Random Thoughts XV: Temere Cogito, Ergo . . .

[Samson]

That is still a pretty small proportion of the wold. From here, in 1500 23.5% of the population lived in China. From here (pdf) is seems at least unproven that they believed the world was round "The widely held conception that China comprised "all under heaven" (tianxia)". 12.6% lived in the Delhi Sultanate, which as I understand it was mostly Hindu while the rulers were Muslim. What does that say about the intelligentsia's belief? The third most populous was the Incan empire at 4.6%, and as I understand it the flat earth was a point of faith.

Is this the description of a society (the same pdf linked above) that believed in a round earth:

In determining the spatial and temporal dimensions of a site, adepts of this Directions and Positions school relied heavily on the geo- mantic compass (luopan or [uojing), a complicated instrument whose dial might have as many as thirty-eight con- centric rings centered on a "celestial pool" that housed a magnetic needle (fig. 8.11). Inasmuch as these rings incorporate "nearly all the Chinese symbols which are used in dealing with time and space," ranging from the eight trigrams to the twenty-eight lunar lodges, it amounted to "an outline of the universe according to traditional Chinese natural philosophy."

Spoiler Figure 8.11 :

And this says:

The theory of the celestial sphere surrounding a flat, square earth was later criticized by the Jin-dynasty scholar-official Yu Xi (fl. 307-345). He suggested that the Earth could be round like the heavens, a spherical Earth theory fully accepted by mathematician Li Ye (1192-1279) but not by mainstream Chinese science until European influence in the 17th century [see J.Needham, Volume 3, pp. 220, 498-499].

Concerning South Asia, wikipedia says:

The medieval Indian texts called the Puranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents. This general scheme is present not only in the Hindu cosmologies, but also in Buddhist and Jain cosmologies of South Asia. However, some Puranas include other models. The fifth canto of the Bhagavata Purana, for example, includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.

It is not exactly clear who believed what, but the population of South and East Asia makes the population of Europe hardly a rounding error, so if the question is what did most people believe then these questions are more relevant that the Europeans.

 

[amadeus]

@Samson — the premise on which I was operating is that there are probably questions future generations will have answers to, but they will also have the concept of asking the question to begin with, and I would suspect at this time the shape of the earth was maybe not something that was given much thought, just as we pay no consideration to questions that, like the earth’s shape to the medieval farmer, have zero relevance to us and don’t exist with us in our current framework.

 

[Samson]

@Samson — the premise on which I was operating is that there are probably questions future generations will have answers to, but they will also have the concept of asking the question to begin with, and I would suspect at this time the shape of the earth was maybe not something that was given much thought, just as we pay no consideration to questions that, like the earth’s shape to the medieval farmer, have zero relevance to us and don’t exist with us in our current framework.

For a mediterranean Christian farmer you are probably right, in that they had no particular reason to think about it. From my very brief reading the shape of the earth was an element of various theologies around the world from the Norse to the Inca to the Chinese, and to these people it would have been relevant.

It seems (again, from a very brief read) that the principles of feng shui are based on mirroring the geometry of the earth in the design of cities and houses. If everyone who practised feng shui in 1500 believed in a flat earth and everyone involved in long distance sailing believed in a spherical earth and no one else cared then the flat earthers would have outnumbered the round earthers by quite a few orders of magnitude.

 

[r16]

this has been sitting in my downloads folder since like November 30th, 2021 . Waiting for something to be referred to in a post .



goes like the world doesn't turn and it is the light source of the universe . All rights reserved . And the best part is it says it on the cover that it is banned to translate this book to foreign languages . Like in order not to embarress the foreign intelligence agents funding this particular congregation against ever present Communist threat . Like the US Congress or the House of Commons would ever notice that their taxpayer money was spent on such ...

 

[Birdjaguar]

For a mediterranean Christian farmer you are probably right, in that they had no particular reason to think about it. From my very brief reading the shape of the earth was an element of various theologies around the world from the Norse to the Inca to the Chinese, and to these people it would have been relevant.

It seems (again, from a very brief read) that the principles of feng shui are based on mirroring the geometry of the earth in the design of cities and houses. If everyone who practised feng shui in 1500 believed in a flat earth and everyone involved in long distance sailing believed in a spherical earth and no one else cared then the flat earthers would have outnumbered the round earthers by quite a few orders of magnitude.

I would assume that those who believed in Feng Shui more than likely believed in the application of feng shui more than the underlying principles. How many people today who put solar panels on their roof understand how the electricity is made, or care? The herd instinct that most people follow in many aspects of their lives does not go very deeply into thought. They mostly want to reap the offered benefits.

