I've only just started scratching the surface of the chapter on Columbus' grounds for belief.

First thing I did was to search for any reference to Ptolemy, and Irving does know about him and his work.



He does know about Ptolemy and his globe. So, is Irving unaware that the Greeks actually proved the world round, or does he think the knowledge was forgotten? The discredited Marinus of Tyre is mentioned here (though Eratosthenes' name doesn't appear in this chapter).

There's still more to absorb here. If Columbus knew what a time zone was, knew roughly how big they were, and knew that there were 24 in a day, I'm still not clear on how he could have been so wrong about the size of the earth.

Antipodes. There's a word we don't use any more, but The Free Dictionary has it:



In all those old cartoons where somebody tunnels through the earth and comes out in China, I don't remember once hearing this word. Talk about missing out on a chance to educate us.

Go drink something and calm down. Petro was not respecting or endorsing the widespread mis-belief, he was wondering at its origins.

Why would so many people believe something that was false?

Just for the sake of curiosity it is interesting to try and understand this phenomena and wonder if anything can, or should, be done to fix it.

Just guessing here, but

1) relatively minor miscalculations regarding the size of a time zone, or whatever unit, could result in fairly major errors when multiplied by 24. If the estimate of curvature were off a bit...and it certainly was in Columbus' time, that would certainly compound any error. If Columbus assumed a cylinder and the E-W distance of a 15 degree arc in Europe, he would have grossly underestimated the size of the earth at the equator.

and

2) when assumptions are being made, as they almost surely were, humans have a tendency to make somewhat optimistic assumptions. If Columbus were "guesstimating" at any quantity in his calculations he almost certainly took the values that minimized the distance of the trip. Depending on how many initial values were involved, the resulting error could be quite large.

A cylinder is something I hadn't thought much of. But we'd moved part of this discussion to the World Religions PM Thread (which I hadn't announce publicly yet, and really need to), and one of the things we were discussing today is the physics of a Flat Earth. One piece of evidence that the world is roughly spherical, that I don't remember hearing mentioned before (so I'm hoping I can take credit for it) is that wherever you go, things appear to fall downward.

Imagine a world shaped like a quarter (but thick enough to keep from being torn apart by its own forces). According to the law of gravity, things would still fall towards the "center" of this object, but unlike a sphere, the center isn't always a straight line to the ground. On a sphere, any time you're standing on a flat looking piece of ground, "down" is straight down to the ground.

But if you're standing on this quarter-shaped planet, it shouldn't always be that way. If you're standing on the edge, say near the date, than a large majority of the mass isn't directly below you at all, it's off to the side. So, if you dropped something out of your hand at that location, it shouldn't fall straight down, it would appear to fall at an angle.

Now, what if you were standing in the center, say where Washington's ear is? There's some mass below you, but most of it is off to the side in every direction. I imagine that things would fall straight down at that point, but having so much force coming in from the side rather than from below would make it appear as though items weighed less at that point than elsewhere.

It seems that only by standing on the ridged edge of the quarter would you have all the mass below you, and have gravity act the way it does normally (though maybe a bit weaker, since some of the mass would be farther away than it could be on a sphere).

I'm not sure exactly how it would be on a cylinder, but I imagine it would be similar: the farther north or south you travelled from the equator, the more things would seem to fall at an angle, rather than straight down.

Disc world....an interesting thought experiment

Without thinking real hard about it I think your basic premise is likely true.

I think that the strength of the "not straight down" effect would be sufficiently small that you wouldn't likely notice it unless you were fairly high above the ground.

If you were on a 15' ladder near the date the gravitational "offset" would likely amount to no more than about .1 degree, so if you drop something from the top of the ladder the deviation from a perfect vertical drop would be.... Oh crap, my geometry isn't good enough...just guessing...would be about 2 inches.

If my guess is the right order of magnitude it would be pretty hard to detect.

Glad to know I still got "it" (maybe that's what Ned was referring to in Three Amigos!--?).

Yeah, I'm rusty--my high school French frequently let's me down. But then, no prob, we've got plenty of Ninjas here to set me straight (as I sometimes set them straight).

I never said I was the great champion of American democracy; you did. I only say it's the least worst system. Didn't E.B. White do an article defining "democracy" along these lines? If memory serves...!

I wasn't smacking Petro, either. Just asking him to respond with one of his super-factual, detailed posts--which he did. So no need to ask me to calm down, spock--I never got heated. I was one of the few who defended Petro during his ban period. How soon they forget!

Loewen's book is already being nailed for factual errors, which some of the Amazon reviews point out. If he were a serious historian, he'd have already corrected the mistakes, but history is not his gig; it's politics.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Explaining metaphysics to the nation
I wish he'd explain his Explanation."

--Byron, Don Juan

Hmm, what's "Thinee"? I can't find it by that name, and it seems clear in several places that this book was scanned into text form, resulting in typos in several places. This looks like one of them, but what city are they talking about here? Not Thebes, that's not in Asia. Thinae, maybe? That sounds familiar, but Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for it. Hmmm...

I mentioned over in the World Religions PM threads that in order to get their flat earth/disk to work, they had to dispense with a lot of Newton's minor theories...like gravity. So, you couldn't use any mathematical proofs that involved invoking the movement of heavenly bodies for the world being round. The flat earthers would just say Newton's laws were mumbo-jumbo and made up for the express purpose of trying to persuade people the earth was round.

Re: Thinae. This might help. That section is about halfway down the fine print. I didn't bother reading it all, just did a search. Cosma is mentioned in that Flat Earth book too, as is Lactantius (from Petro's post), except in Flat Earth it points out that in Irvings et al books Lacta was promoted to a major figure in that he represented the flat earth theories of the entire church, when he was so minor that if someone hadn't latched onto his flat earth paper for propaganda usages he'd still be just a name on a quaint manuscript gathering dust known only to the keepers of the scrolls.

hm, also Thinae somewhere in the book Cathay and the way thither, being a collection of medieval notices of China.

That is funny




That's weak. You may not have read the book, but if you are going to criticize a book based on someone else's opinion, at least provide the opinion- that is, quotes. I doubt anyone here will bother searching through hundreds of Amazon reviews just to find a mention of factual errors, which may or may not be be there and may or may not be accurate or important in themselves. So, if you want to be constructive about this, why don't you provide a list - or at least some examples- of the factual errors you think Loewen has made - I don't care if you read the book or just copy them from an Amazon review. I'll even be willing to check them out in my copy of the book if they look serious enough - to make sure I have them noted.

Suppose schools indeed taught Sam to write Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose--so what. Is it correct to write Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, or merely normal? Oh my God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm freaking out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What if everything I've ever learned is a lie?!!!!!!!?!!!!!!!!?!!!! What if there is no truth?!!!?!?!?!!! Serves me right for trying to learn in a "school," I guess.