Re: Colson on Christianity and science

Robert Schneider wrote:
>
> Oh, dear!
>
> The dialogue from Chiari's play (below) perpetuates a falsehood that should
> have been laid to rest long before 1979. Every educated person (almost all
> of them churchmen) in the Middle Ages knew the earth was a sphere. If you
> went to university, you learned it from Aristotle (at the University of
> Paris, two-thirds of the Arts curriculum was science-based, i.e., mainly
> Aristotle's works on natural philosopy). The dialogue would have been more
> accurate and more interesting if the Prior and Columbus had argued over the
> wisdom of sailing west to find the East. If my increasingly feeble memory
> is correct, Columbus was led to his decision by a calculation that put the
> earth's circumference a few thousand miles less than it actually is. He got
> this figure from the book by the 14th century natural philosopher Nicole
> Oresme. His _Le livre de ciel et du monde_ was a reworking of the latin
> version of a treatise by the 9th century Muslim astronomer Alfarabi, who had
> published the wrong figure.

        If I remember correctly, the error here was due to confusion of units.
Eratosthenes had determined the earth's circumference ~ 250 BC. & expressed it in stadia
- but then one needs to know which stadium he used as a unit. Kind of like "What's a
cubit?" or an imperial & a real gallon. (That's to see if Michael is reading
carefully.)
                                                Shalom,
                                                George
                                
                                                        

George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Mon Dec 8 19:49:12 2003