OK putin. I'm not addressing anything further about my alleged plagiarism until you actually produce text I supposedly plagiarized. You're hysterically focusing on where I supposedly got this or that argument because it distracts from the bankruptcy of what you have to say. I've addressed it, and until you have actual evidence to discuss, I'm done with that.
I'll move on to the substance you do deign to present.
"What a remarkable concession. So you admit that high level church figures believed in the firmament yet all this time you keep claiming that there was a consensus that the earth was round by the time of Columbus and Magellan! Which is it? "
Both. The firmament had long been reinterpreted to be spherical, and to stand far above the spherical earth. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, believes in a spherical earth (see "Reply to Objection 2" in question 1 of the first part of Summa), but also believed in a solid firmament (see the question, "Whether there are waters above the firmament?" in question 68 of the first part).
"Also, good thing that wasn't said in response to YJ. Try to stay on topic. "
This whole sub-topic is a branch of your reply to YJ's post, so it was on topic.
"Then why do *Catholic historians* say otherwise? "
Which Catholic historians?
"Really you have friends who are experts on AD White as a source? Sounds very convenient. "
I agree. It really has been.
"You didn't read any of it (Irving's work). You simply looked at google books that said what you wanted it to say and that's enough for you. If you had read Irving's work you wouldn't have asked for a source on Salamanca. Your story is ridiculous."
First, I only looked at it after you cited it as a source. Before that, I had only read others referring to it. Second, I would still have asked you, because you said the claim was "well documented," and I did not and do not consider Washington Irving to be a historian whose work rises to that level, especially when it is contradicted by serious modern historians.
"The whole point was that the notion of men on opposite sides of a spherical earth being upright was absurd. So yes, denial of the antipodes implied denial of the earth-as-sphere."
No it didn't. It was perfectly possible to believe in a spherical earth, but to be confused about what it would mean to have people on the southern hemisphere; and that, actually, is exactly the position that many took. For example, Augustine in City of God:
"As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants. They fail to notice that, even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form, it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, or that any conjectured dry land there should be inhabited by men. For Scripture, which confirms the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches not falsehood; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."
As Augustine makes clear, opposition to the antipodes does not imply opposition to a round earth. Heck, even White himself doesn't disagree:
" The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth naturally led to thought regarding its inhabitants, and another ancient germ was warmed into life - the idea of antipodes: of human beings on the earth's opposite sides. "
"Yes, some made Ptolemaic objections. "
Right -- Ptolemaic objections to the antipodes, which is to say, they disbelieved in the antipodes while believing in a spherical earth.
"I've come to expect false equivalence from you since it's become your go-to argument these days. Standard cartography today bears no comparison to the T-O maps of the medieval era which were used by the very people would require the most advanced and accurate maps available. "
I don't really see what you're saying here. Modern maps aren't used by people who need accurate maps?
"Ok so we can dispense with any expectation that you're going to treat sources honestly here. The concluding line of that paragraph from your hit-piece on white says that White's "estimate" (he made no estimate) was "off by twenty centuries or so". Which is completely ridiculous! White is saying that in the modern era thinking men accept the sphericity of the globe, and your writer is saying that White is claiming that "only" in the modern era do thinking men accept the sphericity of the globe. "
White did miss the near-universality of this doctrine by about 20 centuries. Yes, he says that "as we approach the modern period we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men." That was close to true in the Roman world much earlier than that (though eastern church fathers were slower in the first few centuries after Christ).
"Which is why leading church figures opposed the doctrine, which you even admit. Heck people like Petrus of Abano were even imprisoned for espousing, among other things, support for the theory of the Antipodes in the 1300s. "
Yes, but not the sphericity of the earth. Your identification of the two is spurious.
"That's [= language of compulsion in White] irrelevant to the point I raised about your writer falsely depicting White as having claimed that only in the modern era thinking men accepted the sphericity of the globe, when in fact he claimed the opposite."
No it's not. If White is making it sound like people were resistant to an idea at a time when they actually accepted it as completely obvious, then he is indeed mis-dating the time when it became universal among educated men, which is exactly the linked author's point.
"A few 'crank sources' my foot. The leading lights of the Reformation, and some of the most influential churchmen of the era, are not "a few cranks".
Which leading light of the reformation opposed a spherical earth?
"'Talking of people "braving" a belief in a round earth does indeed imply it was a minority or untolerated opinion'
"More inventions of things he never said. The "braving" he was talking about was Isidore of Seville, in the context of his *opposition to the Antipodes*."
No it wasn't. White writes,
"But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography - the idea of the earth's sphericity - still lived. Although the great majority of the early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had sought to crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it. Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant theology in many other things, braved it in this."
Notice how the whole paragraph is talking about the sphericity of the earth? Now who hasn't read White?
Incidentally, I also must wonder why you chose, in your post before this, not to quote the part where I explicitly said that I HAD taken the Numbers quote from wikipedia. It's very odd to accuse somebody of something they've freely admitted. Care to explain this quote chopping on your part?
Responding to the wiki stuff:
"The other section you copied from is the following:
' In the past few decades, however, historians of science have decisively rejected the ‘warfare’ view, along with many of the widely believed myths that White and Draper promulgated—such as the fictitious claim that John Calvin cited Psalm 93 against Nicolaus Copernicus or the ****wholly unfounded assertion that most Christians prior to Christopher Columbus believe in a flat earth***.'
[...]
"For reference, here was Semck's original post.
""Historians of science have known for years that White's and Draper's accounts are more propaganda than history." -- Ronald Numbers.
It even repeats the ludicrous story about Columbus and Magellan establishing the roundness of the earth to a society that didn't believe it."
As you can see, right below the part from Ted Davis is Semck's quote from Numbers. Just a coincidence, I guess."
So, two things. First, you accused me of quoting verbatim from wikipedia without attribution, and you have not produced a shred of evidence of that. I know you too well to expect an apology, so I'll just note that one would clearly be in order.
Second, my quote differs from Davis's IN SUBSTANCE, not just in words. Davis didn't mention Magellan at all. Where do you think I might have gotten an idea like that? Certainly not from wikipedia. The only reason I mentioned Magellan was because I actually read White to check Davis's claim, and found that he gave Magellan equal or even greater credit than Columbus, so that Davis's claim was not quite a full description. Thank you for trying to prove that I copied wikipedia and instead accidentally proving that I read White. I appreciate it. I really do.
World diplomacy
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