Indexed

People did believe that the world was flat, the modern myth is the time period. People think that Columbus went out to prove the world was round, but at the time, this was accepted as fact.

Trade boats in olden times generally stayed within view of the coastline, allowing them to know where they were more accurately. The “curvature of the earth” might appear instead as a steep drop-off, leading to the theory that earth was flat.

I found it amusing,

That is why we now have MythBusters.

“it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority”

Benjamin Franklin

Ah, Seasmith, the words from my mouth!

Religion.

Chris H: It is always easier to pin ignorance onto those who can’t answer you. Therefore we will continue to teach our kids moronic things like “flat earth-belief was prevalent”.

How can you disagree that flat earth belief was prevelent?
Think about it — if you didn’t have the benefit of astronomy and the law of gravity, and you just understood the universe as you see it, wouldn’t you believe the earth is flat? Wouldn’t it be likely that this belief was prevelent before those discoveries?
At any rate, good graph.

This is a great index card. It is really a metaphor for how wrong conventional wisdom can be in many fields. Finance comes to mind

Ubiquitous in effect + Practiced by people = Religion

Practiced by people + Accepted as fact = tapping a soda can before you open it so it doesn’t explode

Accepted as fact + Ubiquitous in effect = Eating less to lose weight

Just another beautiful card, Jessica. Goes for a lot of other things, too - not just the flat Earth.

@Chris H: Thanks - that’s a very interesting page on the flat Earth in Wikipedia. It appears that I - like probably most people nowadays - did believe in the myth of most people having believed in the flat-Earth myth in certain periods (which, BTW, they might have). Which, in a funny way, confirms the index card. What do you know…

In general, it may be true that most people tend to believe whatever most people tell them to; I’m no exception. But: it’s not easy to see beyond what one holds to be true. It may take some powerful tools to keep one’s sceptical mind up. What seems to work for me is repeating the mantra “Eat shit; five billion flies just can’t be wrong”. That sort of reminds me that not everything everybody says is necessarily true.

No scholar since at least the ancient Greeks has thought the earth was flat. This is a myth propagated by incompetent researchers.

Any seagoing civilization has ample resources to lay this myth to rest. And almost all ancient civilizations have used the sea to some extent or the other, whether for travel or trade. Don’t believe people who spread these kind of “facts” this one is very outdated.

Hmm.. I wouldn’t say “any” seafaring culture could figure it out. Only ones with telescopes. The original point stands; at some point everyone believed the earth was flat.

Just because the Earth was proved round doesn’t mean it wasn’t proved flat. Round and flat are two different things.

“Most people believed that the earth was flat” goes hand in hand with “Columbus discovered America”.

Positing that the world’s scholars believed the world was flat (when, as noted, that is demonstrably not true, and it didn’t require telescopes or ships, just geometry to prove it) is one way to turn Columbus from an incompetent idiot to a visionary hero.

I do like having a day off in October, but do we have to lie to ourselves to get it?

[...] Hagy on questioning things Amol Kapila Jessica Hagy has an excellent cartoon on questioning things.  I tried to post it inline here, but I got fed up trying to figure out how [...]