Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians

by Jeffrey Burton Russell, David F. Noble (Foreword)

Neither Christopher Columbus nor his contemporaries thought the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers--even noted historians. Inventing the Flat Earth is Russell's attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s and then snowballed to outrageous proportions by the late 19th century. But perhaps the most intriguing focus of the book is the reason why we allow this error to persist. Do we prefer to languish in a comfortable and familiar error rather than exert the effort necessary to discover the truth? This uncomfortable question is engagingly answered. along with a discussion about the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, History Of Science, Medieval, Renaissance, Christianity

117 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2014

About the author

Jeffrey Burton Russell was an American historian of medieval Europe and religious studies scholar.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this work Russell challenged the (false) myth that one important facet of Columbus' voyage was that it proved the world was round not flat. Perturbed by the myth's stay power, Russell amassed a mountain of sources from antiquity through Columbus' day (including his own journals) which clearly demonstrate otherwise. Russell then backtracked through textbooks and other popular historical sources to find the origination of the Flat Earth myth, and analyzed when it was invented and why it was able to gain such a foothold in popular culture and history, including in scholarly works. He determines that among the greatest offenders for this myth's preservation lie with the humanists and the protestants in the post reformation era when it was popular to blame and label Catholicism as the mechanism by which scientific knowledge had been stunted during the middle ages. Russell is adamant that among the educated during the Middle Ages, there was no question that the earth was round. He follows this line of thought through to the later 1800s and the emergence of Evolution, where he asserted that an artificial and unnecessary argument arose, where it had never previously existed, between religion and science. Perhaps most interestingly, Russell pointed out that Medieval scientists did not attempt to support their scientific theories with biblical proof and that this phenomenon is a fairly recent development among the fundamentalist sects of Christianity who continue to emphasize the split between science and religion as irreconcilable epistemes.

An incredibly insightful and succinctly written work, its 77 pgs are jam packed with information and every word is crucial. Russell seemed to strive to avoid academic bloviating so common in academic texts and with the exception of his final summation (which was needed) there is no repetition in this work. Monolinguists will appreciate Russell's thoughtful translations of various titles, quotes, and passages in his footnotes. His work serves as reminder for scholars in all disciplines to check their primary sources and not to take secondary sources at their word, even if well established. Ultimately, Russell's work serves to remind us that "every worldview is a human construct and that paradigms of knowledge are precarious and subject to change..." (pg., 75)

[Mark Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an engaging and fairly thorough (though concise) account of the Flat Error: the erroneous view that medieval European scholars thought the Earth was flat, and that Columbus somehow proved them wrong. The modern version of this myth was essentially concocted and spread in the 19th century (by Washington Irving, John William Draper, and others), but this book considers the Flat Error's roots in earlier centuries as well.

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A common misconception in modern culture and even in academia is that the people in the ancient world and/or the medieval period believed that the earth was flat and it was up to Columbus to set them straight. There are several variants to this misconception. Some hold that the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized that the world was round; others that even they erroneously believed in a flat earth. In general, all variants claim that the medieval believed in a flat earth, either continuing an erroneous belief or losing a correct one. Some variants have Columbus proving the roundness of the earth and some hold that Magellan accomplished that by circumnavigating the globe. I vaguely remember that point about Magellan from high school world history or American history. In this book, Dr. Russell demonstrates that:

• The ancient Greeks and Romans recognized that the earth is round.
• With few exceptions this belief was preserved in the medieval period, the most notable exceptions being Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes. Dr. Russell provides enough examples to demonstrate conclusively that these two held a minority view.
• The primary concern for medieval scholars was the antipodes, land mass on the opposite side of the earth. They wrongly considered the sea too wide or too hot for people to sail between the known world and the antipodes. As a result, any human inhabitants of the antipodes would not be descended from Adam and Eve. Apparently, modern scholarship often confuses the question of the antipodes with that of the sphericity of the earth.
• Opposition to Columbus’ proposed westward route to the Indies was based on the distance relative to the effective range of the ships of that time period.

So, how exactly did we lose all cultural memory of what people actually believed in the medieval period? How did the flat-earth error, as Dr. Russell calls it, come about? There are a number of factors. For starters, Dr. Russell points out a tendency inherent in the progressive movement to hold past societies to current standards such as the scientific method rather than past standards by which past societies actually lived and thought. If they don’t conform to modern standards, they must be irrational. This is not a surprise to me because I see discussion about this very issue regarding the historicity of scripture, as well, given that it meets contemporary rather than modern documentary standards. Another factor was opposition of Christian leaders to Darwin. Proponents of Darwin saw polemical value in painting Christianity as backward and gullible and seized on the writings of Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes as typical of the medieval period, sometimes even knowing that to be a bald-faced lie. The scholarly battles involving creationists and intelligent design proponents on one hand and Neo-Darwinists on the other, coupled with accusations by the Neo-Darwinists of being unscientific are just modern continuations of this polemic. Another factor was the anti-Catholicism of some Protestant scholars who attempted to demonstrate the superiority of Protestantism over Catholicism by falsely accusing the pre-Protestant-era Catholics of belief in a flat earth. Ronald Numbers also points to the last two factors in his book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion.

