Talk:Myth of the flat Earth/Archive 1

message: The article as written is wholly incorrect.  Many Medieval artists depicted the earth as flat; I have included a link to one such depiction (by Bosch) as reference.
FellGleaming (talk) 22:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Bosch is a renaissance artist and does not represent medieval views.  The extensive deletion of well-supported material is in error; see the extensive discussion of medieval belief in a spherical earth at Flat Earth.  I am reverting your changes.  --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 00:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Bosch painted this in 1504, the Middle Ages end in 1517 (Luther's Theses).  More importantly, the theologians mentioned are from the 4th-7th Century.  These **are** clearly and indisputably Medieval views.  I am reverting your edits. FellGleaming (talk) 01:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "First Appearance" in 19th Century is incorrect 

message: It is a commonplace in Wikipedia that primary sources, including images, do not stand by themselves but must be supported by reliable scholarly interpretations.  This seems to be especially the case for Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which is full of unrealistic and symbolic imagery.  If there are art-historical sources that support the idea that the exterior panels are intended to present a realistic portrayal of a flat earth inside a spherical container, please quote them.
A further issue is that to the extent that it might be realistic, is it intended as reflecting Bosch's view of the world (extremely doubtful in the 16th c. Netherlands) or is it intended to represent his view of how he thought medieval people saw the world (in that case it's analogous to the Flammarion woodcut).
I'm not an art historian and don't have answers to these questions; I only raise them to point out the problematic nature of the primary source presented here.  Without reliable secondary sources to present the present interpretation, this source should be removed.  --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 04:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The same editor has discussed Bosh's Renaissance painting once again (in the lede this time), as an example of a supposed common tradition of medieval depictions of the flat earth.  I've tagged it as needing citations, and will delete it if none are forthcoming.  --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I've added a citation for the meaning of Bosch's painting, but I'm not an expert of medieval painting. However the painting below in the article is in my view another example - no I withdraw that having looked at William Caxton's Mirror of the World. The problem is to find any representations at all, flat or spherical. Even the "orb" can be interpreted as being of the "world" i.e. the universe, not the earth. Chris55 (talk) 08:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Garden of Earthly Delights 

message: As an uninvolved 3rd party here, I've read the above discussions, including on the user talk pages, and I see not only no evidence for the Church doctrine theory, but that this is only being argued by one person.  So I have removed the dubious assertions.  --C S (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  removal of dubious assertions 

message: I'm seeing some attempts by Christian apologists to refer to the "Myth of the Flat Earth" when claiming that flat-Earthism has never been a mainstream belief within the Judeo-Christian tradition: which is not correct.  The article does repeatedly state that it covers the medieval period (with one notable lapse: "The popularized version of the misconception that people before the age of exploration believed that Earth was flat persists in the popular imagination, and is even repeated in some widely read textbooks"), but maybe the introduction needs a note indicating that the "myth" refers only to the medieval period, not all of history: and certainly not the time when most of the Old Testament was written, which was before the Greeks figured out that the Earth was a sphere.  Perhaps the following:
:Note: this phrase refers specifically to claims that flat-Earth beliefs were prevalent during the medieval period.  It does not address the issue of flat-Earth beliefs prior to the discovery of the Earth's sphericity by the Greeks, including references to such beliefs within the Bible and other ancient literatureCatholic Encyclopaedia: "On this point as on many others, the Bible simply reflects the current cosmological ideas and language of the time" etc.. --Robert Stevens (talk) 12:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with that aspect. Unless historians have collected strong evidence one way or the other, we simply can't know when this bit of scientific knowledge arose and should stay agnostic on that point. Hans Adler 16:31, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The assertion is easy to support.  Thales, Anaximander and other Greek philosophers of that time had studied mathematics (and presumably astronomy) in Egypt and Babylon.  They posed theories about models of the earth that assumed it was flat under some sort of star canopy.  Either Parmenides or the Pythagoreans were the first Greek philosophers to propose that the earth was round.  This is all explained in "J. L. E. Dreyer's, A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler".  By the time of Aristotle, it was a widespread idea.  As to the statement: "what do you think the Ancient Egyptians thought was the shape of the earth when they climbed to the tops of their early pyramids and could demonstrably see further than at ground level?" that's easy to refute.  While low on the ground other objects such as trees, other people and even bumps in the ground itself basically occlude everything behind them -- so going up just meant that you changed your viewing angle so that those occlusions went away and thus allowed you to see behind what you couldn't before.  More importantly, you can't literally see the Earth's curvature, so you would not automatically give that as an explanation for the better view from on high.  Even when the Greeks had settled on earth being round, there were still doubters as late as Lucretius.  The idea that the earth was round had to be very carefully argued and assumed significant knowledge that not everyone had. Qed (talk) 18:44, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Once upon a time, the myth was true...

