail around the other way. Yet ... 27 years after Columbus' first voyage, the Magellan expedition started it's circumnavigation sailing west proving it was possible. There are plenty of islands in the Ocean to load up on food and water. Magellen, in fact, stopped at several islands.
- ubernostrum 10y agoIt was too large for the ships Columbus took, provisioned as Columbus provisioned them. And everyone who ridiculed him knew that. Magellan went out with a larger fleet and two years' provisions laid in.
- tosseraccount 10y ago2 years' provisions Magellan Voyage took 3 years.
- xlm1717 10y agoHey may have left with 2 years' provisions, but as you said, he stopped at many islands along the way to restock his provisions.
- ubernostrum 10y agoAlso it's a good thing he set out with the fleet he did, becaue only one of the ships, and a handful of the original crew, made it back.
- felipeerias 10y agoColumbus' plan was equivalent to crossing the Atlantic and then the Pacific, with nothing in between. That is a 24,000 km trip in a straight line (from Spain to the Moluccas, the Spice Islands) for which he was absolutely unprepared.
- huxley 10y agoIt's important to remember that the voyages weren't attempts to prove scientific theories, the Spanish wanted to establish new trade routes.
- ianferrel 10y agoI blame Stan Freberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Freberg_Presents_the_United_States_of_America_Volume_One:_The_Early_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Freberg_Presents_the_Unit...
- pluma 10y agoWait. There are people who believe Columbus was the first person to establish as common knowledge that the world was round? Is this an American thing again?
- PeCaN 10y agoI kid you not, it's taught in American elementary schools (at least it was to me, in the early-mid 2000s). ...Yeah. Thankfully my middle school general science textbook mentioned this shit's been known forever and the Greeks even estimated the circumference of the thing.
- cmurf 10y agoWell, not exactly forever, there was that whole Galileo vs Catholic Church thing.
- Spellman 10y agoGalileo v Church was about whether the Earth moved, not about the Earth being a sphere.
- cmurf 10y agoHmm, looks like we're both wrong although you're less wrong than I am. Copernicus supported a heliocentric view and the Church didn't consider it a problem. Galileo was accused of biblical interpretation, positing that the bible isn't intended to be an authority on science, which then explodes into an anti-heliocentricism position by the Church at that time. Cute. I'm gonna guess this confusion happens for the same reason as then: politics vs facts. This same thing happens where school boards what simplistic explanations for certain things they want deemphasized and politically biased yet detailed explanations for ones they want emphasized. Its annoying.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoI have also read that Galileo was a rather aggressive fellow who made a hobby of antagonizing authority figures, and his persecution was less a matter of rigorous doctrine than of finding an excuse to make him shut up. I don't have a source handy for that, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's an interesting take on the story.
- lolc 10y agoA thorough rant if I ever read one.
- kesara 10y agoNow try convincing http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/ http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/ :)
- dreamsofdragons 10y agoArguing with genuinely stupid people just makes me frustrated and depressed. It's far far easier to just ignore them.
- userbinator 10y agoIt is extremely difficult to tell apart genuine stupidity from advanced trolling.
- eric_h 10y agoIndeed. I'm as certain as one can be that the flat earth movement is half stupid and half troll (at least on Internet message boards). I sincerely hope that my unscientific estimate is not erring in favor of the right hand side there.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoI've always just assumed that it was just "trolling", like being a follower of the FSM - noodles all round.
- mcguire 10y agoAh, Washington Irving. One of the greatest minds of his time; what he didn't know, he made up on the spot.
- kazinator 10y agoOf course they knew it was round. Under the belief that the Earth isn't round, land discovered by sailing west would have been taken for granted to be a new discovery, and not India, which lies to the east. Its inhabitants wouldn't have been dubbed Indians.
