From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Error
Date: 29 Jul 92 00:04:38 GMT
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)

In article <0!mm!h-@lynx.unm.edu>, rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
> 
> 
> A thread that pops up periodically on t.o and probably elsewhere,
> involves the thesis that the Middle Ages were a time of total intellectual
> darkness, a darkness specifically caused by the advent of Christianity, 
> and only lightened by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature and
> the growth of the scientific method; the thesis being that if only
> civilisation hadn't been shackled by Christian dogma for a 1000 years,
> we would all be better off and more advanced today.
> 
> Another recent thread involved the idea of a flat earth, to which I myself
> contributed a reference to Boorstin (see below).
> 
> With respect to the first of these, the more I learn, the more I become
> convinced that this thesis is a *crock*, a crock that deserves to
> be broken, and I've already spoken my mind on the subject in t.o,
> but without much documentation to back up my opinion.  Here is a short
> book that sheds some light on the flat earth theory, and on this
> thesis as well: _Inventing the Flat Earth_, by Jeffrey Burton Russell.
> The relevance for sci.skeptic (I think) lies in the dangers of accepting
> without question the common knowledge one is taught in school.

Hear! Hear! The myth of the medieval 'dark age of oppression and superstition'
dies hard. Those who think the Middle Ages were nothing but a thousand years
of filth and war (a la "Robin Hood: Prince of Historical Cliches") should
read some of the medieval manuals on astronomical instruments that I've been
studying lately. After you've waded through a few pages of Richard of 
Wallingford's calculations you really begin to reassess this post-renaissance
proganda ('Renaissance!' my medieval history lecturer once snorted, 'nothing
happened in the fifteenth century that hadn't already happened in the twelfth
except some prettier paintings and a crackpot inventor.')

One classic example of medieval savvy as opposed to modern superstition is the
Turin Shroud. Remember all the nonsense that was being put around before it
was carbon-dated? There were people claiming they could even see coins from
Pontius Pilate's pr>fecture over the figure's eyes! By contrast, the fourteenth
century bishop (this was in the 'dark age of superstition' remember) who first
saw the shroud recognised it as a fake, and set about finding the guy who 
painted it. Once the painter was found, the bishop wrote to the Pope (the 
letter still survives, as does the Pope's reply) saying 'What are we to do with
this fake?' and the Pope replied 'Tell everyone it's a fake, and display it as
a *representation* of the shroud.' This was what was done, until (in the 
renaissance!) the shroud found its way to Turin where it was decided that
it was a bit more profitable to neglect to mention that it was a fake. Thus a
legend was born. 
Now, who were more superstitious, the members of the STURP 'scientific 
investigation' who made outrageous claims about the shroud in the late seventies,
or the fourteenth century bishop and Pope?
Tim O'Neill
Newsgroups: talk.origins