The Middle Ages- The History of Flat Earth



In this video we look at the period of time between the Fall of the Western Empire and the Fall of the Eastern Empire- the Middle Ages. In addition to looking at Western Science, we touch on Indian and Chinese Science, as well as the science of the Catholic Church (Easter).

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC68chxz-bc3e1gYq5WdfClA/join

Donate to the Telescope Fund:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/116418109
MEMBERSHIPS: https://www.patreon.com/c/bobthescienceguy/membership
PayPal Link Telescope Link: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=JSAFP8KSRZDQQ

Bob’s Websites
Check them OUT:

Bob the Science Guy: https://www.youtube.com/user/drbob420

ResearchFlatMoon (the production channel):
https://www.youtube.com/c/ResearchFlatMoon

Slide Rules and Mathematics (STEM Education):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXa89aIdG222z8ADB0e7GA

Shamrock Banks Observatory:
https://www.youtube.com/c/CommonSenseScience

Please consider becoming a Patreon of the Channel- All money donated through paypal or from the patreons goes directly into improvements in the channel (computers, cameras, lights etc) or to create educational videos (sextants, telescope equipment, etc).

https://www.patreon.com/bobthescienceguy

Bob

source

48 thoughts on “The Middle Ages- The History of Flat Earth”

  1. Said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m enjoying this series because I’ve heard all the derp and all the responses to it. It’s nice to just listen and learn something. Please do more of this. Even if it doesn’t get the views that derp bashing does.

    Reply
  2. Overall excellent, but some points. On the restriction of medieval study to theology, agreed, but the main restriction was that Boethius' translations of Aristotle's works were limited by his execution (or martyrdom) by Theodoric. Until the 13th century the medieval scholars knowledge was restricted for the most part to the first two of Aristotle's logical works, the Categories and On Interpretation. Only until the late 13th century was the rest of his logical work, and his scientific work, fully assimilated.

    On heliocentric vs geocentric, Ockham's razor (which was a basic principle well before Ockham himself) dictates the former, but the problem here is that Newton's theory of gravitation was a 17th century development. For Aristotelians, heavy bodies tend towards the century of the universe. Note that 'heavy' does not include the sun, stars and planets which are weightless lights in the sky! It's only with Newton that we get a wholly satisfactory theory of why things fall, namely that they are attracted to other 'heavy' (i.e. massy) bodies. But I assume Newton comes next in this fantastic series.

    Reply
  3. I think we need to remember that documentary about King Arthur in which Sir Belvedere explains how the world is banana shaped.

    …just after he’d identified a witch by showing that she weighed the same as a duck…

    Reply
  4. @BobtheScienceGuy I'm loving this series and I've been a subscriber to your channels for a long time. However I've got to pick you up on your repeated mispronunciation of "Islam".
    The sound of the original Arabic word is perhaps reasonably described to American ears as the "is" from the word "this" followed by the word "lamb". But if you just want to use the accepted American English pronunciation, I'd be very grateful if you could please take your pronunciation in this video and lengthen the "a" sound. Many of your viewers would be very grateful! 😅

    Reply
  5. Hi Bob, I'm an Eastern Orthodox Christian and live in the west and am interested in calendars etc of course. You have an error there: Easter was counted and celebrated in the same way in the West and the East, after the Church agreed on the calculation of its celebration at the Council of Nicaea in 325. (In Britain they counted it a bit differently for a while later, but that's a detail.) The difference came after 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced a calendar reform that was gradually adopted by Protestants but not by the Orthodox Churches.

    Reply
  6. Another nice lecture/ discussion. Time-keeping and calendars are always interesting for me. Partly because it ties in with my interest in celestial navigation I suppose. Well, that and gyrocompasses… and… and.. oh what the heck. Guess I'm just an arm-chair 'renaissance man' lol

    Enjoying these, know you're busy with work and all, but appreciate your efforts.

    Reply
  7. Where Bob says “the golden age of islam” he means The Golden Age of the Arabic World. Islam eventually messed everything up. And made the arabic World the dumb one that it is now under the islamic religion. That is why they have to use the expertise of the WESTERN World….which happens to be Christian/judaeic.

    Reply
  8. The Vatican was responsible for creating one of the most comprehensive star maps. Four nuns, Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri, cataloged the brightness and locations of 481,215 stars from glass plates. It was quite an amazing accomplishment.
    Edit: they used photographic plates and it was long after the Middle Ages.

