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Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, by Jeffrey Burton Russell
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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.
Inventing the Flat Earth is Jeffrey Burton 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―including how noted writers Washington Irving and Antoinne-Jean Letronne were among those responsible. He shows how later day historians followed these original mistakes, and how this snowball effect grew to outrageous proportions in the late nineteenth century, when Christians opposed to Darwinism were labelled as similar to Medieval Christians who (allegedly) thought the earth was flat. 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, and includes a discussion about the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty.
- Sales Rank: #970512 in Books
- Published on: 1991-01
- Released on: 1997-01-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .37" w x 5.50" l, .51 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 160 pages
Review
"Russell conclusively shows how the 'flat earth' myth was concocted and popularized by Washington Irving and a French erudit and how the 'flat error' was declared by Darwininst historians, who compared the denial of Darwin's theory to Columbus's struggle for acceptance by his scholastic religious contemporaries. The book is a delightful, provocative, and persuasive interpretation about a myth that has flitted in and out of popular history."- Colonial Latin American Historical Review
"This book is must reading for all Christians."-Biblical Worldview
"Russell packs a punch in this slender, clearly written, and engagingly argued volume."-Booklist
"Inventing the Flat Earth is a well-written and thoroughly researched account of a fascinating topic. It is strongly recommended."-Science & Christian Belief
"[Russell] has written a scholarly, yet very readable, investigation into [the "flat earth" myth's] background, origins, and consequences. This book also is well-documented and contains a good bibliography and numerous helpful illustrations. It can be of interest to scholars and other serious readers as well as to students in the classroom dealing with problems of medieval-modern intellectual history."-Teaching History
"ÝRussell¨ has written a scholarly, yet very readable, investigation into Ýthe "flat earth" myth's¨ background, origins, and consequences. This book also is well-documented and contains a good bibliography and numerous helpful illustrations. It can be of interest to scholars and other serious readers as well as to students in the classroom dealing with problems of medieval-modern intellectual history."-Teaching History
?This book is must reading for all Christians.??Biblical Worldview
?This book is must reading for all Christians.?-Biblical Worldview
?Russell packs a punch in this slender, clearly written, and engagingly argued volume.?-Booklist
?Inventing the Flat Earth is a well-written and thoroughly researched account of a fascinating topic. It is strongly recommended.?-Science & Christian Belief
?[Russell] has written a scholarly, yet very readable, investigation into [the "flat earth" myth's] background, origins, and consequences. This book also is well-documented and contains a good bibliography and numerous helpful illustrations. It can be of interest to scholars and other serious readers as well as to students in the classroom dealing with problems of medieval-modern intellectual history.?-Teaching History
?Russell conclusively shows how the 'flat earth' myth was concocted and popularized by Washington Irving and a French erudit and how the 'flat error' was declared by Darwininst historians, who compared the denial of Darwin's theory to Columbus's struggle for acceptance by his scholastic religious contemporaries. The book is a delightful, provocative, and persuasive interpretation about a myth that has flitted in and out of popular history.?- Colonial Latin American Historical Review
"Inventing the Flat Earth...is a jewel of a book that provides important new insights into the way historians have interpreted Columbus's achievement."-The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
JEFFREY BURTON RUSSELL is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals and reference volumes and is the author of 16 other books on medieval history, the history of religion, and intellectual history, including A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (1997).
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Definitively and concisely destroys the Flat Earth Myth.
By Dr. J. Sarfati
Dr Russell documents that almost every educated person in the Middle Ages, inside and outside the Church, believed that the earth is a globe. Centuries before Columbus, “the Venerable Bede” affirmed that the earth was round “like a ball” not a shield; and he is one of many. There were a few obscure flat-earthers like Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes but they were largely ignored. Royalty held a golden sphere (‘orb’) with a cross (globus cruciger), where the sphere was clearly understood by the rulers and subjects to represent the earth.
Furthermore, the medieval people even knew how big the globe was—Columbus got that wrong—and how small it was compared with the universe. And in the late Middle Ages, scientist/clergy Buridan and Oresme even toyed with ideas that the earth rotates.
The idea that Columbus was the only round-earther against a multitude of flat-earthers is a lie fabricated by Washington Irving. Then 19th-century atheopathic propagandists like John Willam Draper and Andrew Dickson White spread this mendacity as part of their ‘conflict thesis’.