message: this article isn't in fact about a "myth", but about an urban legend, or popular misconception. One that is already discussed in full at Flat Earth. --dab (𒁳) 13:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are arguing as if significant numbers of cultures had access to "ships" and didn't think that "too small to see" wasn't the same as "going over the horizon".  You also are implying that most cultures people understood how to reason and use empiricism.  One need go no further than to examine what Anaximander and Lucretius (both notable philosophers of ancient Greece) said on the issue -- they all thought the earth was flat.  Qed (talk) 22:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

text: Ah, what was I doing replying to a zombie thread. How about merging the content of this page into an expanded historiography part of the "flat earth" article? There seems to be recurring support and proposals for something equivalent to that (and for ditching the questionable title here), and the few oppose votes seem weak (i.e., actually not opposed to the articles being unified if done properly, and nobody benefits from the overlap/duplication in the meantime). Cesiumfrog (talk) 00:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

text: Early world maps—Machine Elf 1735 09:51, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: scope, title

message: I have placed  and  tags on a few statements in the article about Washington Irving's book, History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Colmbus.  The first is the following quotation from Jeffrey Burton Russell's web page:
:"[Irving]...invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a 'simple mariner,' appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate."
This is an egregious misinterpretation of what Irving wrote.
* Nowhere did Irving claim or imply that any members of the supposed council had any connection with the Inquisition, or describe any of the alleged theologians on it as "hooded".  He does introduce his account by gratuitously mentioning that the Inquisition had just been established in Spain, and falsely suggests that Columbus came close to having his religious orthodoxy questioned. But these claims play a fairly minor role in the account, and in no way justify Russell's above-quoted depiction of it.
* While Irving did say  explicitly that all the members of the council were clerics, nowhere did he say or imply that it consisted entirely of "inquisitors" and "theologians". In fact, he said (on p.87) "It was composed of professors of astronomy, geography, mathematics, and other branches of science, together with various dignitaries of the church, and learned friars."  The context from which Russell has plucked the 'simple mariner' expression is the following (p.88): "What a striking spectacle must the hall of the old convent have presented at this memorable conference! A simple mariner, standing forth in the midst of an imposing array, of professors, friars, and dignitaries of the church; maintaining his theory with natural eloquence, and, as it were, pleading the cause of the new world." I see nothing there (or anywhere else in Irving's account for that matter) about "inquisitors" or "hooded theologians" being members of the council.
:Irving does mention  on page 93 that one of Columbus's strong supporters on the council, Diego de Deza, was a professor of theology.  But the only (somewhat indirect) suggestion in the whole of his account that there were any other theologians on it is  on page 92, where he attributes some of the more absurd objections allegedly raised against Coumbus's propositions to "persons immersed in theological studies, in cloistered retirement".
* Irving did not claim that all of the men on the council (nor even that a majority of them) had argued against the earth's rotundity.  In fact he said explicitly  (on p.92) that the objections from scripture, including those against the Earth's rotundity, "were probably advanced by but a few, and those persons immersed in theological studies, in cloistered retirement".  In his book Inventing the Flat Earth (on p.53) Russell himself gives a quotation from Irving which flatly contradicts this part of the above-quoted statement:
:"Others more versed than [the scripture quoters] in science admitted the globular form of the earth ..." (Bracketed text is Russell's insertion).
This latter quotation can be found in context on    page 91 of Irving's book.
Second:
:"There was indeed a meeting in Salamanca, but Irving's account for what happened there was entirely fictional."
