> ... in the USA, it has long been believed and written in history
> books that the everyone at the time of Columbus believed the earth
> was flat. Not so, we know.
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Below is an item taken from the Internet at
http://info.greenwood.com/books/0275959/027595904x.html
You may also be interested in looking at an extended discussion of the flat
earth myth at
http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/flat_earth.htm
Among other things, someone in the latter discussion points out that one
should say that Washington Irving may have invented for the USA the story
that Columbus had to convince some flat-earthers that the earth was not
flat in order to get financing for his first trip. I expect that before
one decides whether or not Irving was deliberately trying to mislead, one
should look at the context in which Irving made this statement (assuming
this was the content of the statement he made -- I haven't checked.)
These were just two among the first few of the 924 references I got when i
did a search at www.google.com on the string Washington Irving flat earth
Gordon Fisher gfisher@shentel.net
Inventing the Flat Earth
Columbus and Modern Historians
By Jeffrey Burton Russell
Praeger Paperback. Westport, Conn. 1997. 160 pages
LC . ISBN 0-275-95904-X. B5904 $15.95
Available (Status Information Updated 7/29/1999)
** Description **
"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
Neither Christopher Columbus, nor his contemporaries, believed 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 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.
"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
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JEFFREY BURTON RUSSELL is Professor of History at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.