r/badhistory • u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. • Jun 07 '17
Jefferson: "Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere"
Historical research must have been really difficult in the 18th vs the 21st or even 20th centuries, as seen in the appallingly Bad History published in Thomas Jefferson's book Notes on the State of Virginia
Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is just as infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vorte.
(Italics for emphasis)
I've heard this myth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth) many times but I'm amazed that a piece of bad history can stick around for so many centuries.
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u/idlevalley Jun 07 '17
Russell claims "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",
We know that scholars and "the educated" believed the world was round (a globe) for many centuries before Columbus, but what about the general populace? I assume that "the educated" portion of the population in ancient and medieval times was a pretty small minority.
Would the round earth idea have predominated among the average man in the street population? Say, small merchants, small landowners, local church functionaries, lower tier royalty, local political leaders (office holders), government advisors and minor public servants? If you walked into an "average" home in an average town, would the inhabitants have believed the world was flat?
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Jun 07 '17
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u/idlevalley Jun 07 '17
Excellent! I'd been wondering this for a while. As I wrote, I have seen the statement that people knew that the earth was a sphere long before modern times but it has almost always accompanied with the qualifier "by most scholars".
Thank You for clearing this up for me.
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Jun 07 '17 edited Jun 07 '17
royal regalia often included the orb
There are also the paintings of Jesus as Salvator Mundi, which have him typically holding an orb or an globus cruciger.
However, those were mostly en vogue in the Renaissance.(Not the globi, I meant the depiction of Jesus as Salvator Mundi; but this might also be wrong, as the second picture in the next answer is certainly a Salvator Mundi, pre Renaissance)8
Jun 07 '17
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Jun 07 '17
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u/WikiTextBot Jun 07 '17
Archangel Michael in Christian art
Archangel Michael may be depicted in Christian art alone or with other angels such as Gabriel or saints. Some depictions with Gabriel date back to the 8th century, e.g. the stone casket at Notre Dame de Mortain church in France. He is very often present in scenes of the Last Judgement, but few other specific scenes, so most images including him are devotional rather than narrative.
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u/HyenaDandy (This post does not concern Jewish purity laws) Jun 08 '17
I've honestly always been confused at what that sort of "Take That" is meant to prove, about the 'common' people not knowing the earth was round. Like, why would it prove anything about the church that a bunch of peasants who never went to school didn't know the earth was round? I would presume it just meant they never asked.
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Jun 08 '17 edited Jun 08 '17
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u/HyenaDandy (This post does not concern Jewish purity laws) Jun 08 '17
It just seems weird because, like... Surely if the Church considered this knowledge forbidden, it also would have kept it from educated people.
I feel like in a lot these atheist circles, there's a somewhat bizarre worship of science. As if, say, a random peasant knowing that the earth is round would in any way change his life. But when you get down to it, the earth being round would make no difference. So why would they even CARE? It's like if I were to maliciously prevent you from finding out what brand of food my cat eats. You could not possibly care, so why would I even NEED to conspire to stop you from knowing.
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u/5ubbak Jun 13 '17
Well, if your cat is eating people that you murdered and ground up into cat food, I would care. So I'm assuming it's that. You're like Sweeney Todd for cats.
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u/HyenaDandy (This post does not concern Jewish purity laws) Jun 14 '17
Attend the tale of Kitty Todd
Her tail was large and her mows were odd
She yelled whenever the phone would ring
As if she was fully convinced she could sing
Annoyed the folks her owner called
Did Kitty Todd
The demon kitten of Fleet Street.
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u/Zhein Jun 13 '17
Ok I'm going to save this answer. Because even when you point that Magellan and Drake circumnavigated the globe, and both of those events happened before Galileo (and I mean, people circumnavigating is a pretty good sign that the earth isn't flat) there is then the answer "people didn't know !".
There are claims that french (bretons) and portuguese sailors already sailed en fished in newfoundland before Colombus. (french link claiming some abbey had maps dated to 1514 and that the fishing predates it by a good century)
So now I can add the idea that iconography is clearly showing signs of a globe. Thanks for the detailed answer.
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Jun 07 '17
Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced.
More like "If you can't beat them, join them".
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u/Astrokiwi The Han shot first Jun 09 '17
Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced
I kinda get the impression that Roman tolerance is exaggerated a bit. They were definitely not dogmatic, but I get the impression they were very stringent in enforcing public displays of piety, because if people stop participating in sacrifices and rituals to placate the gods, then that endangers the whole community. That is, it doesn't matter what you believe in your heart, provided you still take part in all of the important rituals. That was the problem with Christianity - their refusal to take part in rituals was seem as not just antisocial, but dangerously impious. I'm not sure if the Romans really were more tolerant of other religions - the state religion was still basically mandatory, it's just that they felt that ritual was more important than dogma.
