Published in Canadian Historical Review - Volume 73, Number 4 December 1992
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Inventing
the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians.
JEFFREY
BURTON RUSSELL. New York: Praeger 1991. Pp. xiv, 118, illus. $12.95
Reviewed by OLIVE PATRICIA DICKASON University of Alberta
In
this quincentennial year of Columbus's world-changing voyage, the discoverer's
epic achievement is being celebrated with floods of printed and filmed material,
not to mention exhibitions and a host of events of various sorts. What exactly
did Columbus do to inspire such a frenzy of celebration? Besides the obvious
answer of discovering unsuspected continents, the response that is often given
is that `Columbus showed that the world was round.' That is pure invention,
according to Jeffrey Russell, who maintains that the sphericity of the Earth
was already well known in Columbus's day, as was its approximate circumference.
What Columbus had set out to do was to reach `India' - a term that referred
to the entire Far East - to open its riches to European trade, and the souls
of its peoples to Christian missionaries. Columbus shared the general European
belief that Asia was waiting to be Christianized. The doubts he had to overcome
concerned the distance he would have to sail to reach his objective; authorities
feared it would be too far for the supplies the ships of the day could carry
for the subsistence of the crews, and that the curvature of the Earth would
prevent a safe return. Besides, they did not think there could be inhabitants
on the other side of the planet, because they would not be descended from Adam.
Columbus finally won his point by cooking the figures: he estimated the voyage
at 20 per cent of its actual length. As Russell observed, it was the navigator's
great good luck that the Americas were in his way.
What, then, about those stories of the Council of Salamancea arguing against
Columbus that the world was flat, and if he sailed too far, he would fall off?
Russell attributes them principally to Washington Irving (1783-1859) and Antoine-Jean
Letronne (1787-1848). Irving was a better storyteller than historian; as one
critic observed, `his final claim must rest upon his having turned the story
of Columbus into a work of art.' Letronne's prestige was so great in academic
circles that when he wrote that medieval scholars generally espoused the flat
Earth fallacy, his views were accepted without checking. He had used the fact
that a few of those scholars did support the theory - Lactantius was a much-used
example - to argue that the belief was generally held in the `Dark Ages.' Thus
was error built upon error until the flat Earth fallacy became inextricably
linked with the medieval worldview in mainstream scholarship of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. The error remains pervasive today, despite overwhelming
evidence against it. Russell's tracing out of the process by which such a thing
can happen makes for compelling reading. As he says, there are some important
things to be learned from all this. His points are worth repeating in abridged
form. First, there is the ease with which errors of fact or interpretation can
be unwittingly repeated and propagated when methodology and sources are not
checked; no one's word is above verification. Second, scholars and scientists
can be led by their biases rather than by the evidence. Third, there can be
no privileged systems by which to judge the truth of other systems. Accepted
theories and world views should be critically assessed, as well as reputed facts.
Fourth, the assumption that today's views are superior to those of older cultures
leads to undervaluing the past. The flat Earth error is based on the convictions
that ignorance and superstition ruled the day in the Middle Ages, and that the
church was consistently opposed to science. This was demonstrably not the case,
particularly in the earlier period. Finally, it is important to realize that
fallacies or `myths' can become so embedded in thought that they take on a life
of their own; a shared body of such myth can overwhelm reason and evidence.
Historians of science have known for more than sixty years that Columbus was
sharing a widespread belief of his day when he held that the world was spherical.
That has not prevented the flat Earth fallacy from continuing to appear in histories.