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Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve
Episode two hundred and sixty one Discovering Earth.

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Last week we started the Scientific Revolution
by focusing on the concept of discovery.

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Discovery, to a large extent,
made the scientific Revolution possible. Today,

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I want to go a step further
and consider more deeply how the Age

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of Discovery and early Scientific Revolution contributed
to Europeans changing understanding of the very world

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around them. It turns out what
they had believed for centuries was false.

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But how then to go about adjusting
a perception which had existed since almost the

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time of Christ. Today it is
that question to which we devote this episode.

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The voyages of Discovery completely changed European
perceptions about the world from roughly fourteen

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sixty onwards. Consider this, what
was known of the world in fourteen fifty

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was roughly what was known of the
world in the year one Common Era,

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So this is a big change.
We're talking about. Conventional attitudes that the

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lands around the equator were uninhabitable because
the seas boiled and men would literally melt

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turned out to be nonsense. There
were whole continents unknown to the Greeks and

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Romans. These new lands were carefully
mapped by cartographers what was likely the first

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great victory of experience or philosophy in
the history of the West. The invention

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of what we call the terraqueous globe
took place over the course of a few

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years. This isn't actually a globe, by the way. It's a map,

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but it's a map that works like
a globe, with lines of latitude

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and longitude, and crucially, it
puts into scale for the first time all

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the different new and unexplored regions of
the Earth. This, of course,

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brings us to a very crucial question, what shape is the Earth? The

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answer to this question must seem obvious. Surely everyone knew that the Earth is

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round. In the nineteenth century,
it was claimed that Columbus's contemporaries thought the

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world was flat and expected him to
sail over the edge. That story is

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ridiculous by the fact that everyone,
or at least every properly educated person,

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thought that you could, in principle
sail around the world, and in fifteen

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nineteen Magellan and his crew did just
that. That doesn't mean that they thought

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the world was round. Columbus strangely
thought that the old world known to Ptolemy,

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was half of a perfect sphere.
But the new world, he believed,

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was shaped like the top half of
a pair, or as he says,

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abreast, and he had the impression
that he was sailing uphill as the

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Azores receded behind him. The stock
or nipple of the southern hemisphere was the

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location of terrestrial paradise. The Earth, or rather the Earth and water simply

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bulged. So along with this difficulty
of what shape is the Earth, the

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other problem for Europeans when it came
to translating how this new world functioned was

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the relationship between earth and water.
By earth, I mean land. Generally,

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most of the philosophy on the subject
agreed that land and water occupied distinct

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spheres on the globe in some way, whether you think about a giant ocean

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that surrounds all the land, or
perhaps the opposite. The idea was that

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each zone was distinct and continuous.
I e. What I mean by that

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is you couldn't have ocean and then
more land. Land was continuous. Ocean

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was continuous. They were two separate
spheres. The idea that there are not

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separate spheres, that this is wrong, doesn't start to become into being until

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the very earliest the thirteenth century,
and even then the idea doesn't gain any

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track action until the fourteenth The reason
that this theory is so important is that

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it's the only theory that squares ultimately
with reality, namely that land masses are

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scattered throughout the earth. In fact, the theory that emerges in the fourteenth

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century asserts that land masses should be
scattered throughout the globe. This is the

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only theory that fits with the now
obvious existence of antipodes bodies of land directly

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opposite to each other on the globe. Now. Sadly, again, this

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theory had almost no support prior to
fourteen ninety two. For us to see

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how this begins to break apart,
we have to first begin to think about

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astronomy, which was to be blunt
probably the only science we would recognize as

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science in the late Medieval early Renaissance
period. Students in this period learned their

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astronomy by studying the Sphere, published
in twelve twenty Common Era by Johannes de

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Sacrobosco. His textbook was widely printed
in fourteen seventy two once the printing press

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took cold and actually went through more
than two hundred editions. The sphere was

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still the standard astronomy textbook when Galileo
taught at the University of Padua in the

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late sixteenth century. In line with
the notion that the globe was made up

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of two non concentric spheres, one
of Earth and one of water. Following

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the example of Ptolemy's Alma Guest,
which had been available in the Latin West

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from about the twelfth century onward,
Sacrobosco proved separately that the surface of the

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Earth was curved. He showed how
this can be made apparent to someone traveling

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either north south or east west,
and that the surface of water was curved.

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This was evident because a lookout on
the top of a ship's mast could

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see farther than someone standing on the
deck, which wouldn't be the case if

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the Earth was flat. Modern commentators
assumed that Saproboscope had proved the Earth is

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round. He had done nothing of
the sort, and medieval commentators didn't claim

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that he had, for neither he
nor they believed that the two spheres shared

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a common center. Hence, when
medieval philosophers talk about the Earth, they

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meant the land, namely the sphere
of dry land that showed above the ocean.

