Reddit reviews Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus And Modern Historians

It's difficult to answer this, given that no-one who lived in a period where they were doing anything like accurate cartography believed in a flat earth. The idea that people in the Middle Ages believed in a flat earth is a myth invented in the nineteenth century - see Jeffrey Burton Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (1991)

So early cartographers were well aware that the earth was round and never had to deal with the problems involved with trying to make maps on the assumption it was flat.

It certainly wasn't. There are two primary reasons why we taught this in grade school:

First, a work of historical fiction by Washington Irving about Christopher Columbus became confused by many as a work of historical fact, due in large part to it being one of the first attempts at historical fiction in America. In the book, Columbus is portrayed heroically, believing that the world is round, and being set upon from all sides by the popular wisdom that the world was flat. In reality, people knew the world was round, and indeed knew the circumference of it as well. Columbus was convinced that the Earth was a much smaller sphere than had been calculated, and had North America not been in the way, Columbus and his entire crew would have perished long before they reached India, having carried with them only enough supplies to go the distance Columbus believed needed to reach it.

Second, the work of John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and others on their debunked "conflict theory" helped fuel the idea. Draper and White believed that science and religion had always been opposed, and had no ethical qualms making stuff up to make people who lived prior to the scientific revolution to make them look stupid - uneducated pawns under the thumb of the Church of Rome. Attitudes in the scientific community at the time were all too happy to swallow this tripe whole.

http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Flat-Earth-Columbus-Historians/dp/027595904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454081274&sr=8-1&keywords=Inventing+the+Flat+Earth#reader_027595904X

There are two well done books on the topic Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians and Flat Earth The History of an Infamous Idea. The first traces how the notion that medievals didn't know the Earth was round came about (it was invented in the 19th century by people like the above mentioned Washington Irving and then truly popularized in anti-religious tracts which emerged in the debates over Evolution), while the latter looks at the notion that the Earth was flat, it's demise in antiquity, and the resurrection of the idea among Flat Earth societies in the 19th century.

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The historians of ideas know that science was born in medium infused with Christian ideas and the Dark ages weren`t so dark.

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It's not an either/or.

Maybe take a small dose of little book called Inventing the flat earth, and consider why you think they're opposed.

How about this: http://shatteredparadigm.blogspot.com/2008/07/amazing-video-african-man-dead-for.html

people thought the earth was flat

Not true. Most medieval people we have writings from believed the earth was a sphere including Thomas Aquinas who was in the 1200's.

http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Flat-Earth-Columbus-Historians/dp/027595904X