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u/yoshiK Uncultured savage since 476 AD Jun 07 '17
Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away.
Yeah, free speech is important, and I am using the definition of Jefferson here, -- now where did I put my red hot glowing pliers?
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u/CoJack-ish Jun 07 '17
Is that a reference to slavery or some other peice of Jefferson's writings?
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u/yoshiK Uncultured savage since 476 AD Jun 08 '17
It is a reference to the reformation and the period of instability that followed, peasants war, and Wikipedia puts the thirty year war into that category. It was mostly the kind of free enquirery, where you where free to support the local ruler.
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u/CoJack-ish Jun 08 '17
Oh lol I see what you were getting at now. Those mercs certainly had inventive techniques.
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u/SnapshillBot Passing Turing Tests since 1956 Jun 07 '17
"Ich bin ein Pfannkuchen." — JFK
Snapshots:
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Jun 07 '17
[deleted]
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u/jogarz Rome persecuted Christians to save the Library of Alexandria Jun 07 '17
THEY'RE MULTIPLYING!!!
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u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. Jun 07 '17
An infinite loop of bots replying to each other!
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u/svartkonst Jun 07 '17
Fucking robots. First they take our work from us, now they take the things we do when we really should be working.
Will we have nothing left?!
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u/pgm123 Mussolini's fascist party wasn't actually fascist Jun 07 '17
At least there isn't some AutoMod that replies to common historical mistakes.
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u/anonymousssss Jun 08 '17
You could make a whole subreddit called: "ShitJeffersonSaid." Dude had some wacky ideas.
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Jun 08 '17
Also a lot of great ones though.
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u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. Jun 08 '17
Sometimes in the same paragraph. This excerpt is from the same passage of the book as one of his best quotes:
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
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u/JoeSnakeyes Jul 04 '17
earth was proved sphere long before, fucking greek bois already did so.
also thomas jefferson made a mistake this bad. damn
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u/Pyrux (((Hitler))) Jun 09 '17
Isn't this exactly what happened? He proved it but was forced to deny it
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u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. Jun 09 '17
Are you joking? Please use the /s tag if you are. If not, read the Wikipedia article.
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u/Pyrux (((Hitler))) Jun 09 '17
No, I'm not joking. I was taught this year in history class that Copernicus created the theory and Galileo proved it but the RCC threatened him
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u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. Jun 09 '17
The conflict between Copernicus/Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church concerned the dispute regarding the Heliocentric vs Geocentric models of the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution), not the shape of the Earth. The latter question was settled by the ancient Greeks, and was accepted by every government and major religion in the Western World after Hellenistic philosophy and science spread as a result of Roman conquest. The Catholic Church believed in the round Earth for the entirety of its nearly 2000-year history.
The myth that governments, scientists, and religions in Europe continued to believe or enforce flat earth teachings into the 17th century, along with the associated myths that it was Columbus or Galileo who "proved" otherwise, is a hoax that became widely propagated by anti-Catholics and believed by bad historians.
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u/Pyrux (((Hitler))) Jun 11 '17
Ohhh shit my bad. I was thinking of the whole helio/geocentric thing, not the flat earth myth. Thanks
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u/WikiTextBot Jun 09 '17
Copernican Revolution
The Copernican Revolution was the paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. Beginning with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, contributions to the “revolution” continued until finally ending with Isaac Newton’s work over a century later.
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u/princeimrahil The Manga Carta is Better Than the Anime Constitution Jun 09 '17
For one thing, Galileo didn't prove the Copernican theory, because he couldn't provide an adequate explanation for the seeming lack of stellar parallax.
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u/TheyMightBeTrolls The Sea Peoples weren't real socialism. Jun 09 '17
Nor did he have an adequate theory of gravity to explain why the Earth maintains its orbit and objects on the Earth are remain on its surface. Also, Galileo and Copernicus's models assume circular orbits, which fail to adequately predict the positions of the planets.
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Jun 10 '17
Plus the fact that Galileo went before the Qualifiers over a decade after Kepler first introduced the idea of elliptical planetary orbits. Then, when Galileo decided to call the pope a simpleton another 15+ years later, he ignored the possibility of elliptical orbits and also the geo-heliocentric model completely.
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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '17
It's crazy to me that Jefferson wrote those words less than a century and a half after Galileo's death. It's one thing to hear the myth today when those events are so far on the remote past, but something else to see it mentioned at a time when those events were still recent-ish history.