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All these late medieval discussions took place
within a context of a geographical knowledge

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which corresponded to that of the ancients. No one believed that the Earth was

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flat, but the habitable Earth could
be represented fairly accurately on a flat surface.

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The habitable Earth had a center,
which was generally taken to be Jerusalem.

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However, there was another center measuring
from west to east from the fortunate

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Aisles which are the Canaries, to
the Pillars of Hercules, which marked the

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limit beyond which it was impossible to
travel. There existed a notional location on

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the equator that was called Autumn or
Erin, believed to be about ten degrees

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east of Baghdad. For the Arabs
and for astronomers relying on Arabic sources,

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Ram represented the degrees zero of longitude
and latitude. It was universally accepted that

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dry land was confined to one hemisphere, the rest being covered by ocean.

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Of the dry land, the furthest
northern and southern parts were uninhabitable because they

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were either too cold or too hot. As the habitable portion of Earth represented

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approximately one half of the whole of
the dry land, one sixth of the

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whole agglomeration of earth and water.
Thus, this two sphere theory of the

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world was shared by nearly all philosophers, astronomers, and cartographers, despite the

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difficulties it was known to present until
the late fifteenth century, when the rediscovery

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of Ptolemay's geography was incorporated into it
without much difficulty. The Portuguese explorers reached

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the equator in fourteen seventy four or
fourteen seventy five, discovering a new heavens

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and a new stars when things suddenly
reversed, but they didn't find any uninhabitable

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zones, and this required some minor
rethinking, but little more. It's true

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that Ptolemay in geography, unlike the
Alma Guest, treated earth and water as

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a single sphere, and this was
obviously bound to be of interest. After

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the translation of Ptolemay's geography, there's
no record of a terrestrial globe being made.

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In fourteen fifty three, Columbus read
Ptolemaian was convinced that the Earth and

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the water formed one's sphere. He
produced a small globe to illustrate his planned

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voyage. At the same time,
he chose to reject Ptolemay's account of the

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extent of the habitable world, preferring
a different man, that of the name

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of Marinus of Tire, who claimed
that the habitable portion of the earth extended

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more than halfway around the globe,
a view difficult to reconcile with the two

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spheres theory, and of course,
the crisis then begins with Columbus's landfall in

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fourteen ninety two. In fourteen ninety
three, Peter Martyr described Columbus's returning from

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the quote western antipodes end quote in
editorial certificate drawn up by another man.

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Pedro Alvarez Cabrel's discovery of Brazil in
fifteen hundred is described as the discovery of

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the quote land of antipodes end quote. He was right, by the way,

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Brazil is antipodal to the eastern extremity
of the world known to the ancients.

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But the decisive event was the publication
in fifteen oh three of the first

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letter written or supposedly written by A. Metago Vespucci, entitled Mundus Novus,

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which went through twenty nine editions in
the space of four years. It was

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vespucci second letter, by the way, which introduced the word discovery to European

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audiences. Vespucci's claim was that he
had encountered a vast new land mass which

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formed no part of the previously known
world. He had found, in other

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words, a new world. Moreover, it was clear that this land mass,

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although it was only one quarter of
the way around the globe from his

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starting point, was halfway around the
globe from other parts of the known world,

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and Vespucci sailed fifty degrees south of
the equator. This was not just

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the equatorial antipodes that some exponents of
the two sphere's theory had envisaged. Antipodes

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had become a reality, and there
was no way anymore that you could fit

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Earth's land mass into one hemisphere.
So up to this moment, it was

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possible to assert that the spheres of
Ocean and Earth were round, and that

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the zone of dry land, as
the Bible asserted, had four corners.

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You could just change the idea that
these were four square quarters into rounded ones,

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and the idea still worked fine.
But as I mentioned, the problem

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was this concept of a one hemisphere, multi sphere Earth, and how it's

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just bedeviling to people trying to make
globes. In fifteen oh seven, two

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globe makers tried to sidestep the issue
by naming their project omen Terra ambitum or

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the whole Circumference of the Earth,
and claimed of this ptolemy only knew one

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quarter. And again we find why
language is critical to understanding the shift in

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perception taking place here. In classical
Latin, the word orb was derived from

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orbis, meaning not just a sphere, but also potentially a flat disc.

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When Aow wrote of the orbis,
he means habitable dry land. The concept

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of a globe in the modern concept
of the globe is totally foreign to this.

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Finally, in fifteen eighteen, George
tan Center published the first ever edition

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of The Sphere that shows a modern
conception of the globe when with the interlocking

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land and sea. That was twenty
sixty years after Columbus reached the Americas.

