3 ms·

Alright, make it simpler then. There was once broad consensus the earth was flat. Only if you go back far enough to predate the notion of the scientific method

• vidarh 5y ago
  And even outside of science the notion that people thought the Earth was flat tends to be vastly exaggerated. E.g. Dante's Divine Comedy contained a detailed explanation of how the Earth is round, including a description of how this means daytime comes at different times in different locations in the 14th century, well before the fanciful fictional descriptions of Columbus struggling to convince people the earth was round (rather than the more realistic argument over distance) Dante wasn't first in literature by any means either, and at most the detail in which it is described might indicate it was something he may have thought his audience were unfamiliar with the consequences of, but it doesn't appear to be presented as some shocking, controversial idea even for a non-scientific audience, more than just illustrating the sheer scale involved. It's interesting how the notion that the belief in a flat earth was widespread, may well be far more widespread today than the belief itself was.