All Around the World

n                 Tin-plate was not only used fornmechanical toys, many other kinds of toys were made from it. Here is antin-plate globe from the 1960s, which I was given as either a birthday ornChristmas present. It is litho-printed, made by Chad Valley, and is six inches inndiameter. Originally it had a stand, which was broken and lost over the years.

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nGlobus is Latin forn‘sphere’ and that the Earth is spherical (OK, it’s an oblate spheroid, butnlet’s not overcomplicate things), has been known from antiquity.

nPythagoras in the 6^thncentury BCE, and Parmenides in the 5^th, both taught that the Earthnis spherical, and in c.330 BCE Aristotle developed the idea further. The Greeknmathematician Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in aboutn240 BCE (and, depending on which definition of the measure the stadionnis used, was accurate to within 2%). Ptolemy based his maps on a sphericalnEarth, and his Almagest was the authoritative work on astronomy in thenMiddle Ages.

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nAfter the fall of Rome, learningndeclined in Europe, in a period known as the Dark Ages (although not quite asn‘Dark’ as was once thought). Learning began to re-emerge as the Classical textsnfrom antiquity were rediscovered – in the monasteries of Ireland and in Islamicntranslations from the East. Scholasticism became the dominant force in the newnuniversities, basing its teachings on the precepts of Aristotle.

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nOne important theme innscholasticism was the Great Chain of Being. This held that everything had itsnplace in a hierarchy, and was used to justify, well, just about everything.nGod, naturally, was at the top, followed by the various ranks of angels. Man,ncreated in God’s image, was next – but man had his ranks too, with the Pope,nGod’s representative on Earth, at the head, followed by emperors, kings,nnoblemen and so on. Man held dominion over the animals and birds, with lesserncreatures below them, down through insects, plants and rocks. FollowingnAristotle’s teachings, and using the authority of Ptolemy’s Almagest,nthe Earth was seen as the centre of the universe. The sun, moon, planets andnstars all surrounded the earth, and were set in nested, rotating spheres ofncrystal.

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nThe problem with the rebirth ofnlearning – the renaissance – was that people began to ask questions. Like, wasnthe authority of the ancients justified? Were Aristotle and Ptolemy alwaysnright? Following the Fall of Constantinople, in 1453, scholars flooded in tonthe West, bringing with them more classical texts, some of which offered widelynopposing views. One important question that was raised was the nature and truthnof the geocentric universe. Copernicus, who carefully couched his argument innthe terms of a ‘what if’, argued in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestriumn‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’ (1453), that the sun, not thenearth, could be at the centre of the universe. The book attracted onlynmild opposition, until Galileo also began to openly champion heliocentricity.nIn 1616 he went to Rome to try to persuade the Catholic authorities not tonplace Copernicus’s work on the Index of Forbidden Books. He failed innthis, and in 1633, following publication of his own Dialogue Concerning thenTwo Chief World Systems in the previous year, Galileo was recalled to Rome,nwhere he stood trial in an ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition. He wasnfound ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’, and was required to ‘abjure, curse andndetest’ the beliefs that the sun was at the centre of the universe and that thenearth rotated around it. He was also sentenced to house arrest for thenremainder of his life, and all his works, including any he had not alreadynwritten, were banned.  A legend has itnthat when sentence was passed, Galileo supposedly muttered ‘Eppur si muove’n– ‘And yet it moves’ – but this is extremely unlikely. The ban on uncensoredneditions of the Dialogue and De Revolutionibus remained on the Indexnuntil 1835.

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nOne enduring historical myth isnthat people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat, and thatnsailors were afraid of sailing over the edge. Nothing could be further from thentruth, but why should the truth stand in the way of a good story?

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nAs we have seen, no one evernreally questioned that the Earth was spherical – they questioned whether or notnit rotates around the Sun. However, in 1828, Washington Irving (of Rip vannWinkle and Sleepy Hollow fame) published his four-volume biography ThenHistory of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. In Volume One,nBook II, Chapter III, Columbus goes before the court of Salamanca to argue thatnhis voyage of discovery should be authorised. The ‘simple sailor’ stands beforenthe ranks of bishops, scholars and clergy, who oppose his sailing on thengrounds that the existence of the antipodes is contrary to ecclesiastical law.nBy extension, they counter that belief that the Earth is spherical, Irving’snwork is a mixture of fact and fiction, and this is most certainly fiction. Thenopposition Columbus faced was because he had miscalculated the circumference ofnthe earth, using a different, smaller, version of the stadion thatnEratosthenes had used, and the authorities were concerned that, due to hisnunderestimation, he would not be able to carry sufficient food and water fornhis journey. But it suited Irving to depict Columbus as the plucky ‘little guy’nstanding up to, and getting the better of, the Establishment. However, Irvingnuses a version of the courts that were used to condemn Galileo (and others),nand in conflating the two, he set a precedent that was seized upon by othernwriters seeking to depict the courts of the Catholic Church as ignorant,nsuperstitious, intransigent and dogmatic.

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nAs the supposed antagonismnbetween science and religion gained ground during the 19^th century,nexamples of the irrationality of the believers were sought, and examples likenIrving’s were so much grist to the mill. John W Draper’s History of thenConflict between Religion and Science (1874) was one of the publishingnsuccesses of the 19^th century, with fifty printings in fifty years.nIn it, Draper argued that ‘science’ championed progress and intellectualnfreedom, and ‘religion’ represented superstition and repression. Thanks tonworks like Draper’s, this view became established as a ‘given’ in intellectualncircles. It also helped to cement the myth of the Flat Earth in the Middle Agesnin the minds of the general public. The truth is, virtually every educatednperson in the last two thousand years has known that the world is round – andnsailors were afraid of running out of food and water, not falling over the rimnof the world.

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nIn one of those excellentnhistorical coincidences I love, on Saturday May 30^th 1860, J WnDraper gave a lecture in Oxford entitled “On the IntellectualnDevelopment of Europe, considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin andnothers, that the progression of organisms is determined by law.” Thenlecture was, by all accounts, too long and very boring, and would probably havenbeen long forgotten, were it not for the discussion that followed, in whichnBishop Wilberforce and T H Huxley had the famous exchange in which ‘Soapy Sam’nWilberforce supposedly asked Huxley if it was through his grandfather or hisngrandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey.nHuxley is said to have replied he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for hisnancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his greatngifts to obscure the truth. (Disraeli described Wilberforce’s manner asn”unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous”, leading to the popularnsoubriquet ‘Soapy Sam’).

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nThe evolution debate, which oughtnto have been over years ago, rumbles on today. In the US, the term ‘Darwinian’nis too often used with opprobrium; in the UK, Charles Darwin is on the back ofnthe ten-pound note.

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nWe live in interesting times.

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