 

[Samson]

The intelligentsia in York or Kiev would for sure still have familiarity with Greek writings by that point in time, even if they were also familiar with Norse legends.

Thinking more about this, what about the author of Beowulf? It was some number of hundred years before Columbus, and we do not know where it was on the scale of history to fairy tale, but I imagine them believing in some combination of Norse and Christian teachings, perhaps that Jesus died on this dome of the world so we could ascend Yggdrasil to Helgafjell, or whatever.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Read "The Dream of the Rood" for a mix of Christian and pagan world systems.

Beowulf too: yes, some clearly Christian passages, but interspersed into much that has a pre-Christian sensibility (I can't say Norse specifically; that I don't remember about the poem).

All sorts of Danes referenced: Spear-Danes, Bright-Danes.

On the larger point, my position is pretty much that of amadeus: it misrepresents medieval thinking to say that they "believed the world was flat" (as against some other possible belief). Rather, they just didn't think about it one way or another, not as we do, anyway: that it must have some specifiable geometric totality. I think for them it just sort of was. If you'd asked them "do you think the world is flat," they'd have said, "no, it's hilly right over there; can't you see?" About the shape of its totality, they just never would have bothered to think at all.

 

[r16]

yes , another picture here



google found it as the first answer to the query: Was the world round in the Middle Ages?

 

[Gori the Grey]

One bit of evidence that that treatment provides needs to be handled with care, though: the bit about Satan in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Yes, he is said to be lodged in the center of the earth, at the very nadir of the cone-shaped hollow that is the region of Hell. Yes, Dante and Vergil start crawling "down" his torso, and then crawl "up" into the next region of their voyage: a big cave formed by his flailing feet. So to us that feels as though they move through the very center of a sphere, i.e. that the totality of their trip bisects a spherical space.

BUT, two things:

First, Dante says he got scared because Vergil turned around during the climb, so he thought they were going back. If we tried to picture this, a turn mid way would turn us back to where we had just come from, rather than progressing us forward on a bisecting trajectory.

Second, they next walk through that cave and get to the other side of the world. Right there, they see the mountain of Purgatory. We are told that the mountain is made up of the dirt that was displaced when Satan was thrown into Hell after rebelling against God. If you try to imagine that, you just cannot. We can imagine the first part of it, a projectile shot into a sphere and lodging half way, and displacing some of the matter of the sphere as it does so. But we can't imagine the second part: the material of the sphere displaced by the projectile ending up on the opposite side of that sphere.

My point is that Dante is working with meanings and he devises spaces that let him convey those meanings, even if those spaces don't hang together geometrically. So the turning around is Dante saying "I reached the worst spot on my journey, and then things started in a positive direction again." If we try to map it geometrically in a rigorous way, though (as our minds must do), he would just be going back into hell. Ditto the earth that makes up Purgatory. There's no physical way that that could happen. Dante doesn't care. Hell is a pit of suffering. Purgatory is a mountain of (redemptive) suffering. He think's its cool that an upward cone could be made out of the material of a downward cone-shaped hollow, so he just asserts that it is so, even if there's no rigorous way that it can be mapped.

I would actually use this as support for my view that people in the middle ages didn't even try to imagine the earth as a distinct geometric totality at all. Dante is free to string together assertions about space that don't hold together (for our geometrically rigorous minds) because neither he nor his audience feels under any pressure to resolve all of these assertions into one single shape.

It's not "they thought about the earth as having some shape other than a sphere." It's just "they never bothered to think that the earth needed to be regarded as having any fixed total shape."

 

[r16]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Aluminium_plate_spalling.gif

not much a literature person , but can imagine devil hitting the earth so fast and so hard to make an imprint on the other side . The wikipedia mentions arrowheads in the next picture but couldn't make much sense of them , meaning Dante should have seen real life examples .

 

[Gori the Grey]

Right, but it's not that, it's this:

With the chunk of dirt originally in spot A moving to spot B. The actual substance that used to occupy spot A is now in spot B.

Yes, this can only happen in literature. It can't happen in what we know as the real world. But their sense of what constituted the real world wasn't as fully developed as ours is, in that ours demands of any representation that it actually represent a viable relation of parts, mappable in geometric space, whereas theirs didn't. The earth was just a vague "something." Some parts of it were clear enough. There was dirt under your feet. You could walk for as far as you could and there would still be dirt under your feet, so that dirt formed some kind of mass. Any mass can have a hole in it, so this can too. But what the whole of it looked like? They didn't even bother to think that far.

