Random reading notes

[akashiver]

In 1551 the "Company of Merchant Adventurers" was formed "for discovery of regions, dominions, islands and places unknown." It sounds a lot more appealing than most of the clubs I joined as an undergrad.

In 1576 Sir Humphrey Gilbert argued for the existance of a Northwest Passage. He also argued that North America was in reality the lost island of Atlantis.

In 1714 the British givernment formed the Board of Longitude to help solve the problem of determining where a ship was on the globe. The subsequent invention of the sextant, chronometer and improved compasses allowed the calculation of both lattitude and longitude by the 1760s.

Since ancient times, geographers had believed in the existance of a southern continent called the Antipodes that theoretically should exist at the bottom of the world in opposition to the known world. According to tradition, this mysterious land was the real source of the Nile, which flowed beneath the earth's surface under a zome of scorching tropical seas to emerge in Africa. In the Middle Ages, Christians were taught to reject the concept of the Antipodes as being contrary to the word of God, who did not make rain to fall upward , trees to grow downward or men to stand upon their heads. Post-Marco Polo, however, people began to believe that the existance of a vast sourthern continent was needed to counterbalance the northern continents and prevent the world from toppling over.

(...into what? I wonder.)

At any rate, belief in the existance of this continent was so widespread that it was depicted on all the surviving maps we have of the globe after 1477 or so.

That's it for tonight's dose of randomness.

Comments

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

Another interesting feature of discussion of the antipodes in medieval history: the idea "antipode" literally meant "underfoot" - the idea that there were people on the other side of the earth (over a seemingly untraversable ocean, impassable climes, etc.) was as far-fetched to Aristotle (and from thence, the medievals) as the idea that there might be alien civilizations basking in the sunlight of a star visible from Earth. It was not so much a question of southern or northern - think about sticking a pencil through an apple, or that old joke about "digging your way to China" - that was what struck them as impossible, mostly on the grounds of distance, impassibility, improbability that the decendents of Adam could get that far, and most interestingly -- that if there WERE people over there, they had neither met Jesus (see: distance) nor could they be converted and thus saved, and God would not damn a continent of people to such a fate. (This pragmatic of salvation was also the base of the Church's argument against Giordano Bruno's many-worlds hypothesis).

Of course, the amazing teleporting Jeebus of Joseph Smith solves THAT problem later, but that would have clearly been completely untenable in catholic Church doctrine.

As for what the earth would have toppled into -- this really doesn't make much sense in the medieval cosmos, because the planets (Earth included) were thought to be imbedded in spheres. The Earth was absolutely considered to be immobile and fixed in its place by God all the way up to Copernicus.

You might be interested in Edward Grant's "Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos 1200-1687" (Ed is clearly going for the Long Thirteenth Century, which I'm all in favor of, natch).

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

(I just realized the spheres thing was vague - the spheres of which I speak are not the planets themselves, but either a) crystalline spheres in which the planets are embedded, like jewels set on the circumference of perfect glass balls. These spheres were nested in each other, and the friction of the spheres caused the harmony or "music of the spheres" (similar in concept to playing musical glasses - a wet finger rubbed on the rim of a glass making eerie, beautiful noise) or b) "virtual spheres" if you will - perfect circular motion, as mandated by the perfection of creation by a perfect and good god.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Sadly, most of my knowledge of medieval cosmology comes from Shakespeare, who was very much into spheres of all shapes and sizes. Wasn't there some wacky modern experiment done that translated astral radiation into musical tones to detect the real "music of the spheres"?

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

YES! And guess who else was heavily into it? Franz Anton Mesmer. Who had a glass harmonica. And by that, I don't mean a harmonica made of glass.

http://www.thebakken.org/exhibits/mesmer/glass-armonica.jpg

Lots of neat books on the subject.

[(Anonymous)]

Shakespeare isn't a terrible source, but he's a little late. Chaucer would be better for medieval, if you're going to source from lit. Plus, Chaucer was a badde asse.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Update: I think this was what I was thinking of: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1430/is_n2_v17/ai_15903755

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks for the recommendation!

[(Anonymous)]

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