This is an exaggeration. While Irving certainly did embellish his account with a lot of codswallop, and badly garbled much of the rest of the story, he nevertheless did also get a few basic facts right.  And even some of the more dubious details of his account were at least accurately reported from what Columbus's son Ferdinand had written in his biography of his father.  Russell himself (Inventing the Flat Earth, p.9) seems to accept those details as credible, although he studiously avoids mentioning that Irving had reported them accurately.  Instead, he gives Irving's citation of Ferdinand as a supposed example of his careless use of sources  (Inventing the Flat Earth, p.54) on the grounds that Ferdinand says nothing about the council's raising any objections against the rotundity of the Earth.  But since Irving never cited Ferdinand as support for that claim (in fact, he gives no source at all for it), it is Russell, not Irving, in this instance, who is being careless in his use of sources.   
In view of all this I propose that the paragraph containing the quotation from Russell's website be replaced with something more accurate and worthy of Wikipedia, such as the following:
:"The first accounts of the legend have been traced to the 1830s. In 1828, Washington Irving's highly romanticised and inaccurate biography, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,[1] was published and mistaken by many for a scholarly work.[2] In Book III, Chapter II of this biography, Irving gave a largely fictional account of the meetings of a commission established by the Spanish sovereigns to examine Columbus's proposals. One of his more fanciful embellishments was a highly unlikely tale that the more ignorant and bigoted members on the commission had raised scriptural objections to Columbus's assertions that the Earth was spherical.[3]"
Third:
:"Ironically many modern historians have misread Irving."
This statement needs to be documented. Even if one regards Russell as having "misread" Irving (which I doubt), that's hardly enough to establish the claim that "many modern historians" have done so.
Next:
:"Nowhere in his History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus does he state that Columbus argued for a spherical Earth against "flat Earth" academics."
Yes he does. On page 90 of his book he states that some of the commissioners raised scriptural objections to his assertion that the Earth is spherical, and on page 92 he states that Columbus replied to all the objections raised from Scripture.  
Finally:
:"What Irving does report is a supposed debate in Salamanca in 1486 between Columbus and scholars appointed by the Spanish crown to assess his proposal to sail west to China. But nowhere does Irving state the topic of the debate."
But he does state the purpose of the commission—namely, to hold "a conference with Columbus, and examin[e] him as to the grounds on which he founded his proposition" (p.85), and "investigate the new theory of Columbus" (p.87). Subsequent pages give a detailed account of the issues that were allegedly raised during the supposed conference, including objections to the rotundity of the Earth, as indicated above.
References
1. 
2. The inaccuracies in Irving's work have been described in detail by 
3. Irving, p.90.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 17:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Washington Irving's biography of Columbus 

message: About six weeks ago a template proposing that this article be merged into the Flat Earth article was placed on this article's main page. If no-one objects, the proposer is entitled to be bold and carry out the merger without further ado. Personally, I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other, though I am inclined to favour keeping the articles separate. I have created this section to try and stimulate some discussion on the proposal.
As far as I am aware the only argument offered by the proposer to support the  proposed merger is the edit summary provided when the merger proposal template was added:
::"there is nothing here that isn't already covered in the parent article."
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 13:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The debate started by Russell about medieval cosmology does deserve an article. It falls in the context of "medivalism" and the way the modern world constructs the middle ages. The question is whether that should go on the same page as a more general report on flat earth theories (ranging from Bablonian cosmology to Pratchet's Diskworld).  The answer seems to be that both things are becoming rather long. So let's separate them.  --Doric Loon (talk) 09:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merger into Flat Earth 

