X-Message-Number: 24203 From: "michaelprice" <> References: <> Subject: Flat Earth : was Re: Markets and reality Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2004 13:01:53 +0100 Actually the using the flat-Earth belief as an argument against the value of market-based ideas doesn't work, for the simple reason that people in medieval times did NOT believe the Earth to be flat. This is a 19th century myth, based in a painting showing Columbus arguing his case before the Spanish Inquisition, er, theologians, which Washington Irving and others fictionalised, and has been accepted as fact ever since. The myth of the Flat Earth is a itself myth From http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm "the invention of the flat Earth myth can be laid at the feet of Washington Irving, who included it in his historical novel on Columbus, and the wider idea that the everyone in the Middle Ages was deluded has been widely accepted ever since." And from http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html " It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. [.........] The idea was established, almost contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and an American, between whom I have not been able to establish a connection, though they were both in Paris at the same time. One was Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices who had studied both geography and patristics and who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers (1834). The American was no other than our beloved storyteller Washington Irving (1783-1859), who loved to write historical fiction under the guise of history. His misrepresentations of the history of early New York City and of the life of Washington were topped by his history of Christopher Columbus (1828). It was he who 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. Well, yes, there was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to quote a distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine. Washington Irving, scenting his opportunity for a picturesque and moving scene," created a fictitious account of this "nonexistent university council" and "let his imagination go completely...the whole story is misleading and mischievous nonsense." " Cheers, Michael C Price http://mcp.longevity-report.com http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24203