Finally, why do we continue to falsely believe in the flat-earth error in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? It is truly interesting. The proponents of the flat-earth error condemn scholars of the medieval period of ignoring overwhelming evidence that the earth is round while simultaneously ignoring overwhelming evidence that they actually recognized the roundness of the earth and even calculated the earth’s diameter using measurement and calculation methodologies of their time. It is absolutely amazing to me what staying power bad ideas can actually have. Ultimately, Dr. Russell notes that scholars who acknowledge the evidence against the flat-earth error are unwilling to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy upholding it. He also points out that under the progressive worldview of continuous advancement, modern society needs to see itself as superior to those that preceded it. What better way to feel superior to a past society than to paint it as ignorant?

I still remember a humorous take on the flat earth myth from a Looney Toons cartoon. In it, Columbus is arguing his case before King Ferdinand of Spain. Columbus states that the world is “round like my head.” In response, King Ferdinand grabs a large mallet, slams it down on Columbus’ head and confidently asserts, “No, it is flat like your head.” While this sketch was memorably funny, the flat earth myth is no laughing matter. In order to have a feeling of superiority to our predecessors on this planet, we feel it necessary to slander them with obviously incorrect beliefs that they didn’t hold. Would we want our descendants to do that to us? I applaud Dr. Burton’s efforts to set the record straight.

[Shane Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine book on correcting the idea that Christianity ever promoted the idea of flat earth nonsense...my only criticism is the book is to short!

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

DID NEARLY ALL EDUCATED PEOPLE IN COLUMBUS' TIME ACCEPT THE SPHERICITY OF THE EARTH?

Jeffrey Burton Russell (born 1934) is an American historian and religious studies scholar, who is currently Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written many other books, such as 'Exposing Myths About Christianity: A Guide to Answering 145 Viral Lies and Legends,' 'Satan: The Early Christian Tradition,' 'Witchcraft in the Middle Ages,' etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1991 book, "The almost universal supposition that educated medieval people believed the earth to be flat puzzled me and struck me as dissonant when I was in elementary school, but I assumed that teacher knew best and shelved my doubts. By the time my children were in elementary school, they were learning the same mistake, and by that time I knew it was a falsehood. Most of the undergraduates I have taught have received the same misinformation... The Flat Earth error is firmly fixed in our minds; I hope this little book will do a little to help dislodge it." (Pg. xiii)

He adds, "By the time Copernicus had revolutionized the way people viewed the planets---as revolving around the sun rather the earth---the seed of the Flat Earth had been planted, but it did not grow to choke the truth until much later. When did it triumph and why? Who was responsible? There are the main questions of this book." (Pg. 5)

He points out, "Of the objections posed to Columbus, none involved questioning sphericity... the opponents... argued that the circumference of the earth was too great and the distance too far to allow a successful western passage. They rightly feared that life and treasure might be squandered on an impossibly long voyage... The committee's doubts were understandable, for Columbus has cooked his own arguments... Columbus needed to persuade Ferdinand and Isabella that the journey across the ocean sea was not impossibly long, and to do that he needed to reduce two things: the number of degrees occupied by the empty sea, and the distance between degrees. (Pg. 8-9)

He notes, "The Greeks' knowledge of the earth's roundness has never been disputed by any serious writers. The earliest Greek philosophers were vague, but 'after the fifth century no Greek writer of any repute' thought of the earth as anything but round... Pythagoras... Parmenides... Plato... Aristotle... Euclid... Aristarchus... and Archimedes ... all took the round view." (Pg. 24)

So where did the Flat Earth myth come from? One major source was Anglican priest William Whewell, who "pointed to the culprits of Lacantius and Cosmas Indicopleusustes as evidence of a medieval belief in a flat earth, and virtually every subsequent historian imitated him---they could find few other examples." (Pg. 31) Another source was John William Draper's book, 'History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science.' Russell observes, "Draper might not have been so successful had it not been for the emergence of the controversy over evolution and the 'descent of man.' This controversy seemed to Draper and his colleagues to be another major battle in the supposedly ancient 'war between religion and science.'" (Pg. 41)

