Flat Earth
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| + | [[Image:Flammarion engraving.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Flammarion engraving]]'', a wood engraving by an unknown artist, so named because its first documented appearance is in Camille Flammarion's 1888 book ''L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire'' ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology").]] | ||
| {{Template}} | {{Template}} | ||
| - | :''[[medieval culture]]'' | ||
| - | # The period of [[European]] history encompassing (roughly) [[AD]] 476–1000. | + | The '''Flat Earth''' model is a view that the [[Earth]]'s shape is a [[flatness (mathematics)|flat]] [[plane (geometry)|plane]] or [[Disk (mathematics)|disk]]. |
| - | # [[barbarous]], [[rude]], [[unpolished]], belonging to the "[[Dark Ages]]", medieval as opposed to [[classical]]. | + | |
| - | #: "Enormities which gleam like comets through the darkness of gothic and superstitious ages." | + | |
| - | ==Modern popular use== | + | |
| - | Films and novels often use the term "Dark Age" with its implied meaning of a time of backwardness. For instance, the popular movie ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'' humorously portrays knights and chivalry, following in a tradition begun with ''[[Don Quixote]]''. The 2007 television show ''The Dark Ages'' from [[The History Channel]] called the Dark Ages "600 years of degenerate, godless, inhuman behavior". | + | Various ancient cultures had conceptions of a flat Earth, such as [[Babylon]], [[Ancient Egypt]], pre-[[Classical Greece]], pre-[[Golden Age of India|Classical India]] and pre-17th century [[China]]. This view remained long dominant in ancient thought until the realization first recorded around the [[4th century BC]] in [[Classical Greece]] that the [[spherical Earth|Earth is spherical]]. From [[Greek astronomy]], the [[paradigm]] of the rotundity of the earth gradually spread around the world supplanting the older cosmological belief in a flat earth. |
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| - | The public idea of the Middle Ages as a supposed "Dark Age" is also reflected in misconceptions regarding the [[History of science in the Middle Ages|study of nature during this period]]. The contemporary historians of science [[David C. Lindberg]] and [[Ronald Numbers]] discuss the widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages were a "time of ignorance and superstition", the blame for which is to be laid on the Christian Church for allegedly "placing the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity", and emphasize that this view is essentially a caricature. For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the [[Flat Earth|Earth was flat]]. According to Lindberg and Numbers, this claim was mistaken: "There was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference". Ronald Numbers states that misconceptions such as "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy" are examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research. | + | |
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| - | ====Synonyms==== | + | |
| - | * [[Early Middle Ages]] | + | |
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
| - | * [[Fall of Rome]] | + | *[[Myth of the Flat Earth]] |
| - | * [[Plague of Justinian]] | + | *[[Bedford Level experiment]] |
| - | * [[Migration Period]] | + | *[[Denialism]] |
| - | * [[Middle Ages in history]] | + | *[[Earth's rotation]] |
| - | * [[Islamic Golden Age]] | + | *[[Geographical distance]] |
| - | * [[Muslim conquests]] | + | *[[Hollow earth]] |
| - | * [[Carolingian Renaissance]] | + | *[[List of common misconceptions#Science|Scientific mythology]] |
| - | * [[Medieval demography]] | + | *[[Skepticism]] |
| - | * [[Crisis of the Late Middle Ages]] | + | |
| - | * [[Great Apostasy]] | + | |
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The Flat Earth model is a view that the Earth's shape is a flat plane or disk.
Various ancient cultures had conceptions of a flat Earth, such as Babylon, Ancient Egypt, pre-Classical Greece, pre-Classical India and pre-17th century China. This view remained long dominant in ancient thought until the realization first recorded around the 4th century BC in Classical Greece that the Earth is spherical. From Greek astronomy, the paradigm of the rotundity of the earth gradually spread around the world supplanting the older cosmological belief in a flat earth.
[edit]
See also
- Myth of the Flat Earth
- Bedford Level experiment
- Denialism
- Earth's rotation
- Geographical distance
- Hollow earth
- Scientific mythology
- Skepticism
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Flat Earth" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
