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I don't think so. You have to go back a really long time to find when people thought the earth was flat. In the time of the ancient greeks they estimated the
by imp 18y ago
I don't think so. You have to go back a really long time to find when people thought the earth was flat. In the time of the ancient greeks they estimated the circumference of the earth. And even in the heliocentric theory of astronomy they at least assumed the earth was a sphere.
- mattmaroon 18y agoYou have to go back a really long time to find when everyone thought the earth was flat, but even though it was no longer consensus, flat earth was still a well-represented belief in the middle ages.
- boredguy8 18y agoI'm interested in knowing those sources to which you refer and also interested in what constitutes "well-represented". The largest and best representation of generally accepted cosmology of the middle ages, Dante's Comedy, _requires_ the earth be round (an 'echo' of the heavenly spheres). And he's basically synthesizing all available knowledge (theological, philosophical, political, and scientific) in his text, so where the text is silent to a conflict (that is, where it's making an _assumption_ as opposed to an _argument_), it ought be trusted as generally accepted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology has more on the myth. And assuming the truth of the citation in the wiki article, having Gould say, "all major medieval scholars accepted the earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology" is, I think, fairly damaging to your position. When one of the biggest critics of religious interactions with science says 'hey, they got it right here', they probably got it right.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI meant well-represented in the same way that creationism is today. Not as in believed to be true by most scientists.