[meteorite-list] RE: Doing the rounds

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri May 5 01:53:15 2006
Message-ID: <005001c67008$30e374a0$a628e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Martin, List,

Martin wrote:
> ...recently I read in two independent articles that in mediaeval
> times people would have thought and church taught, that the
> Earth would be a flat disk, cause a round world would have
> been inconsistent with the bible. What an incredible rubbish!!
> (that prejudice about the disk firstly appeared in 17th century).

    Well, Martin, I hate to tell you, but it is NOT TRUE that it is a
modern prejudice that the Church taught that the world was flat.
The Early Father Lactantius wrote extensively against the rotundity
of the Earth from 302 AD to 323 AD and promoted a flat Earth
with a "box lid" of the heavens over it, the "Tabernacle Earth." By
the mid-Fourth century, the vast majority if the patristic fathers
were opposed to a spherical Earth, a long list: Cyril of Jerusalem,
Diodorus of Tarsus, Philoponus, St. Jerome... But the chief
promulgator of Flat-Earthism was Cosmas.
    Cosmas Indicopleustes ('India-voyager') of Alexandria was a
Greek sailor in the early 6th century who traveled to Ethiopia,
India and Sri Lanka. He then became a monk and before 550 AD
wrote a strange book, copiously illustrated. There can be few books
which have attracted more derision than the Christian Topography
of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It advances the idea that the world is flat,
and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid.
The author cites passages of scripture (inaccurately) to support his
thesis, and attempts to argue down the idea of a spherical earth by
stigmatizing it as 'pagan.' Cosmas was basically a poorly-educated
crank (internet-style) but through him Christianity was solidified into
supporting the idea of the flat-earth.
    In defense, let it be said that Christians and pagans did not as
such hold different views about the shape of the world. It was
a subject on which there was no certainty of knowledge for the
common man of the ancient world. It was "cutting edge," like
Relativity, and as little understood. And by the fourth century,
knowledge was decaying away at a rapid rate, without any more
help from Christians than from any of a host of causes.
    Cosmas' book is not without some value. There was trade
between the Roman Empire and India, but Cosmas was no doubt
the only writer who had actually made the journey. He traveled
the Red Sea coast, and as far as Taprobane (Ceylon, modern
Sri Lanka), and he describes some of what he saw, and even
drew pictures of strange animals in his autograph manuscript.
Away from his whacky theory, Cosmas is both interesting and
reliable. It was this content that made the work was immensely
popular in the Dark Ages (much as Mandeville's Travels were
in the Middle Ages), but it carried his cosmology along with it.
    You can read the complete text of "Christian Topography" at:
http://www.ccel.org/p/pearse/morefathers/cosmas_01_book1.htm
if you want laugh and groan.
    Isidore of Seville (600-635 AD), very erudite, discusses a variety
of theories without really deciding which is right, but most writers
of the seventh century stuck with a Flat-Earth model the Babylonians
had proven erroneous 3000 years before!
    Starting with the ninth century, Greek writing, preserved in Ireland,
begins to seep slowly back into the Christian West. Bacon and
Aquinas may have known about the Ptolemaic theory but they did
not write about it. But it is not until 1256 AD that the first short
and sketchy account of the Ptolemaic system appears in a
European language, just a few pages. And the full exposition of
a geocentric spherical Earth would wait until early- to mid-fifteenth
century for full publication.
    The importance of celestial navigation in Europe's expansion toward
gobbling up the planet (Hey! Somebody had to do it!) was the chief
impetus for pushing for greater accuracy and understanding that would
lead us to Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and all the rest
of that story...


Sterling K. Webb
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Altmann" <altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de>
To: <Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>; "'Rob McCafferty'"
<rob_mccafferty_at_yahoo.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 7:26 PM
Subject: AW: [meteorite-list] RE: Doing the rounds


In fact without the church, we really would live in a dark age nowadays.
Smth which is always forgotten, as the discipline of History of Science is
mainly philology, a branch which since decades isn't directly en vogue.
For a period of about 800 years the church was the only institution
collecting knowledge, doing science and educating students.
And nowadays we wouldn't for sure live in such a technically and
scientifically developed (socially I'm not so sure) world,
if there wasn't done the enormous transfer of knowledge by the clerics in
mediaeval times of the classical sciences, which the Islamic scientist
rescued and enlarged. Already before 1000 A.D. the first Arabian texts (btw.
Astronomical treaties) were translated to Latin by monks, take as an example
the manual for using the planispheric astrolabe by Gerbert d'Aurillac (950 -
1003), the later pope Sylvester II. and in the main stream later in 13.th
century it was of course also the church, who cared for translating and
spread the scientific literature from islamic occupied Spain, mainly with
the help of Mozarabs and bilingual jewish savants.
Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler weren't isolated ingenious solitaires,
they founded on a tradition and a 600 years lasting history of ideas,
collected and taught by the scholars of the church.
Without church no antique knowledge, no renaissance, no reconnaissance, no
modern science.
It is astonishing to me, how few is taught today about those for the
development of the occident most important period in history on
universities. For astronomers & physicists science starts with Newton, as
science would fall suddenly like an apple from a tree and the philologists,
who could read the texts, rather like to occupy with novels about knights
and stuff,
and the normal consumers see on cinema Giordano burning, a pissed-off
Gallilei sitting in his villa, or think, that Columbus' achievement beside
of the enormous size of his nose was, that he didn't fell off from the disk
or are lost in the mists of Avalon.
Imagine, recently I read in two independent articles in the largest German
astronomy (one was from a Prof. of physics) magazine, that in mediaeval
times people would have thought and church taught, that the Earth would be a
flat disk, cause a round world would have been inconsistent with the bible.
What an incredible rubbish!!
(that prejudice about the disk firstly appeared in 17th century).

Buckleboo
Martin







-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Rob
McCafferty
Gesendet: Freitag, 5. Mai 2006 00:23
An: britishandirishmeteoritesociety_at_yahoogroups.com;
meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: [meteorite-list] RE: Doing the rounds

Don't worry about getting excommunicated. They can't
do that unless you're already a member. Though maybe
you are.

Incidentally, the Vatican's position has softened
tremendously in the last few years.

BBC Radio Scotland had the Vatican's Meteorite
representative on at about 830am this morning. I
didn't even know they had one of the worlds largest
meteorite collections let alone a representative to
talk about it.

I missed a lot of it because out on this island, the
reception isn't great and it's even worse since I tore
the ariel off the roof putting my car in a ditch a
couple of months back. What I did pick up was that
they agree with the scientists over the age of the
Earth and theologically speaking, they have no problem
with any of the theories over the creation of the
universe or even the concept of life on other planets.

Galileo has had 10 years to recover from the burns of
hell now so I'm sure he feels pretty vindicated. House
arrest isn't so bad, not if you've got a telescope, a
microscope, some meteorites and the internet so he
must have enjoyed it about 25% by my maths.

As a scientist who is a Christian, a lot of people as
me about the church changing it's stance over Galileo.
I tend to be rather glib in my response.
The wittiest repost is along the lines of,

"He got out of Hell on appeal which is no surprise
because guess where all the lawyers are"

It's a larf innit?

Rob McC

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Received on Fri 05 May 2006 01:53:10 AM PDT