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Synopsis
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.
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About the Author
JEFFREY BURTON RUSSELL is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a frequent contributor to history volumes, including the Handbook of World History and The Transformation of the Western World. Dr. Russell has also written fifteen previous books and contributed articles to scholarly journals, such as History Today and Christianity Today.
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- PublisherPraeger
- Publication date1991
- ISBN 10 0275939561
- ISBN 13 9780275939564
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Edition number1
- Number of pages1
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Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians
Published by
Praeger Publishers/An Imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., New York, Westport, CT & London, 1991
ISBN 10: 0275939561
ISBN 13: 9780275939564
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Hardcover. Condition: Like New. Dust Jacket Condition: Like New. Richard Rossiter (Jacket Design) (illustrator). 1st Published in 1991/Copyright © 1991 J. 117 + xiv pp. An excellent, spotlessly clean copy and dust jacket! Clean, fresh, sharp, tight, essentially and virtually flawless copy and dust jacket with crisp pages, clean text, and very light shelf wear. Synopsis: Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), history continues to be accompanied by a curious and persistent illusion; the well-known fable that when Columbus discovered America he proved that the earth is round - to the astonishment of contemporaries who believed that it was flat and that one might sail off the edge. This error has become firmly established in the popular mind by the media, textbooks, and teachers, despite the fact that historians of science have known and proclaimed for over sixty years that most people in Columbus' time believed the earth to be spherical. Jeffrey Burton Russell aims to set the record straight, beginning with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages and what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe. Russell then demonstrates why and how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s - and how Washington Irving and Antoine-Jeane Latronne were among those responsible. Later historians followed the mistakes of these writers, reaching a peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Christians opposed to Darwinism were labelled similar to medieval Christians who allegedly opposed the sphericity of the earth. "Inventing the Flat Earth" ends with an explanation of why the error remains pervasive in society, despite the overwhelming evidence against it, and the implications of this for historical knowledge and scholarly honesty. Seller Inventory # 5vEf0040
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