message: I propose the following scheme, to organize all our WP information about the "flat earth" idea. In no particular order:
*Article on Inventing the Flat Earth - book by historian Jeffrey Burton Russell
*:Russell says the flat earth mythology flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. 
*External link: The Myth of the Flat Earth - a web page by James Hannam, author of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
*Article: Shape of the earth
*:This currently redirects to Figure of the earth, but I'd like to reclaim the title for a comprehensive historical account of the flat earth and spherical views, i.e., who believed them, where and when. 
*Medieval views on the shape of the earth could be a standalone article, or a section of Shape of the earth
Proponents of the view that Medieval Christians or Europeans believed in flat earth:
* "The myth that Christians in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat was given a massive boost by Andrew Dickson White's weighty tome [The Warfare of Science with Theology published in 1896. This book has become something of a running joke among historians of science and it is dutifully mentioned as a prime example of misinformation in the preface of most modern works on science and religion." 
This isn't the only place I've commented on the need for a reorganization. I hope we can find one place to discuss this matter. --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:10, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: => I started Shape of the earth as an article on the historical development of mankind's ideas about the earth's shape. Basically, it was the ancient Greeks who first decided it was spherical. Other civilizations followed suit, either adopting the idea from the Greeks or figuring it out for themselves. Medieval Christianity did not revert to belief in a flat earth; that is a "myth" created and spread by some modern writers. --Uncle Ed (talk) 02:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Article organization

message: In the term "myth of the Flat Earth", the term "myth" is used in its modern, colloquial sense, not in the sense of "mythology". We get enough confusion over this term, and in the case of the "flat earth", it is an exceptionally bad choice to use this word: because the actual conceptions of the earth as flat held before the 4th century BC or so, were themselves part of cosmological myths. 
The term "flat earth error", attributed to a good reference, is therefore clearly preferable. --dab (𒁳) 12:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately I don't think you'll find the term attributed to a good reference. The whole "myth" bandwaggon is due to Russell and in turn leans on an article by Wesley Stevens. Neither of these were refereed papers - just correspondence and announcements. I haven't found any other historians who agree with the designation. (And see the critiques by David Wilson earlier on this talk page which are certainly in the right direction.) The Historical Association "common error" refers pretty much to a view of Columbus I believe (something went wrong with my request at the British Library this week so I don't yet have the exact words) not to the views of scholars in the fifteenth or preceding centuries. Who is responsible for the rubbish found in American schoolbooks hasn't yet been identified - it's certainly not Irving, Draper and White whatever the page currently says. But just to point out that it survives pretty late here is a quote from the 15th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica (1993) article on "globe": "The earliest surviving terrestrial globe was made in Nürnberg in 1492 by Martin Behaim, who almost undoubtedly influenced Christopher Columbus to sail west to the Orient.". In fact the influence was almost certainly the other way round and it shows how badly checked even published encyclopedias can be. Chris55 (talk) 17:23, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "error" vs. "myth"

message: Too many quotes. Long quotes should be formatted correctly (with indents). All internal citations should be removed and replaced by numbered footnote tags.
Magicxcian (talk) 22:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Style editing

message: A work well known throughout the middle ages, Ovid describes in his Metamorphoses the round earth with its different climates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses -- 178.114.123.154 (talk) 01:31, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Which is a nice piece, but did you have any particular ideas on improving the article? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:30, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ovid, Metamorphoses - another source 

message: I'm highly confused after finding out that medieval folk, at least medieval scholars and nobles, knew that the Earth wasn't flat because in modern times we have Modern flat-Earthers as the corresponding wikipedia article shows (from Samuel Rowbotham in England to Mohammed Yusuf among muslims and the Flath Earth society) and we can add sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz from Saudi Arabia who in a Muslim religion edict in 1993 said "The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim is an atheist who deserves to be killed". Islamism was far less extremist in the era previous to the middle ages and its through islamist scholars that European scholars got their hands in ancient Greek knowledge, thus early Islamists must have known the Earth was spherical before middle age Europeans. Where do modern flat Earthers among Christian and Islamist fundies come from? Undead Herle King (talk) 09:27, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: From the same place that idiots, fundamentalists, and performance artists (see trolls) come from. Some people are just stupid, is all. Others aren't stupid, but they need to have things in black and white. Others want to see your blood pressure go up, and they know how to twist you knobs, and they do so. My best advice is ignore all of them. Unless they threaten you with violence, then deal with that accordingly (as we are doing with certain fundie Muslims, right now, assisting them into paradise as rapidly as we can). SBHarris 21:16, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern belief that the Earth is Flat and the Flat Earth Myth