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From fifteen thirty eight onward, the
idea that the earth and water made up

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one sphere became the dominant theory,
and that's an amazing change. The two

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sphere theory was unquestioned in fourteen seventy
five, by fifteen fifty was totally abandoned

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once more. This was the triumph
of experience and evidence over theory and logical

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argument. The invention of the printing
press and the invention of discovery, acting

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in combination, transformed the balance between
evidence and theory, tilting it away from

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the reinterpretation of old arguments and toward
the acquisition and interpretation of new evidence.

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As far as the two sphere theory
was concerned, the voyages of Vespucci were

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deadly. The new facts were killer
facts. As it happened, this is

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the first occasion since the establishment of
universities in the thirteenth century on which a

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political theory was destroyed by a fact. Astonishingly as it might seem, there

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is no previous occasion on which new
empirical evidence determined the outcome of a long

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standing debate between philosophers. Aristotle,
for example, had argued that the nerves

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are all connected to the heart.
Galen had shown that they were connected to

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the brain, but Aristotelian philosophers,
both ancient and medieval, had continued following

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Aristotle's teaching as if Galen didn't exist. In fifteen o seven, the relationship

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between theory and evidence changed, and
it changed forever. We're going to get

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more into Nikolai Copernicus in a few
weeks, but for now, know that

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the broad outline of capernas Kus's argument
for the Earth as a single globe was

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conventional by fifteen forty three, that
was when it was published. We know

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that he formulated this view as early
as fifteen fourteen. Again, I will

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get more into his theories in much
greater detail here in a bit. What

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is interesting for us now from a
macro level is how Copernicus's theories about the

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world were received. Note he died
shortly after their publication so as not around

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for debate. It used to be
taught in many schools that Copernicus sparked an

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intellectual revolution. Sadly, that's just
false. Sure astronomers were interested in what

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he had to say, but most
assumed his arguments for a moving Earth were

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plain wrong. If the Earth moved, the argument went, we would be

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aware of it. You would feel
the wind in your face, like if

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you ride in an open car or
on a bicycle. If you dropped an

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object from a tower, it would
fall to the west, etc. Etc.

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Other men would solve this riddle,
I e. That the Earth does

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move, but much too slowly to
impact us in perceptible ways. But for

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now we need to accept the reality
that Copernicus's work was maybe less revolutionary than

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it's often made out to be.
For example, while there is no mention

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of astrology in his work, Copernicus
never disputed the standard view of the time

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that astronomy existed to make astrology possible. That was its purpose. Coupernicus's view

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of the universe is different from Ptolemais
in that the Sun, not the Earth,

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lies at the center, but in
all other respects, Copernicus's view is

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identical to Ptolemais. It was a
series of spheres, one nested within the

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next, all movement within it was
heavenly and perfect, and therefore circular.

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For the first two generations of astronomers
reading Copernicus, the crucial point about his

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book was not that it advocated heliocentrism, but that it took the principle of

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circular movement more seriously. Finally,
Copernicus's universally Ptolemay's was finite in size.

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What then, are the implications of
claiming that the Earth is a planet?

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Copernicus does not discuss the question,
but his successors would have to. In

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the summer of fifteen thirty eight,
an Italian man by the name of Giordano

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Bruno gave a series of lectures in
Italian in Oxford in fifteen thirty eight.

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By then it had been forty years
since Copernicus had published on the Revolutions.

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His new astronomy had certain evident advantages
over the established astronomy of Ptolemay. According

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to Plato and Aristotle, all movement
in the heavens should be circular and unchanging.

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And in the Renaissance there were still
philosophers trying to construct a simple model

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of the universe, which consisted of
spheres nested around a common center. But

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try as they might, these philosophers
could not get such models to fit what

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it actually happens in the heavens.
What Ptolema had managed to achieve was a

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system that accurately predicted movements in the
heavens. The Ptolemaic system, like those

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of Plato and Aristotle, claimed that
the moon, the Sun, and all

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the planets circled around the Earth.
But in order to accurately predict the movement

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of these heavenly bodies, and it
was a complex system of what we're called

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deference circles, epicycles, circles on
circles, and eccentrics, circles rotating around

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a display center, and equants all
had to be used. The equant was

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a device for speeding up and slowing
down the movement of a body in the

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heavens by measuring its movement not from
the center of a circle, but from

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a different point. By this means, the movement could be described as constant.

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Essentially, what it comes down to
was Ptolemy head figured out in a

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very artful way how to get a
round peg to fit in a square hole.

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You had to just jimmy it a
lot. It was awkward, It

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had a lot of bizarre calculations,
but it worked. Now, Capernaskis comes

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along and proposes to abolish the equant
and to eliminate the epicycle for each planet

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further from the Sun than the Earth, by showing how the movement of the

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Earth created an apparent movement in the
sky equivalent to these epicycles. Copernicis also

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claimed that his system was preferable because
it specified more tightly the characteristics of the

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system as a whole. Polemaic philosophers
had never been sure, for example,

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whether Venus or the Sun was closer
to the Earth here Coupernicus's system had a

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huge advantage because it placed the heavenly
bodies in a fixed and permanent order.