There was also Andrew Dickson White's 'A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom'; Russell comments: "White's efforts to construct a new Christianity based on that 'higher religious spirit' were doomed, for scientific realists insisted that all truth was scientific and that there was no room for revelation, while traditional Christians insisted that if Scripture and tradition were dismissed, Christianity was left with no intellectual basis. By the time White reinforced Draper and Whewell, the Flat Earth Error had grown to a stature that entirely dwarfed the historical reality." (Pg. 42-43)

He observes, "Where Protestants wished to darken the Middle Ages in order to discredit the papacy, Humanists such as Erasmus wished to restore the purity of the early church, which coincided with the late classical age of the early Roman Empire. Both the Protestants and the Humanists, demanding the restoration of a brilliant past, needed to posit a decline... The brighter the Humanists were to shine, the darker the preceding ages had to be painted. Petrarch... invented the term 'Dark Ages' about 1340... This left a growing sense that between the Good Classics and the Good Renaissance was a dark period of illegitimate authority in church and state and ignorance of arts and philosophy..." (Pg. 65-66)

He concludes, "The assumption of the superiority of 'our' views to that of older cultures is the most stubborn remaining variety of ethnocentrism. If we were not so ethnocentrically convinced of the ignorance of stupidity of the Middle Ages, we would not fall into the Flat Error. And we would not remain in it were we not afraid of the conceptual shock of realizing that our closest held assumptions are precarious. The hope that we are making progress toward a goal... leads us to undervalue the past in order to convince ourselves of the superiority of the present." (Pg. 76)

This is an extremely informative book, that should be considered "must reading" for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of ideas---and their misrepresentations.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

A trenchant demonstration that what "Everybody Knows" is not just dead wrong (as usual), but the result of systematic anti-Catholic Whig propaganda. Russell dissects and explodes the "Flat Error" ("Flat Lie" would be more like it) to the satisfaction of everyone reasonable.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent debunking of a myth that has been used to denigrate religion.

[James Lancelot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great example of (what seems like) an objective history. I say, "what seems like," because one of the points this book made was that part of the reason for what Jeffrey B. Russell calls, 'The Flat Error,' (his name for the mistaken modern belief that people in the middle ages thought the Earth was flat) was due to the practice of writing bad histories. Washington Irving, one of the major sources of The Flat Error, falsified and invented sources of "facts" and included such imaginations in his "history" of Columbus. Irving made what Russell called and ironic apology:

"[Irving] came to perceive [History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty] as a tongue-in-cheek Aeneid, since the early days of New York were

'open, like the early and obscure days of ancient Rome, to all the embellishments of heroic fiction.... Neither did I conceive I was committing any grievous historical sin in helping out the few facts I could collect... with figments of my own brain.... My presumptuous trespasses into this ... region of history have met with deserved rebukes.... If it has taken an unwarrantable liberty with our early provincial history, it has at least turned attention to that history and provoked research.'"

Irving also had a history of falsifying sources, "In 1829 he published A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, allegedly taken from the manuscripts of "Fray Antonio Agapida"... [he] was as fictitious as the Dutchman [who Irving invented and pretended to be]."

Irving wasn't the only one. The Flat Error was perpetuated, according to Russell, because as science advanced it became narratively useful to ascribe silly superstitions and backward thinking to religious people. If the religious had such a "distinguished" history of dogmatically denying scientific progress, religious arguments could essentially be laughed out of the room and denied a place at the grown-up's table.

I disagreed with Russell on this last point though. Russell implied that the main impediment to scientists realizing their erroneous belief in The Flat Error, is ideological. And, to risk being wrong, Russell seems to believe in the idea of "non-overlapping magisteria" (the idea that religions answers "value" questions and science answers "factual" questions). He says:

"historians, who could be expected by the nature of their trade to understand that every worldview is a human construct and that paradigms of knowledge are precarious and inevitably change, including the religious, scientific realist, and positivist worldviews, sometimes forgot that there are and can be no privileged systems by which to judge the truth of other systems.... But the search for truth is long and laborious and easily set aside. And since the present is transformed day by day, minute by minute, second by second, into the past, while the future is unknown and unknowable, we are left on the dark sea without stars, without compass or astrolabe, more unsure of our position and our goal than any of Columbus's sailors. The terror of meaninglessness, of falling off the edge of knowledge, is greater than the imagined fear of falling off the edge of the earth. And we we prefer to believe a familiar error than to search, unceasingly, the darkness."

Russell seems to have a kind of epistemological relativism and he despairs of finding the 'true' truth. And he's right that we are guaranteed to have false beliefs that we consider to be true. But science works by induction and making assumptions to see if the consequences of the assumptions, the predictions, conform to reality. 'True' truth may be unobtainable, but that doesn't mean that "there is no privileged system by which to judge the truth of other systems." If there is a society that believes the earth is flat, and a space-faring society who knows the earth is spherical, the space-faring society DOES have a privileged position. The flat earth society may be perfectly logical and follow the consequences of their assumptions, but they'll still be wrong in fact.