    Reply
  9. One piece of evidence for the Medival knowledge of the round earth was frequently pictured iin the left hands of kings–the orb. Yes, we like to think of it as the "Holy Hands grenade of Antioch," but it was symbolic of the sphere of the earth topped with the cross of Christ. Love your programs, Bob. I hope you tie the Myth of the Myth of Columbus "disproving" the flat earth to Washington Irving. He wrote about Columbus and inserted the flat earth into the story.

    Reply
  10. I am not an expert on this, so take this with a grain of salt:
    As far as I remember, I was taught, that alchemy – though intrinsically flawed in its premise – DID cause several innovations and discoveries. This was because – unlike flat earthers – they genuinely believed in discovery and experiments and performed various chemical and physics experiments that did advance science as a whole.

    Reply
  11. Bob, you are a superb teacher. You are “skimming” a huge subject without cherry picking and just presenting just the relevant bits. That takes some doing. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

    Reply
  12. This will be an interesting discussion next time I get a chance to meet with a good friend that is a world recognized expert in such disciplines! She published an interesting paper on dress code laws during the dark to Enlightened tera. Sleeve length was punishable! We've discussed how the mirror helped start the Renaissance! We've talked mythicism, even Bart Ehrman, she's been in the Vatican catacombs many times, met the Pope … but not flat earth! She'll get a kick out of it. Especially after some wine! Thanks!

    Reply
  13. The method of determining the date of Easter also varied between the Roman and Celtic churches. The Synod of Whitby in 664 was not all about that issue (as school history books generally said) but it was one of the the contentions between the earliest Christianity in Britain and Ireland and the later formulations brought from Rome by missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons, originally mainly in the South.

    In the event, it was a stitch-up, the "saints and scholars" of Celtic Christianity being no match for the political fix by which Northumbria had everything rigged in advance, conceived and co-ordinated by the fixer-in-chief, Hild of Whitby, later "Saint". I may fume at her machinations, but I have to admit she must have been a most remarkable woman. She became a nun only in her 40s, and a year later was the Abbess of the new monastery of Whitby. Being of the Northumbrian royal family helped with that. Her reason for "taking the veil" in middle age was that it was considered unseemly for kings and princes, some from quite distant places, to be seeking political advice and support from the extensive network of influence built by a WOMAN! But that was what had been happening. However, if she was a "holy" woman, then it was deemed to be OK. "Holy" and "Saint" may be doubted, but her intellect was beyond question. Her power-broking, was not of the shifty backroom deal, but of being held in genuine awe, of being a dominating mind, and acknowledged as such.

    Some going for a woman in the 7th century!

    However, it left Celtic Christianity travelling back North and West, grieving and bitter at being done over. They had to accept the Roman system of fixing the date of Easter, and so it remained. They had also agreed to adopt the monastic tonsure, though it may have been only the delegation to Whitby which did so, whilst the rest remained as hairy as ever.

    Reply
  14. This tidbit about Chinese astronomy was interesting, also the ones about Indian astronomy (didn't know about their grasp of time – 25 microseconds is a damn short time period). You should put this into a "supercut" with all the single episodes in one video after all is done!

    Reply
  15. Los dos sistemas serían válidos ya que se puede tomar, como referencia, cualquier punto, pero hay un pequeño inconveniente.
    Los tamaños aparentes del sol y la luna, son casi iguales, pero se puede, ahora y supongo que también entonces, calcular las diferentes distancias del sol y de la luna.
    En un día de cuarto menguante exacto o cuarto creciente exacto, el ángulo formado por sol-luna-tierra es de exactamente 90º. En ese momento, si medimos el ángulo luna-tierra-sol, podremos comprobar que es de más de 89,5º. Eso supone que el sol está centenares de veces más lejos que la luna y por tanto, su tamaño, en diámetro, es centenares de veces mayor.
    De ahí podríamos deducir la imposibilidad de que el sol orbitáse la tierra.
    Ciertamente, para calcular las diferencias de distancia, habría que disponer de aparatos muy precisos y tener en cuenta una mínima refracción, pero aunque el error fuera de 10 veces, se podría deducir que la distancia del sol es muchísimo mayor que la de la luna.

    Reply

Leave a Comment