It's notable that the famous Stephen Jay Gould had nothing but praise for this book. It is also good to read its footnotes because there is plenty of supporting information and quotation.
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Good introduction to historiography
By Craig Schamp
Christopher Columbus was a radical who thought that the earth was round while everyone around him believed the earth was flat. That's the history that most of us are taught, but it's wrong. The fallacy of this view and the intellectual fraud that perpetrated it are explained in Jeffrey Burton Russell's short book.
There were a few medieval "flat earthers," to be sure. Russell explains, though, that no one of any stature was influenced whatsoever by them, and especially not by Cosmas Indicopleustes, who has been given undue attention by writers eager to hold him up as typical of the period.
The ancient Greeks believed that the earth was a globe. Modern historians invented, and in some cases continue to teach, that this knowledge was suppressed by the Catholic church in the middle ages. According to Russell, the church did not stand athwart history yelling "Stop!" Augustine, Origen, and Bede, as well as other Christian intellectuals, acknowledged the sphericity of the earth.
People living in the middle ages, if they thought about such matters at all, could see that the earth was likely a sphere. After all, the hull of a ship disappeared over the horizon before the mast did. The stars also provided evidence that the world was not flat. Russell convincingly shows that the concept of a "dark age," during which the ancient Greek and Roman knowledge was lost, is pure fantasy and was promulgated by modern historians in part to make their own work at "reinterpreting" the classics seem more profound. The "Flat Error," as Russell calls it, was amplified over time as some intellectuals repeated the claim of earlier secondary sources without checking the primary sources for the evidence.
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
a good statement of the obvious
By A Customer
This is a neat little book, almost too short a book, in which Jeffrey Russell aims to make clear to a popular audience what professional medieval historians have known for years: that the cherished modern notion that all medieval minds thought the earth was flat is simply false. Yet setting the record straight is not Russell's only concern, for in the second half of the book he engages in a historiographical account of how nineteenth century writers invented the notion.
Anyone familiar medieval intellectual history has encountered innumerable references to the spherical earth. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Roger Bacon, writers of travel narratives like John Mandeville, and many others all assumed sphericity (Aquinas, writing around 1250, even offers the statement "the world is round" as an example of something so obvious it needs no proof). In this respect, trying to "prove" that medieval intellectuals did not think the earth was flat is a bit challenging-how does one begin? Russell does a pretty good job, beginning with the controversy over Columbus' voyage (which had nothing to do with the shape of the earth, but was about its circumference), and working backward in a vain attempt to find evidence of flat earth belief. In the process he comes across only five indisputable "flat earthers," at least two of whom were ridiculed during the Middle Ages for being so silly as to be unaware the earth was a sphere. The main culprit is Cosmas Indicopleustes, who thought the earth was flat and beneath a vaulted heaven shaped like a tent. Most people who accuse all medieval people of being "flat-earthers" rest their case on Cosmas, but he was unknown in western Europe (since there was no Latin translation of his Greek work), and at least two Greek-speaking scholars during the Middle Ages dismissed him as a quack.
After making relatively short work of the actual geographical knowledge of medieval Europe, Russell charts the progress of the myth of the medieval flat earth, and traces it from the late 18th and early 19th century to the present (with a focus on the mid to late 19th). In this section of the book the author poses some fundamental questions about how and why history is written, and about the very notion of "modernity." For the general reader, this section may hold less appeal than the opening chapters on medieval geography.
The book is not perfect. Short shrift is given to flat earth traditions outside of medieval Christianity, including the Near Eastern tradition that accounts for some language suggesting a flat earth in the Old Testament (such references would not have troubled medieval theologians, who did not necessarily privilege the literal sense of scripture). Also Russell should have made more of the association of the medieval belief in the flat earth (myth) with the medieval belief in the geocentric universe (fact). The acceptance of the idea that the Middle Ages believed in the flat earth has been abetted by the ecclesiastical opposition towards Galileo and other early modern heliocentrists, and Russell brushes this aside too quickly. Occasionally, Russell wears his own religious beliefs on his sleeve, and this will discomfit some readers.
In general, however, this is a good attempt to discuss medieval geographical knowledge and question our assumptions about modernity. For some of my friends this book has been pretty bewildering, since the myth Russell destroys is so firmly ingrained in our culture. It is nice to see more popular books, like Lies My Teacher Told Me, continue to attack the myth.
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