 

[r16]

so , out of some random stuff we have this . Anyone , feel free to object at any time

-in an era of dog eats dog a bunch of honest trader at day/smuggler at night crowd wins a war against home country

-not exactly sure how they got there , they still avoid the fate of the French Revolution coming on their heels , kinda sorta inspired by their success

-they become aristocrats without a king despite the attempts , powerful Presidents or even crowning George Washington

-against the nature or whatever there will sure be a next time ; luckily for the ever matchless Americans Napoleon turns out to be a genius at war

-ever so burdened all Britain can do is a blockade , cutting the supply of slaves so that America will not grow too big while people are not looking

(you didn't think the abolishment of slavery was coming from the heart , did you ?)

-finally a deal is struck

-to prevent future Napoleon type distractions , the excess population of eventually entire Europe will be deported after making sure the controls will remain firmly with the waspy lot

-to make it a sure thing , the latter arrivals should be assimilated

-hence based on the Black Legend , the Irish Catholics have no freaking rights whatsoever because the Pope thought the earth was flat and would burn Galileo , too , because

-america is the land of the free and the scientific and the Irish will get extra care before George Washington in Heaven forbid , the Washington DC has to import the Spanish and Italians

-with that Columbus becomes an American hero overcoming barbarians back home and also failing because he is not an Anglosaxon anyhow

-it must be important for Italian Americans because ı saw it on The Sopranos , Tony and his crew ready to murder demonstrators chanting against Columbus on Columbus Day or whatever if that was a thing but it is still the daytime

-and finally in the name of Woke and DEI the Biden Administration like bans the Columbus Day

-and finally in the name of owning the Libs the Trump Administration brings back the Colombus Day

-and like , ı don't know , maybe and possibly ı am proven wrong or whatever that Christopher Columbus intentionally lied to his would be or actual benefactors that it would be easy , piece of cake , easy peasy to go places and come back and so on

-riches beyond imagination , even beyond the envy filled snickering tales from the recently captured Umeyyad archives

-real unfortunate that the invasion would have it real easy with the locals being "soft" or whatever ...

and this based on Dante was wrong hence the entire European continent , at least the European scholars knew the world was round for a thousand years is also wrong ...

 

[Gori the Grey]

I can't follow a lot of that, but regarding the last sentence, my claim was much more modest. Simply that Dante's worldbuilding is maybe not unambiguous proof that people of the medieval period regarded the world as spherical.

 

[amadeus]

I’m just a little disappointed that hearing aids are so advanced now by the time I’m a senior citizen I won’t be able to feign not hearing in order to avoid conversations.

 

[amadeus]

We of CFCOT generally consider ourselves intellectuals, and also generally work

Replying here but this doesn’t speak for me.

I thought for the longest time that ancient Roman furniture was all made out of stone.

 

[Ordnael]

I’m just a little disappointed that hearing aids are so advanced now by the time I’m a senior citizen I won’t be able to feign not hearing in order to avoid conversations.

Apparently the very expensive hearing aids break down rather quickly. A colleague of mine bough a 4k€ pair for his elderly mother and they didn't last a year.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Apparently the very expensive hearing aids break down rather quickly. A colleague of mine bough a 4k€ pair for his elderly mother and they didn't last a year.

I've had mine for over 5 years. The best hearing aids are mapped to one's hearing loss and focus their responsiveness is to fill in the gaps lost and not just amplification of sound. Often hearing loss in each ear is different and hearing aids that can be programmed to for each ear separately will generally perform better. The always difficult problem is in crowded settings like restaurants or group gatherings where one would prefer better understanding of the person you are listening to rather than the entire room.

 

[Samson]

I've had mine for over 5 years. The best hearing aids are mapped to one's hearing loss and focus their responsiveness is to fill in the gaps lost and not just amplification of sound. Often hearing loss in each ear is different and hearing aids that can be programmed to for each ear separately will generally perform better. The always difficult problem is in crowded settings like restaurants or group gatherings where one would prefer better understanding of the person you are listening to rather than the entire room.

Interesting. How do they know where your gaps are in each ear? Do you have to test your hearing at a load of different frequencies and tell the device?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Always a scream peeking at what media people are putting in their galleries

Spoiler :

 

[Birdjaguar]

Interesting. How do they know where your gaps are in each ear? Do you have to test your hearing at a load of different frequencies and tell the device?

Yes, with a comprehensive hearing test they can map the loss by frequency in each ear. then they can program the hearing aids to help with the areas that have the losses.