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Still, as late as fifteen thirty
eight, there were, as far as

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historians know, only three competent astronomers
in all of Europe who accepted Coupernicus's claim

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that the Earth traveled around the Sun. In Germany there was Christophe Rothmann,

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in Italy Giovanni Bettini, and in
England Thomas Diggs. Several of these men

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were able to push Copernicanism a little
bit further to argue for an infinite and

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eternal universe. The stars, they
said, were suns, and the sun

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was a star here. Actually they
weren't following Kupernicus, but Aristochus of Samos,

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who lived back in the century BC. Thus, they argued there could

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be other inhabited planets in the universe. Even the Sun and the stars might

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be inhabited, for they could not
be equally hot all over, and there

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might be creatures quite different from ourselves
who thrive on the heat. Moreover,

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there was nothing to show that the
other planets were different from the Earth.

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Several argued that the moon and planets
could be presumed to have continents and oceans,

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and that they shone not by their
own light, as generally was assumed,

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but solely by reflected light. Thus, seen from the Moon, the

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Earth would look like a gigantic moon. Soon from even farther away, it

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would look like a brighter star in
the sky. The Earth, one of

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these men thought, would shine brightly
because the seas would reflect more light than

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the land. Thus, for the
first time, we start imagining an infinite

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universe with numberless stars and planets,
all possibly inhabited by extraterrestrial life forms.

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Interestingly, these men weren't the first
to imagine infinite universes with extraterrestrial life.

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Back in fourteen forty, Nicholas of
Cusa, in his un learned Ignorance,

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had argued that only an infinite universe
was appropriate for a finite god. Nicholas

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thought the Earth was a heavenly body
which from a distance would shine like a

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star, an idea that would later
catch attention. But Nicholas assumed that the

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Earth and the Sun were similar bodies. A habitable world, Nicholas thought,

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was hidden behind the shining visible surface
of the Sun. As for the Earth,

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it, like the Sun, was
surrounded by a fiery mantle which for

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some reason was invisible to us.
But really the first competent astronomer to argue

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for an infinite universe was Diggs,
the English astronomer, in fifteen oh seven.

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He was the first person to explicitly
propose an infinite universe. Diggs was

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not an insignificant figure in new astronomy. In fifteen seventy three, he had

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published a study of the nova and
supernova which had appeared the previous year,

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and yet at the same time he
was happily engaged in using the new astronomy

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to predict the weather and to decide
when doctors should bleed their patients. He

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published his new Copernican account to the
Cosmos alongside his father's old Ptolemaic account.

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He knew that the Copernican system could
only work if the cosmos was much bigger

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than the Ptolemaics had imagined, but
he didn't correct some of the figures from

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before. And there's where I think
we get our biggest takeaway from today's episode.

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The reality is that, like most
revolutions, the scientific revolution was never

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uniform in its direction. There was
a lot of back and forth. There's

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a lot of efforts, even by
the men who would consider to be the

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00:25:10.279 --> 00:25:15.680
best astronomers of their age, to
still figure out some way to get all

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these new findings to fit neatly within
the Ptolemaic box, or at the very

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least to figure out a new way
to get the circular peg to fit into

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the square hole. It's going to
take repeated knocks to the system, and

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really we're going to have to wait
for Galileo to see the system completely be

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00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:44.039
brought to its knees, but that
won't be for another fifty or sixty years

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from where we are right now,
and we are going to get to Galileo.

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It's just going to take me a
little bit of time. So it's

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interesting to think of how the new
discoveries from the voyage of Columbus lead to

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new discoveries by men like Copernic,
which caused the old system to buckle but

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not necessarily break, at least not
in every case. All right, we're

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going to pick it up next week
with evidence and experimentation. That'll be one

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of our last sort of broad episodes
before we ultimately get into looking more closely

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at first Copernicus and then Galileo.
But in the meantime, if you're looking

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for some additional content to tide you
over, I highly recommend checking out a

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00:26:37.640 --> 00:26:42.359
free seven day trial of either the
Patreon account link is in the show notes

271
00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:51.200
or western Sieve two point zero.
You can get all the episodes seven day

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00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:55.759
free trial just by clicking the link
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273
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point any podcast app that you may
so choose, and it'll show up there

274
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every time I upload a new episode. As always, if you are interested

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00:27:06.599 --> 00:27:11.359
in additional content, you can check
out the website westernsip podcast dot com.

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00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:15.759
And if you have enjoyed the show, I always appreciate a rating or review

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