Dinosaur In a Haystack - A Website About Stephen Jay Gould's ...

There were two minor scholars whose work survives that argued for a flat earth betweenthe years 250 AD and 450 AD. However, all of the giants – Venerable Bede, RogerBacon, Thomas Aquinas, and others – all clearly assumed a spherical earth. Yes, Gouldstates, Columbus had to argue with the clerics of Ferdinand and Isabella, but theargument was not about whether he would sail off the edge of the world, as the tale iscommonly told. It was over the actual size of the Earth, and thus the distance from Spainto Cathay (China) and India, which the clerics argued (correctly!) that Columbus hadgrossly underestimated. [Columbus died believing that he had reached Asia.]So how and when did the idea that medieval scholars believed that the world was flat takehold? Russell argues that the first generalized claims to this effect took place in the early19 th century, and became widespread in textbooks between 1860 and 1890. One of themain sources was John W. Draper, who wrote a best-selling book called History of theConflict Between Science and Religion, first published in 1874. The other major sourcewas Andrew Dickson White, co-founder of Cornell University and author of the bookHistory of the Warfare of Science with the Theology in Christendom in 1896. Both wrotethat the forces of knowledge and truth, including science, had been fighting against thedogmatism of Christian theocrats for thousands of years, and both used the (essentiallyfalse) flat earth argument as an example. The timing of these books is correlated with theresponse of western culture to Darwin’s book on the theory of evolution (Origin ofSpecies, 1859), in which heated debates between the two communities really did occur.Russell and Gould agree that this is not a coincidence.Gould notes that for most of the past few millennia, science and religion have workedtogether far more than they have fought. The Church, for example, traditionallysponsored work in astronomy, in order to support such tasks as determining the correctdate for Easter. Gould makes the point here and elsewhere [most notably LMC 14] thatscience and religion should have no inherent conflict because they work in differentregimes: science in determining the nature of the universe, and religion in establishingour ethics and morals. Yes, he acknowledges, there have been historical turf wars, butfor the most part the problem has been dogmatism, which has been and continues to be aproblem for both science and religion.DIH 5. The Monster’s Human NatureGould discusses Mary Shelly’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, and the moral lessons that havebeen falsely attributed to it starting with the Hollywood movie of the same name (1931).In the Hollywood version, the monster is evil because it was made with an “abnormal,criminal” brain. The implication is that nature, not nurture, is completely responsible forwho we are; this was a commonly held view by the intellectuals at the time the moviewas made [see ESD 28, for example]. The movie version also explicitly states that thestory was a moral tale, warning against the use of science and technology by man to playGod. The actual novel, however, differs completely in this respect. Mary Shelly’screative circle was strongly rationalist, and several members were atheists. The noveldoes not present the moral argument that is attributed to it by the movie. The monsterhimself is not born evil, but rather unformed: he has the capability for both evil and5