A good book, and my disagreements should really just be footnotes. I will try to not perpetuate the Flat Error anymore because Russell has convinced me.

[Alonso Mañuico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro brillante el cual nos demuestra, y por propias palabras de Russell, que la superioridad del presente no puede descender a la supuesta ignorancia del pasado incluso si el error está frente a nuestros ojos. Este maravilloso ensayo deslumbra que la historia es imparcial y que somos nosotros los que persistimos en vivir en el engaño.

Por otro lado, Russell demuestra la totalidad de sus puntos en una secuencia impecable, dando la concordancia entre los causantes y los efectos a nivel histórico y social. Un claro ejemplo son los padres de la iglesia quienes ya estaban convencidos que la teología y la ciencia son dos ramas del conocimiento humano que dibujan la realidad desde su perspectiva sin afectarse entre ellas, lo que da paso a aceptar la esfericidad de la tierra desde su concepción cristiana, sin discutirla.

[Steven Rossi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because (a) I had no clue that this was the "true story" of the flat earth history, (b) the story is a great study in historical method/ideological influences on the historical project/the influence of secularism/etc, and (c) it was short enough to read in a day.

[Angela Daley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise is interesting but it's poorly organized and just keeps reiterating the same point. It may have been more engaging if I read it when it was first published.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cover designer unknown. Very short at 77 pages of text, and nearly 30 pages of notes. JB Russell was very nearly a mentor to me, but retired just as I sent him an inquiry to study under him. I did receive a very nice letter.

Russell was a medievalist, and so spends a great deal of time defending the Dark Ages as actually not very distinct from other ages that accused them of believing in a flat earth. He calls this the Flat Error.

There seemed to have been less than a half dozen church fathers that asserted it. Some were ignored due to unrelated charges of heresy or were untranslated into western languages until the 28th century, which means they had no impact on medieval thought.

An important distinction is that the shape of the earth was not the same argument as centric its. Nor was the religious rejection of the antipodes that is, people genetically distinct from the line of Adam, the same as the possibility of other geographic regions in the 'bottom' of the sphere model.

The Flat Error was used by progressive modernists to shore up their confidence and superiority to past civilization. As a fellow Middle Ages fan, this was a good and informative read into scientific biases over time.

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about what the author calls the "Flat Error", that is: the mistaken popular perception that, at the time of Columbus, educated people in Europe thought the Earth was flat, and one of the navigator's achievements was to prove them wrong. This is, of course, not truth, and the knowledge that the Earth is spherical was never seriously questioned among educated people since the Greeks first deduced it in the fourth century BCE, not in Antiquity, not in the Middle Ages, not latter. The book describes the process by which this myth was slowly built, chiefly during the nineteen and early twentieth centuries, and the reason for it, which was basically the need to downgrade the image of religious thinkers of the past (and in the Medieval times all European thinkers were, in one way or another, religious or religious connected) by some of the intervenients in the science/religion conflicts erupting with great strength in those times due to the secularization of the Western mind and to the conflicts directly connected to Darwin's theory of evolution. A very interesting book.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

You've probably read, or been told, that the church (and pretty much everyone else) believed that the earth was flat, that if you sailed too far west, you would fall off the earth, until Christopher Columbus made his momentous voyage in 1492. Turns out it's not true. With the exception of two eccentrics, the church, and everyone else, believed that the world is a sphere, from at least the 5th century BC on. Russell has done his homework and given us the well-documented results. Turns out, the flat earth myth was mostly devised and propagated by "men of science" who didn't like the church or anything it stood for. Charging the church with holding to the theory of a flat earth was a means to an end--the humiliation of religion and the exaltation of science. Recommended.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Shows how ideology and prejudice dictates most peoples view of the Middle Ages. Also traces how Protestant rhetoric inadvertantly helped to discredit Christianity for later generations.
Russell points out the the believe that people thought that the world was flat and that the "Burning Times" occured have become part of the modern cycle of myths, to the extent that they are assumed knowledge.

[David Scarratt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief attempt to trace the rise of the false claim that most people before the early modern period believed, under the pernicious influence of "the church", that the earth is flat, and that Columbus demonstrated their folly. A must-read if you are into higher-order intentionality.

[Stephanie T · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book warns us not to believe everything we hear and read. Therefore, should be believe this book? I enjoyed the message, although the text itself is pretty dry.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting.

[Christina]

Recommended by St. Abraham's of Santa Cruz, CA
Here's a summary of the book by the author:
http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/r...

[Diego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Directo, preciso e informativo. Una maravilla de libro.