3 ms·

As an amateur historian, I found the Colombus bit a bit interesting, and probably more on-point than Graham might have even known. Columbus, his backers, and h

As an amateur historian, I found the Colombus bit a bit interesting, and probably more on-point than Graham might have even known. Columbus, his backers, and his detractors all accepted that the world was round. What they disagreed about was how big it was, and how far it would be to Asia by sailing West. Everybody, pretty much, by that point knew that the world was literally round (and flat only in stories). This was especially true in monastic and church circles which had known this for longer. In other words they all agreed it was a great idea and an ambitious project that might succeed. They disagreed about what it would take to get there, and whether there might be obstacles in the way. Seems like a very fitting metaphor for an ambitious startup. Edit: For sources, you can start with "Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages: The Physical World Before Columbus" by Rudolf Simek, which is a book uncommon in its level of insight. His description of Marco Polo's purported encounter with a unicorn had me laughing in both humor and amazement. Simek's basic thesis was that Columbus's expedition was important historically because it blew away an important piece of medieval ethnographic thought--- once it became clear that the areas he had reached were not India, but were inhabited anyway, it doomed the Augustinian argument against the existence of inhabited continents beyond Africa, Asia, and Europe. This then paved the way for questioning the religious and classical basis for some aspects of the physical world, and lead in many ways to the Renaissance (though I think the failure of the Crusades and the translation of Arabic writings into Latin had a strong hand there too). The importance of Columbus's voyage about changing the way we think about our place on the world was still important. Another good point about ambitious startups?

keithpeter 15y ago
Thanks for the reference. Of course, every sailor knew the Earth was round. Just take a morning off and watch the boats going out of a fishing harbour should your location allow this... I found that pg quote useful as well, in a 'look for local advantage' way. Plan the next step based on how the weather and sea look today. Tomorrow it might be different.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  The Simek book is quite interesting. Of course it wasn't just the sailors. By the 13th century, pretty much everyone knew the world was round as it was a common description in popular literature. Their ideas of antipodes were rather funny and something the church struggled against for some time until the discovery of the New World but an end to the question.... And until Vasco de Gama proved them wrong, they might not have believed you could sail across the equator.... but they knew it was round. But the Simek work is interesting beyond that. It's largely on the basis of his work and the understanding that Europeans often knew more about Asia than Europe that it's fairly clear what a unicorn was: it's what you get when you describe an Asian rhino using a horse as a reference point. (Pliny's description of a monoceros is also frighteningly like a rhino, although some things are exaggerated.)
sayemm 15y ago
I'm currently working through SICP and watching the 1986 lectures of Abelson & Sussman, and one interesting bit in Lecture 2b on Compound Data is when a student raises his hand and asks Hal Abelson about the axiom of doing all of your design before any of your code. Abelson's response: "People who really believe that you design everything before you implement it are people who haven't designed many things. The real power is that you can pretend that you've made the decision and later on figure out which one is right, which decision you ought to have made, and when you can do that you have the best of both worlds." Probably the same holds true for startups.

keithpeter 15y ago

Thanks for the reference. Of course, every sailor knew the Earth was round. Just take a morning off and watch the boats going out of a fishing harbour should your location allow this... I found that pg quote useful as well, in a 'look for local advantage' way. Plan the next step based on how the weather and sea look today. Tomorrow it might be different.

einhverfr 15y ago
The Simek book is quite interesting. Of course it wasn't just the sailors. By the 13th century, pretty much everyone knew the world was round as it was a common description in popular literature. Their ideas of antipodes were rather funny and something the church struggled against for some time until the discovery of the New World but an end to the question.... And until Vasco de Gama proved them wrong, they might not have believed you could sail across the equator.... but they knew it was round. But the Simek work is interesting beyond that. It's largely on the basis of his work and the understanding that Europeans often knew more about Asia than Europe that it's fairly clear what a unicorn was: it's what you get when you describe an Asian rhino using a horse as a reference point. (Pliny's description of a monoceros is also frighteningly like a rhino, although some things are exaggerated.)

sayemm 15y ago

I'm currently working through SICP and watching the 1986 lectures of Abelson & Sussman, and one interesting bit in Lecture 2b on Compound Data is when a student raises his hand and asks Hal Abelson about the axiom of doing all of your design before any of your code. Abelson's response: "People who really believe that you design everything before you implement it are people who haven't designed many things. The real power is that you can pretend that you've made the decision and later on figure out which one is right, which decision you ought to have made, and when you can do that you have the best of both worlds." Probably the same holds true for startups.