- Buge 10y agoWhether they are called Indians or not has nothing to do with the myth that Europeans thought the Earth was flat. The myth says "Columbus thought the Earth was round, while everyone else thought it was flat". Even if that myth was true, they would still be called Indians, because Columbus named them that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- danielam 10y agoThis isn't the only childish myth that refuses to die. The so-called Galileo affair and Copernicus' alleged fear and trembling over publishing "his" heliocentric theory are two notorious and by now classical examples. In both cases, the supposedly grand Manichean battle between Religion and Science was nothing but the fallout of the provincial squabbling of petty men. Copernicus -- who was a classically educated cleric -- was reluctant to publish De Revolutionibus on account of hostility from rival astronomers (and though the Church had no doctrinal interest in something as theologically irrelevant as which rock orbits which other rock, Paul III and Cardinal von Schoenberg did take interest in his work). Furthermore, Copernicus' original contribution was not the idea of a heliocentric "universe", but the mathematization he produced that "saved the appearances" accounted for in the geocentric model. The Galileo "affair", which stretched for some 30 years IIRC, culminated in house arrest in the papal apartments overlooking the papal gardens, a fate far better than that of many in the 15th century or the 21st century for that matter. Ultimately, his house arrest was largely the result of Galileo's habit of harassing people and making enemies, some of whom were clerics, and nothing to do with doctrine (the story goes that Galileo was arrested and forced to abjure the very same heliocentrism Paul III and others encouraged and found so fascinating under pain of death, but anyone free of prejudice and acquainted with the history knows this account to be comically stupid as it is presented). There are many more such fabrications and misconceptions. At least some of these myths are known to have their origins in the 19th century and in the slanderous writings of fanatical Enlightenment and Protestant writers whose rabid hatred for Rome seems to have, in their minds, given them license to resort to libel or corrupted their thinking. The author credits two men in the article who certainly had an axe to grind.
- transfire 10y agoUh, no. You are the one reading too much revisionist history. On the morning of June 22, 1633, Galileo, dressed in the white shirt of penitence, entered the large hall of the Inquisition building. He knelt and listened to his sentence: "Whereas you, Galileo, the son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine....." The reading continued for seventeen paragraphs... "And, so that you will be more cautious in future, and an example for others to abstain from delinquencies of this sort, we order that the book Dialogue of Galileo Galilei be prohibited by public edict. We condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure." "As a salutary penance we impose on you to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for the next three years. And we reserve to ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off, the whole or part of the said penalties and penances." "This we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, order and reserve by this or any other better manner or form that we reasonably can or shall think of. So we the undersigned Cardinals pronounce." Seven of the ten cardinals signed the sentence. Following the reading of the sentence, Galileo knelt to recite his abjuration: "Desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this strong suspicion, reasonably conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church; and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me...." "I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633." "I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand."
- transfire 10y agoI'm pretty sure there were many Europeans who thought the Earth was flat. And given the quality of the Columbus' crew, some among them as well. The idea that it must be all or none is ridiculous. How many people today still reject Evolution?
- egjerlow 10y agoThe point is that we're still being taught that the reason Columbus sailed westward was to prove that the earth was round, which was certainly not the case. I have lost count of the times the 'we used to think the world was flat' argument has been used in discussions I have partaken in. Though it does have a valid point (we know more now than we used to) it is also misused, especially when it comes to discussions on science and religion. It is quite ironic when the defenders of science in that perceived battle perpetuate this myth.
- transfire 10y agoWell, "the reason" is certainly wrong. But I think it is easy to understand the error. When Columbus thought he reached the Indies, it was the final difinitive proof that the world was indeed circumnavigable and thus round.
- known 10y agoGod != Religion; Religions are ~2000 years old; Humans are ~200,000 years old; Earth is ~4,000,000,000 years old; Religion was born when first con-man met the first fool; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history
- golergka 10y ago> Religions are ~2000 years old Ehm.
- bambax 10y agoWhat's really amazing is how calumny works: the bigger the better. It's very likely nobody, since men walked the earth, who gave it a moment's thought ever believed the earth to be flat; it's absolutely certain nobody in Europe or the Middle East post Aristotle ever believed it either (as many comments already point out). And yet, a myth invented in the 19th century to make fun of "medieval times" and the Catholic Church is still around today, and needs to be constantly refuted. I think it works because it flatters us, making us feel sooo superior to those ancient characters that must have been sooo stupid and smug. Well, in this case at least, we're the smugs and the stupids.
- qb45 10y ago> It's very likely nobody, since men walked the earth, who gave it a moment's thought ever believed the earth to be flat Ahem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth